Lawson-Jordan Family
The Lawson-Jordan family was honored as a Centennial Family by the History Center in 2022. The following is taken from the presentation for that award.
We’ll begin the family’s local story in the 1890s, with Walker Sales. Born in 1864 in Morganfield, Kentucky, he came to Lake Forest around 1890, after years working as a farm laborer in Kentucky. In the 1900 census, Sales and his family were among about 100 Black residents living in the town of 2,200.
Lake Forest’s African-American community dated to the years just after the Civil War, and grew through the late 1800s with prospects of steady employment, integrated public schools, and tight-knit neighborhoods of homes driving migration from the upper and middle south, often through word of mouth and familial connections. By 1900, two churches served the local Black community, the African Methodist Episcopal church at Maplewood and Washington, and First Baptist Church, founded that very year and then still searching for a home.
In Lake Forest, Walker Sales first worked as a coachman for the Rumsey family. Captain Israel Parsons Rumsey, Union Army veteran, and his family lived at the Evergreens, 404 East Deerpath, just east of today’s Lake Forest Library. While working for the Rumseys, Walker Sales lived in the upper floor of the coachhouse at 361 East Westminster (pictured here), with third wife Tischa and their children. (If this building looks familiar, it should; it was the previous home of the Historical Society for nearly 20 years, and was only recently demolished).
By 1900, Walker Sales was part of the two-man Lake Forest police force, working as the night officer with James Gordon as the daytime patrol. He was hired on a regular basis after serving on special assignment, which is detailed in the article at left - he acquired the evidence necessary to prosecute a blind pig - to convict “Mr. Ast” of selling liquor without a license (possible George Ast, a Libertyville grocer at the time).
Walker Sales served as a member of the Lake Forest police department for nearly 20 years. As the two Lake Forester newspaper articles on the right attest, his night duty was at times full of incident, like with this attempted robbery he foiled: “This morning around 3:00 a man was detected by policeman Walker Sayles trying to get into Mrs. Holt’s residence (on Sheridan). When detected the man ran, and Sayles gave chase, firing two shots at the fleeing burglar. One shot passed through the man’s hat knocking it from his head, but he succeeded in effecting his escape minus the hat.” Other nights were more tame, like in the lower article where he confirmed some unseasonably snowy September weather to the news reporter.
Unfortunately, during this period the young Sales family met with tragedy: 1-year-old Mildred died in 1896; wife Tisha Sales died of consumption in 1903; and two sons, 6-year-old Richard and a 4-year-old, died in 1904 of bronchial pneumonia. Only Sales’ eldest daughter Mamie, born in 1889, survived into adulthood.
After Walker Sales began working for the police department, he and his family left the Rumsey coachhouse and rented rooms in a house on Wisconsin Avenue. The 1908 city directory lists him residing with daughter Mamie Sales, by then working as a dressmaker. They were boarding on Wisconsin with America Bridgeman, a Black woman who ran her own laundry business. In November of 1910, Walker Sales and America Bridgeman were married in Waukegan.
During Walker Sales’s tenure on the police force, the department grew from two officers to five by 1919; his salary (and that of other officers as well) increased from $50/month to $100/month. As night officer, Sales was often on call for burglary cases, and among his many duties included keeping watch during the “offseason” on any shuttered Lake Forest residences. Local newspapers, while remaining complimentary, periodically felt the need to explicate this role of a Black policeman in a North Shore community. The Chicago Tribune wrote: “In winter when many of the residents closed their homes they often left keys in charge of Sales, trusting him with thousands of dollars’ worth of furnishings. He was reputed to be a brave man and a crack pistol shot.” The Lake Forester wrote: “The night was never too dark or the request too impossible for Walker to undertake to be obliging. … Hundreds and hundreds of little things that another man never would think of helped to make Walker popular…”
Another Tribune article from late 1916, as the U.S. role as supplier for the war-torn European countries drove up the prices of many material goods, featured Sales and his innovation of using car tires to sole his shoes. “The high cost of living can’t scare me,” the newspaper quotes Sales. “I used to be a chauffeur and I still got a fine limousine tire left. I found out the cobblers are using paper so I just tacked on a hunk of automobile tire. I gave a piece to Ferd Berghorn – he’s on the fire department – and that’s what makes him so fast.” - Berghorn, of course, being a member of one of our other Centennial Families.
On March 3, 1919, Walker Sales died following complications from asthma and heart trouble. His funeral was held at First Baptist Church and he was buried in Lake Forest Cemetery. After his death, the Lake Forest City Council passed a resolution: “Whereas, for over fifteen years, Mr. Sales had served the City, faithfully and efficiently, and by his kindly and sterling character and faithful discharge of duty, had won the approbation of the City Council and the officials of the City, as well as the citizens of Lake Forest…”
We haven’t tracked down a photo of America Bridgeman Sales yet, but hope to at some point. She was born in 1876 in Pikeville, Tennessee, to William and Sarah Bridgeman. Her wedding notice lists her as a graduate of Fisk University, and she had made her way up to Lake Forest before 1908. After Walker Sales’ passed on, she continued to live at 321 Granby and operate her laundry business until her own death in 1938. Her obituary in the Lake Forester, which mistakenly refers to her as Mrs. Amanda Sales, states that: “Mrs. Sales was proud of two things during her lifetime: that she had always been able to support herself, and of the splendid record made by her husband, Walker, as a member of the local police force.” The obit lists only a couple siblings as survivors, but this was misleading.
Though America Bridgeman Sales had no children of her own, she was nonetheless a matriarch. Her house was a social center of the early twentieth century Lake Forest Black community. And not only did she serve as stepmother to Walker Sales’ daughter Mamie, but her home was as the northern launching point and place of refuge for countless extended family members: uncles, nieces, nephews.
One such nephew is pictured here: William Lawson, born in 1890 in Pikeville, Tennessee, to America’s older sister Arminta and Jasper Lawson. Pikeville is a rural town north of Chattanooga, which had a population of about 500 in 1920. The family worked as farm laborers.
Lawson is pictured here in his World War I uniform, with his draft registration card and transport record overseas. He served as a Private in Company B of the 368th Infantry, 92nd Division - one of America’s all-Black divisions in the war. After their arrival in France, these soldiers were deployed to the front lines in August 1918. The division saw action primarily in one of the last Allied operations of the war—the Meuse-Argonne Offensive that began in September and ended with the Armistice.
Shortly before departing for Europe, William Lawson married fellow Pikeville resident Sarah Leticia Spring. In late December 1918, their son William Jr. was born, after the Armistice but very possibly before his father was able to make the journey back overseas.
By the mid-1920s, the Lawson family had made their way to Lake Forest where Aunt America Bridgeman helped them get settled. William Jr. attended elementary school in Lake Forest. By 1930, the census shows the family running a grocery store in Chicago.
Here we will leave this side of the family briefly and track back in time to meet the other side. In 1850, Mary Decoursey was born into slavery in Liberty, Missouri, located northeast of Kansas City in one of the Missouri counties most closely aligned with the Confederacy. Her parents Joe and Maria were enslaved by wealthy landowner JTV Thompson; he later gave Joe and Maria as a wedding gift to his daughter upon her marriage to T.W. Decoursey. On January 11, 1865, following Missouri’s Proclamation of Freedom, Joe, Maria and their daughter Mary were freed. Joe and Maria were finally legally able to marry and begin a life and Mary was permitted to learn and go to school.
In 1874, Mary Decoursey married William Slaughter - their marriage record is shown below. Over the course of nearly 25 years, they had eleven children.
Pictured here is the Google Maps view of 325 Harrison Street in Liberty, Missouri, a home built by William Slaughter around 1880 and where he and Mary raised their family. According to a web memorial dedicated to Liberty’s African-American history, it is located right across the road from the property line of the land where Mary Decoursey’s parents were originally enslaved.
Mary’s husband William Slaughter served in the Union Army in the Civil War, as a teamster in the 13th Missouri Cavalry, Company C. He worked as a farmer and a butcher, along with serving as a deacon in the Liberty Baptist Church.
Pictured here are 8 of the 11 children of the Slaughter family - all four daughters and four of the seven sons. I love the photograph of the sisters in particular, with the quilt in the backdrop, taken outside the Harrison Street house in Liberty. The photo of their mother Mary, a few slides back, was also taken in front of a quilt – possibly the same one. There are always more stories to uncover!
In the early years of the 20th century, six of these Slaughter siblings – more than half – would end up migrating to Lake Forest.
One of the earliest was William Slaughter Jr, who was born in 1883. He was living in town by 1907, when the newspaper noted his marriage to Lutie McIntosh. By 1910, he was advertising a vacuum-cleaning business in the Lake Forester newspaper.
Anna Slaughter, the oldest daughter of the family, was settled in Lake Forest by 1910, when the census lists her here with husband Charles Gray, then working as a coachman. The Grays lived at 341 Granby, just down the street from Walker and America Sales. Charles Gray later operated a riding academy out of a stable on Bank Lane, located near where Lake Forest Bank and Trust is today. The Grays were social leaders of Lake Forest’s Black community - Charles Gray served as president of the Baptist Church’s Progressive Literary Society; the chairman of one of Lake Forest’s WWI municipal gardens, planted to maintain local food supplies during the war; and president of the Citizens’ Moral Protective League, formed among residents of color in 1923.
Also in Lake Forest by 1910 was Elizabeth Slaughter, born in 1889, then listed in the census as working as a domestic servant in a private home. She later married Jerry Burris Coleman; the pair first lived on Spruce and then later at 1388 Edgewood, where their four children grew up. (This home no longer stands - the back parking lot for the high school is located there today.)
The oldest Coleman child, Jerry Jr., was a budding journalist - by the mid-1930s, he was reporting about local happenings for the Chicago Defender, the renowned Black newspaper.
Unfortunately, Jerry was not strong in health - an enlarged heart - and was hospitalized and ultimately died in early 1939. His brother Bill, two years younger, fell ill and died less than a month later; family lore is that the brothers were so close, Bill died of a broken heart.
Pictured here is their younger sister Frances Coleman, who graduated from Lake Forest High School in 1945 and went on to study at Lake Forest College. As a young woman, she decided to make a change and see more of the world - she bought a Chevy Impala Super Sport yellow convertible with a black top, drove out to California, and looked for a job. Later, when asked how old she was when she went to California, she responded that she was “quite young... but old enough to vote.” She continued: “I had never been anywhere, and that made me quite mad... always in the same place. So I just decided that I would go to California, so I bought a car... I bought maps and put them all around my living room wall so I would know where I was going to stop first and where I was going next. ... I went out there and I was hired the same day because there was a young woman who worked in one of the offices that I worked at, and she recommended me to these lawyers in Beverly Hills and so when I got up there, they hired me.” Following that job, she worked at Paramount Pictures as a legal secretary. Then she worked for TV writers and producers Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin when they were starting out.
Bealy Slaughter, born in 1880, had joined his siblings in Lake Forest by 1913, when he and Minnie Waters were married. He had a young son, Carl, from a previous marriage. In 1920, he was working as a handyman over at Great Lakes. He launched his own garbage hauling business in the 1920s after purchasing a Ford truck, going on to work for the City in that capacity as well. Around that time, Bealy and Minnie Slaughter moved to 1359 Edgewood, one of four homes on lots long owned by the Shepard family, as you can see on this map.
Living with Bealy and Minnie Slaughter was a relative of Minnie’s, Edwina Jennings, who you can see pictured here doing some acrobatics in gym class at Gorton School. She went on to marry Mitchell Whittingham and lived at 1359 Edgewood for many years.
Bealy’s younger brother Edgar Lawrence Slaughter, born in 1884, had also relocated to Lake Forest around 1910, living on Oakwood Avenue, where in 1913 he opened a confectionery. There he served “all kinds of cool drinks and delicious ice cream, sundaes, and soda.” Likely he had undergone training in this line back in his hometown of Liberty, Missouri, where his oldest brother Charles ran a well-known confectionery.
This could have been the precursor to another sort of beverage business. Family lore has it that during Prohibition, at least one of the Slaughter brothers, on the down low, sold bootleg alcohol at 41 and Deerpath, helping to supply the local demand, which I can imagine, once private stocks ran out, was considerable.
Edgar Slaughter also worked as a driver and as the local seller for the NAACP’s publication, The Crisis.
By the 1920s, Edgar was working as a caretaker and gardener at the Learned estate at 780 Deerpath and living in one of the estate outbuildings. On one occasion, his wife Deborah frightened away attempted burglars by interrupting their search for valuables and calling the police.
Edgar and Deborah Slaughter’s daughter, Mildred Slaughter, was born in 1916. Like other women in her family, Mildred Slaughter was involved in the local YWCA - Young Women’s Christian Association - which met on the second floor of the Marshall Field building in Market Square. She became the president of the Keep Tryst Girl Reserves, precursor of the Girl Scouts - leading the troop of local African-American girls. The group’s adviser was the famed flapper, dancer and performer Irene Castle McLaughlin, who had settled in Lake Forest after marriage and semi-retirement.
Graduating from high school as an honor student, Mildred Slaughter went on to attend college at the Hampton Institute for a few years before returning to Lake Forest College, where she wrote for the literary magazine. After graduation, she took on an advisory role with the Lake Forest YWCA and taught classes in Waukegan, before taking a paid position at the Phyllis Wheatley Association of Cleveland, then referred to as the “Black YWCA.” She later studied social science at Northwestern and went on to live in Connecticut, working for the YWCA in Hartford and marrying Gibson Young.
I love this photo, which shows an extended Slaughter family reunion around 1950 - both siblings who relocated to Lake Forest, like William, Bettie, and Anna (all standing, middle), and Laura, Robert, and Henry, who stayed local to the Liberty area (all seated, middle).
The last Slaughter sibling to come to Lake Forest in the early 1900s was Bettie, born in 1887. In her early 20s, she traveled to Lake Forest to visit her older sister Anna Gray and attend a church picnic. The visit extended from days to weeks to months - and she never really left after that.
However beautiful and charming the city of Lake Forest can claim to be, this was not the only attraction for Bettie Slaughter. She also met the man who would shortly become her husband. Washington Jordan was born in 1885 in Nashville, Tennessee. By 1910, he is listed in the census as living in Lake Forest, lodging with Chauncey Tibbetts, the superintendent of Mellody Farm, the J. Ogden Armour estate, and perhaps working there as well. The inspiration for this photograph was perhaps that he went on to work as a chauffeur, for the mayor of Lake Forest, Keene H. Addington. Son Alphonso Jordan recalled how when the Northwestern train came in at 5:55 p.m., all the chauffeurs would arrive at the station, backing their cars into the same spots every night.
Bettie Slaughter Jordan and Washington Jordan married and soon started a family, as you can see from these newspaper notices. The one on the left from the Chicago Defender, announcing the birth of first daughter Eloise in 1913, reads, “The proudest man in Lake Forest at this writing, and the man who wears a smile that won’t come off, is Mr. Washington Jordan, who was greeted at a very early hour Saturday morning from the Stork Limited, with a fine baby girl.”
Bettie and Washington Jordan went on to have eight children, though three sadly died as infants or in early childhood. Five grew up in Lake Forest and we will meet them shortly
As befits a couple who met at a church picnic, Washington and Bettie Jordan were very involved at First Baptist Church, pictured here in the 1960s and again more recently. Washington Jordan is one of the early church deacons referenced in the cornerstone, erected as the church building underwent numerous physical improvements in the early 1900s.
The Jordan family was involved in all aspects of church activities and events - book clubs, social clubs, the J.O.Y. club for young people, bake sales, welcoming ceremonies for new pastors, the Men’s Church Relief Club during the Great Depression…you name it.
Washington Jordan also served as the troop leader for the Boy Scout troop organized at First Baptist Church and which included his son, Alphonso.
In the early 1920s, the growing Jordan family was living in a home on Bank Lane; Washington Jordan worked as a janitor and laborer at private homes; he would go from estate to estate lighting fires and cleaning flues, for example. With commercial development along Bank Lane and Oakwood in the 1910s, 20s and 30s, including the new bank and the Deerpath Inn south of Deerpath and Market Square and the post office north of Deerpath, most of the African-American residences and businesses that had been located in these areas had to relocate. Washington Jordan built a new home for the family at 441 Spruce Avenue in 1925, right in the midst of the growing Black neighborhood at Spruce and Edgewood. Sided with stucco, the home always stayed very cool in the summer.
Even with a family of seven, the Jordan family stayed solid through the Great Depression, = maintaining their two-car household. Bettie Jordan was also employed, taking in laundry and doing other day work around the community. She kept meticulous account books; one of those passed down to her descendants even indicates that entertainer Jack Benny, whose father Mayer Kubelsky had a tailor shop in Market Square, still owes her a few dollars – not sure what that translates to with inflation, but could be worth checking into…
The Spruce Avenue neighborhood helped prop each other up, trading goods grown in gardens, keeping chickens. The Jordans had a peach tree and their neighbors the Saddlers had a plum tree, and everyone would exchange fruit for preserves.
The house still stands on Spruce although much of the surrounding neighborhood has changed, and has remained in the same family for nearly 100 years.
The Jordan home is located just around the corner from where Sheridan School is today, but back in the 1920s, a large residence was located there, inhabited at the time by former Lake Forest College football star and Major League baseball player Fred Hayner and his family. Hayner had gone on to work as a sportswriter for the Chicago Daily News, and is one of those credited with coining the name “Cubs” for the Chicago baseball team.
In January, 1929, the Hayner house suffered a devastating fire. Their neighbor Washington Jordan was first to spot the smoke and flames; his quick call of the fire department very possibly is what allowed the firefighters to rescue Mrs. Hayner and the two boys. Sadly Fred Hayner perished in the blaze, having earlier gone down to the basement, the source of the fire, to investigate why the home’s electric lights had gone out.
Alphonso Jordan was the oldest of the Jordan children, born in 1912. He was involved with Boy Scouts, sports, and worked as a caddy at the Onwentsia Club, getting up early to arrive by 6 a.m. and be one of the first caddies out on Sunday mornings. After high school, he played for the Gold Coasters softball team, made up of local Black players, which competed against various community teams from around the area. In 1942 he married Beulah Jones of Waukegan - they lived at 1373 Edgewood.
As a young man, Alphonso Jordan got a job stocking shelves at a local grocery store, Consumers Grocery. He moved on to Community Service Grocery, located where Starbucks is today, for 13 years doing everything from delivering and burning the trash down in the basement (where the heating plant for Market Square was located), to becoming shipping clerk and waiting on customers, according to a 1978 newspaper feature article. Then, for 34 years, he worked for Janowitz’s Finest Foods, then located at 293 Illinois, where Francesca’s is today. There he waited on the trade and filled orders - children called him “the Cookie Man” in honor of the treats he could always be counted on to supply them with.
Even in retirement he continued to work, selling newspapers in front of Walgreen’s and greeting customers at the Lake Forest Winery.
The oldest Jordan daughter, Eloise, is pictured here. Family members aren’t sure exactly what dish was on display in this wonderful photo, but are certain it was delicious.
In this multi-generational photo, Eloise Jordan Pearson is surrounded by her family: son Eddie McCampbell and daughter Loretta Jordan, who married Fred Saddler, with their children Gregory, Michael and Christopher; along with the elder generation, her mother and aunt and uncle.
Eddie McCampbell, pictured here, grew up on Spruce Avenue. In school, he was involved in band, as you can see from this great photo in Market Square, as well as football, track and wrestling. He had jobs growing up at Hahn Brothers and Janowitz groceries - possibly with his uncle Alphonso nearby to keep him on the straight and narrow. He went on to marry Veronica Landry and reside in Evanston.
Alfonso and Eloise’s sister, Zenobia Jordan, called Tobe by the family, married Clifford Logan in 1935. She later followed in the footsteps of her cousin Frances Coleman and went out to California, where she worked for the actor Raymond Burr (best known for Perry Mason and Rear Window).
Born in 1924, Leroy was the youngest of the five Jordan siblings. He ran track in high school and was in the orchestra like his nephew Eddie. According to this article, he and Clarence McIntosh played drum and piano at the junior prom in 1941. He served as a Private in the U.S. Army in World War II.
Like their many local cousins, the Jordans attended Lake Forest public schools - Halsey and Gorton, and then Deerfield-Shields or Lake Forest High School. Here you can see a photo of Mary Etta Jordan - at top left, in braids - with one of her classes at Halsey, probably 4th or 5th grade, around 1929. You can see the boys in the front row displaying some truly impressive socks. From the expressions of most of the students, including Mary Etta, it looks like it was a hot day and this was perhaps not the first take.
While at Halsey, Mary Etta and her sister Zenobia both were listed in the newspaper on the “thrift honor roll,” which recognized students who had made deposits in their school savings accounts every week over the summer.
This picture shows Gorton School students, around 1933 or 1934, when Mary Etta Jordan graduated from 8th grade. You can see her pictured again at the top left, again in braids.
Mary Etta Jordan was the youngest of the three Jordan girls, born in 1920. She graduated from high school in 1938, one of the first few graduating classes at the new Lake Forest High School building. She went on to enroll at Tennessee State College.
Now we’ll pick up a thread we dropped awhile ago, and return to the Lawson family. You’ll remember that William Lawson, Jr. was the great-nephew of America Bridgeman Sales, the redoubtable woman who supported herself and introduced so many relatives from Pikeville, Tennessee to Lake Forest, including the Lawsons. But Sarah Lawson’s death in 1934 prompted transition, with William Sr. and Jr. returning to their hometown of Pikeville. When he registered for the draft in 1942, William Lawson Jr. was working for the Tennessee Valley Authority, a New Deal program that brought electrification and economic development to the region. He was living with his grandmother, Queen Anne Spring, in Pikeville.
During World War II, William Lawson served as a sergeant, training soldiers for combat at a camp in the southern U.S.
Mary Etta Jordan and William Lawson had met back in the 1920s when she was in kindergarten at Halsey - he was living on Granby Road at the time and attending Lake Forest schools as well. They continued to keep in touch even after he left town. When Mary Etta’s first marriage broke up in the 1940s, her cousin Frances Coleman-Tate wrote to William Lawson, telling him to “come back quick” because Mary Etta was available. So he did - and Frances took credit for getting them back together.
After they married, Mary Etta and William Lawson, along with Mary Etta’s young daughter from her first marriage, Mary Agnes Maxwell, lived for a time at 1371 Edgewood, in one of the houses on the lots owned by the Shepard family we mentioned earlier. William had a job as the custodian at the post office, where he would work for 25 years. By the 1960s, the family was living in the home Mary Etta’s father Washington Jordan had built, 441 Spruce.
Their children grew up in this house, which you can see in the background of the photo on the right – William and Mary Etta had two more daughters in the 1950s, Deborah Leticia, called Debby, and Phyllis Elizabeth, called Sue or Susie.
They lived right around the corner from the new Sheridan Elementary School, which was built in 1957. Here you can see a photo of Debby’s kindergarten class, taught by Mrs. Larsen - some of the students look a little skeptical, but she is clearly all about it.
All three attended Lake Forest High School. We dug up senior photos from the Forest Trails yearbooks - you can see some of the many things they were involved with as students, some of which, like Future Teachers of America for Debby and Telecom and Crew for Sue, prefigured future careers. Mary’s senior yearbook did not include lists of activities but hers was also extensive, including National Honor Society, Music Club, a cappella choir, orchestra, Latin Club, and more. All three were involved in the Girls Athletic Association. This on top of part-time and summer jobs - Mary at a laundromat and as a shampoo girl at Terry’s Beauty Shop; Debby at the Lake Bluff Children’s Center, and Sue at Gorton Community Center and Fort Sheridan.
Here also are two high school dance photos - Debby’s is prom and Sue’s is from homecoming.
A rare photo of all three together in the 1970s - Sue, Mary and her son Owen Thomas, and Debby.
Mary Maxwell Thomas went on to graduate from University of Chicago Law School. She was later the first African American assistant city attorney at the city of Evanston and served as Assistant US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. In 1987, she was appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court to fill a vacancy as a circuit judge of Cook County in 1987, where she served until 2006.
The photo on the right shows Mary Maxwell Thomas with Nelson Mandela in 1993 at an event for Operation PUSH - People United To Save Humanity.
Debby Lawson attended Illinois State and became a teacher, working for years at Forrestal School in North Chicago. She has long been involved with the Lake County Federation of Teachers, including as President – she continues to live at 441 Spruce.
Here we have a wedding photo - Sue married Bruce Himmelblau in 1986.
Sue attended Drake University and went on to a career as a film editor and director. Here you can see her pictured in 2005 at the Women in Film and Television International "Women of Achievement Awards,” with the actress Doris Roberts.
Here you can see a 1990s family photo of the whole crew, with Mary Etta Lawson second from left. She passed away in 1996 - both she and William Lawson are buried at Lake Forest Cemetery
This 1970s-era photo - with some truly excellent plaid and striped pants - shows the family’s newer generation: several of the great-grandchildren of Washington and Bettie Jordan: Christopher Saddler, Stacy Thomas, Gregg McCampbell, Stephanie McCampbell, and Michael Saddler.
Here we see Stacy Thomas again, receiving her doctorate from National Louis University; her brother Owen, graduating from Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, and Stacy’s son Nate Mosley, running track here for the Waukegan Invaders, but he also ran at Tennessee State and North Carolina AT&T. He’s also recently completed two Congressional internships.
One thing that came up a few times was the family tradition of gathering for Christmas - whether at 441 Spruce, the home that has been in the family for nearly 100 years, or elsewhere, it has been a way to maintain connections through the decades.