Friends and Family or Family and Friends?

Which is it?  Friends and Family or Family and Friends?  Sometimes they are two distinct groups of people.  Sometimes one is greater or more important or in greater numbers than the other.  But sometimes in our family tree we have a line where the roles of family and friends are blurred.  Sometimes our family and friends are both.

For my maternal grandmother, Clementine (Stenger) Miars this is indeed the case.  She was born in August 1913 on the family farm in Kickapoo, Illinois.  Her immediate family was large with 7 children in all.  But it is her extended family that was very large.  One time I counted and she had over 90 first cousins.  As a point of reference...I have five.  That means both her parents had very large families.  It also means that her second and third cousins numbered in the hundreds.  Many of them lived in Kickapoo just like Clem.

She went to school with her extended family at St Mary's School in Kickappo.  Most of them would have also attended St Mary's Catholic Church with their families.  She grew up not just with her siblings but her extended family in close proximity.  Her siblings and many of her cousins and their families were to be lifelong friends as well.

I recently came across this photo from Clem's "stash of stuff" that I think illustrates this situation very well.

L-R:  Wilma (Schmitt) Johnson, Clementine (Stenger) Miars, Flossie (Gilles) O'Toole, Rose (Stenger) Inskeep, Mary (Stenger) Carman; ca. mid 1930s

L-R:  Wilma (Schmitt) Johnson, Clementine (Stenger) Miars, Flossie (Gilles) O'Toole, Rose (Stenger) Inskeep, Mary (Stenger) Carman

The five women in this photo that I think is from the mid 1930s were all raised together in Kickapoo and attended the same school and church.  Their families were connected by blood in multiple ways.  They played baseball together as kids and young adults.  They were friends and family and also family and friends.  Who's to say which bond was the stronger between them.  The reality is that it changed over the years.

Their family bonds are complex.  Clem, Rose and Mary were sisters.  Wilma was a both a second and third cousin to the Stenger siblings through her parents, Albert and Cecilia (Stenger) Schmitt and Clem's dad, Joseph L Stenger.  Cecilia (Stenger) Schmitt and Joseph L Stenger were 1st cousins.  Albert Schmitt and Joseph L Stenger were 2nd cousins.  (Does your brain hurt yet??)

Flossie (Gilles) O'Toole was a 2nd cousin of the Stenger siblings through their mothers.  To make matters more confusing both Flossie and the Stenger sisters had mothers with the name Lucy.  Flossie's mother is Lucy (Brutcher) Gilles and Clem, Rose and Mary's mother was Lucy (Loescher) Stenger.  The two Lucy's are first cousins.  Lucky for us though I do not think that Wilma and Flossie were related.

But just as importantly, these five young women pictured above were friends and had known each other all of their lives while growing up.  Yet even after they married some of these bonds of friendship were to continue.

Wilma, Flossie and Clem, all found themselves married and living in Brimfield, Illinois during the 1940s and 1950s.  It was not far from Kickapoo.  These three women had children who also went to the same schools and church together and had lots of social activities together.  Their lives continued more as friends and neighbors than anything during this time.  Each of them had a daughter that would be in the same class (1959) at Brimfield High School and would remain close as they married.  It has continued on into the third generation of these three women when some of their grandchildren found themselves in the same class at school and attending the same church in Brimfield in addition to social activities.

Wilma was the first to pass in 1964 as a young grandmother.  Mary Carman was gone in 1973.  Rose, Clem and Flossie lived to be old women into their 90s and beyond.  Clem and Flossie remained good friends and neighbors until Flossie passed in 2005.

I have said this before that Clem kept so much stuff.  At times it is overwhelming how much there is to sort through, identify and preserve.  But it is when I find these gems that I am so grateful that she did. What a blessing this is!  I had no idea growing up that some of my friends were also my cousins and that our grandmothers had been friends  in decades long past. This is truly a great gift to see this photo and reminisce about their lives growing up, as young mothers and now about the connections their grandchildren have made.

The Picture -
The picture above was cropped so that we could see the faces better of these five women.  But here is the uncropped version for more context.

Does anybody know where this was taken or the occasion? What about the guitar that Flossie (Gilles) O'Toole is holding?  Did she play?  Please let me know if you know any more details about this.

The reason I knew who all of the people were in the photo is that somebody had written on the back of the photo who everybody was (Thank you whoever you are!!!!).  Once I read the names and then looked at the faces in the photo again I recognized them all.  All five of them have daughters that today resemble their mothers which made it easier to confirm the names on the back.

Wilma (Schmitt) Johnson, Clementine (Stenger) Miars, Flossie (Gilles) O'Toole, Rose (Stenger) Inskeep, Mary (Stenger) Carman, photo, ca. mid 1930s, location unknown; digital image 2019, from the Clementine (Stenger) Miars collection, original privately held by Jana (Miars) Minor.