My paternal grandmother, Margaret Hansen Hillinger, was born
in Cleveland, Ohio, US, in 1919.
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| Cleveland, Ohio skyline, wikimedia commons |
The city is situated on the southern shore of Lake Erie, and
currently covers an area of about 82 ½ square miles. It was founded in 1796, and
incorporated as a city in 1836. It became a manufacturing center because of its
location on the lake shore, which gave it easy access for transporting goods. These
days, the city has quite a diversified economy, which includes manufacturing,
financial services, healthcare, and biomedical. Cleveland is also home to the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and several sports teams, including the Indians and
the Browns.
Before the Europeans arrived in the area, several native
tribes lived in the area, including the Erie, Wyandot and Ottawa tribes, until
at least the mid-seventeen hundreds. It is believed most of the tribes in the
area were transient ones, coming and going, or settling only seasonally in the
area.
The city got its name from the leader of the group who
surveyed the land that would become Cleveland, General Moses Cleveland. He
oversaw the plan for the core of the city before going home, and never returned
to the area.
Though the city had voted only marginally in favor of Lincoln,
when the South began to succeed from the Union, they were quick to rally to
Lincoln's war efforts, though there were still some that opposed it. The Civil War
was a boom time for Cleveland. Manufacture of railroad iron and gun-carriage
axles brought in a great deal of money. By 1863, almost a quarter of all US
Naval craft for use on the Great Lakes were built in Cleveland. In 1865, that
number had increased to nearly half. The fact that all supplies from the South
were cut off caused Cleveland to build its first tobacco factory. And its
garment industry also began to flourish due to the German Woolen Factory, which
was the first company in the area to manufacture the cloth.
At the end of the war, there was much rejoicing and
celebrating, though even then, some still felt that the former slave population
did not deserve citizenship, which had been granted to them by Lincoln. It took
many more years for the black population of Cleveland to arrive. Most did not
start arriving until after 1900. At that time, the Census Bureau estimated the Black
population of Cleveland at just over 4000. By 1930, it had risen to over 70
thousand, most of whom had arrived during the twenties.
The May Day riots happened the year my grandmother was born.
These were a series of violent demonstrations all over Cleveland on May first
of that year. Eugene V Debs, a Union leader, was arrested for denouncing US
participation in World War I. He was convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917,
and served until his sentence was commuted in 1921. Charles Ruthenberg, head of
the US Communist Party at that time, organized a series of protests that
quickly broke into violent clashes with other groups. When things calmed, two
people were dead, and forty injured. 116 people, including Ruthenberg, had been
arrested. The city government quickly passed laws that restricted parades and
specifically red flags, which had been one of the inciting points of the riots.
It is seen as the most violent of the civil disorders that happened at the
time, a result of the first Red Scare.
My great-grandmother, Oline, would have been about halfway
through her pregnancy then. She and her husband, Holger were both Danish immigrants who had not yet even been naturalized. I can only imagine how they must have felt about all this. I'm
sure they kept well away from the worst, but even living in the city would have
made it quite alarming.
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| Margaret with her parents ca 1921 |
The family flourished in Cleveland, and in 1923, Margaret
had a sister, and in 1925, a brother. Holger's homes sold well in the
increasing population, and Oline sewed and cooked and took care of their
family. Unfortunately, in early 1929, Oline fell ill, and soon died of
pneumonia. Holger was devastated. He packed his kids off to live with his
brother and sister-in-law, who lived nearby, then began to work on a new home
for the family. He couldn't bear to live in the same house where she had died.
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| ca 1929 - back: Helga; middle: Margaret, Marilyn, Torben; front: Else |
He soon remarried, and Maggie found she did not get along
with her new stepmother. When the opportunity came to go to boarding school,
she jumped at the chance, and never looked back. Andrews Academy (now Andrews
Osborn Academy) was located just outside of Cleveland in a small town called
Willoughby. She lived there during the school year, and only returned home on
breaks and for the summer. The school taught her basic secretarial skills, and
when she finished her schooling, it helped her find a secretarial job in
Cleveland.
She remained in the Cleveland area until 1942, shortly after the US
joined World War II. As soon as the call went out for women to be able to
enlist, she joined up, as did both her sister and brother. She spent the years
of the war in different locations in the US, eventually landing the rank of
First Lieutenant, the highest rank a woman could get at that time. When the war
is over, she and her sister signed up to help with the cleanup over in Europe. She
was stationed in Frankfurt, where she met and married my grandfather. After the
war, they had to choose where to settle their family. He was not particularly
attached to Chicago, where his family had moved only a few years before he was
drafted into the army. She did not particularly want to go back to Cleveland,
either. After some debate, the couple settled on Seattle, and settled there
happily, living there and raising four children. Maggie returned to Cleveland
for visits, but she never lived there again.
Sources:
Hillinger Family Tree
Margaret Hillinger Interview, 2001
May Day Riots of 1919
May Day Riots of 1919
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