We could only get two rooms at the Frydell home, one of which we used for a kitchenette, dining room and bedroom for my wife and me, and the other as a bedroom for the girls. Our rooms were rather small, and we were too many in family for our limited quarters, but we got along very well there during our canvass of the city for a suitable home to purchase.

There were two of Bernice’s friends, Misses Florence Stockdale and Christine Riley, who were also rooming at the Frydell home. They were very pleasant young ladies whom Bernice and the other girls had known since soon after they came to Washington. In fact Bernice met Miss Riley on the day of her arrival in Washington in September, 1918. She, like Bernice, had come to Washington after passing an examination to take a position as a government employee in one of the government departments, and they both got rooms at the home of the Frydells. Miss Riley’s home is in Pennsylvania, and not long after Miss Riley and Bernice arrived in Washington, Miss Florence Stockdale and her sister, Marion, who lived near Miss Riley in Pennsylvania, came and obtained employment as government clerks and got rooms at the Frydell home. Later Miss Marion resigned her position and went home. Bernice, Irene and Nelle soon became intimate friends of the Stockdale girls and Miss Riley and liked them very much. Two or three years after we came to Washington, Miss Florence also resigned her position with the government and returned to her home in Columbus, Ohio, where her mother and stepfather had moved from Pennsylvania during her absence from home. She and her sister Marion were very kind, amiable young ladies and our daughters regretted their departure from Washington.

Our landlord, Mr Frydell, and his good wife, we found were excellent people. Mr. Frydell was an employee in the Navy Department, and I am sure was a very capable man. They had one son Thomas, then a boy about 12 years old. Mrs. Frydell also had a married son and a married daughter by her first husband. Mr. Frydell was a member of the Masonic fraternity and he and Mrs. Frydell were members of the Order of the Eastern Star. We remained at the Frydell home about a month and during that time I visited a number of government buildings to wit: The National Capitol, the Congressional Library and the Old and New Museums. Congress was in session then and I spent one day, accompanied by our daughter, Nelle, in the Senate and House of Representatives, and recognized uncle Joe Cannon and Champ Clark, former Speaker of the House, and James A. Reed, senator from Missouri.

Meantime we had been making diligent search for a home. We wanted an eight room house with a bath on the first floor, for the convenience of my crippled wife. We found a number of very good houses for sale which were satisfactory in every way except that the bathrooms were on the second floor. My wife wished to have her bedroom on the first floor, convenient to living room, dining room and kilchen, and houses with bath on second floor would be very inconvenient for her on account of difficulty of going up and downstairs in her almost total disability to walk without assistance. After nearly a month of almost daily inspection of houses, we finally found one that was the most satisfactory of any we had seen and after considering the matter for a day or two we bought it, of Mr. W. S.. Phillips. It is an eight room frame and stucco bungalow, at 6512 Eighth Street, North West and seemed to be a well-finished house with a large cement front porch, large frame wood floors, covered back porch and a small side porch over the kitchen door. There is a cement walk in front and a cement walk extending from the front walk back to the kitchen porch. There is a basement, full size of the house with a cement floor and brick walls and the basement is well-lighted. It has hot water heat, electric lights and city water. The kitchen is supplied with a gas range, a nice cupboard and adjoining the kitchen is a nicely shelved pantry. The dwelling is situated on a lot 43 feet wide and 157 feet long and affords plenty of room for a garden.

Soon after its purchase we had household goods moved to our new dwelling and when the furniture was installed we found that we had a very roomy and comfortable residence, and were well-pleased to be again on our own. Several other families were located on Eighth Street near about the time we settled here. Our nearest neighbors then were Mr. and Mrs. Warren S. Allison and two children, Bob and Jane, and Mrs. Allison’s mother, Mrs. Booker; Mr. and Mrs. WiIson and daughter, Dorothy, and Mr. and Mrs. Olsen and two sons, Arthur and Herbert. All of them are here except the Wilsons who sold their home later and removed elsewhere in the city.

During the spring and summer after locating on Eighth Street, I made a good garden on the part of the lot west of the dwelling designed for use as a garden, and which I had broken and fertilized. The ground was new and the soil not very deep or fertile and quite sandy; it produced fairly well, and we got quite a lot of vegetables off of the garden. In the fall I set the garden plot in apple, peach, plum, pear, cherry and apricot trees, and hoped to have some fruit of our own raising after the trees were large enough to bear fruit. I also set out several grape vines on each side of the walk extending from the basement steps to the garden.

In addition to those of our neighbors who settled on Eighth Street, North West about the time we did, another neighbor Mr. Sengstack and family consisting of his wife, one son and one daughter, and also his married son, Charles, and wife and two little sons, Billie and Buck, bought the house on the opposite side of the street from Mr. Wilson's home and occupied it a few months later. Mr. Sengstack was an employee of the Herald, one of the morning dailies of Washington. He was quite an old man and had been a compositor and worker in other departments of various newspapers of Washington and other cities since he was a young man. After they had lived there for several years, Mr. Sengstack died, and after his death the home was sold and the family moved elsewhere. I think the married son and family located somewhere in Washington.

Another who lived near us on Underwood Street was Captain Cecil Anderson, wife and daughter, Ida. Captain Anderson was then in the military service and stationed at Walter Reed Hospital on Georgia Avenue, a few blocks north of our home. On account of a defect in his hearing caused by shell shock while engaged in the World War, he was declared unfit for further service in the army and he resigned his captaincy. Then he studied dentistry and after his graduation at the Georgetown University, Washington, he located on Georgia Avenue in the Bank of Brightwood building for the practice of his profession.

Another family who settled on Van Buren Street, about a block from our house a few days before we became residents on Eighth Street, was Mr. and Mrs. Millard and three daughters, Misses Mary, Emily and Rachel, who married before I was very much acquainted with the family. After they had been living on Van Buren Street a year or more I became very well acquainted with Mr. Millard. He was quite an aged man and had been an employee of the Treasury Department for more than forty years. Although he was so old, he was apparently in excellent health and very active. He was very near eighty years old when I first became acquainted with him and although subject to retirement, on account of his splendid physical condition, was retained in the civil service until he was about 82 years old when he was stricken with a very serious ailment, and after a few weeks of dreadful suffering, he passed away. He was a fine old man. I regretted his death very much.

The section of Washington in which our home is situated was very sparsely settled at the time we became residents therein. We were quite a distance from grocery stores or other business establishments. There were no stores nearer to us than Takoma Park, a suburb of Washington, partly in Washington and largely in Maryland and distant from our home about a mile, or some stores on Georgia Avenue about the same distance from us. Mary and I made trips to these stores several times every week and bought groceries and vegetables. I did not mind these trips when the weather was good, but in rainy weather and later in the season during cold snowy days, it was a disagreeable and tiresome job. But a year or two later several chain stores were located nearer to us, one the Sanitary Grocery, being only three blocks from our house, making it much more convenient to us. There is a church, the Emory Methodist Episcopal, South, on Georgia Avenue, five or six blocks from us, and a little further away is the Masonic Temple, in the lower story of which is one of the branch post offices of which there are a number in various parts of the city. Just across the street is the fine bank building of the Bank of Brightwood, which was established in the year 1922, of which I was one of the members of the Board of Directors. The bank building was erected about two years after the bank was established and is a two story structure, with the bank in the first story, and six office rooms in the second. The bank is well-equipped with fixtures and vault.

Chapter twenty-six continued...