The first child born to Barbara and Joe McCart was a girl named Barbara (after her mother) and was born on Defender's Day (the Maryland celebration of the bombing at Fort McHenry during the War of 1812) on September 12, 1897. Father William Kessel at St. James Catholic Church baptized her on September 19th and her godmother was her mother's Aunt Barbara Herbert according to the baptismal registry.
Young Barbara had long brown hair with a reddish tint and wore it rolled and in pigtails at 12 years old until her early twenties.
Young Barbara always liked to sing. She met her best friend Mary Engles when they were nine years old. Mary lived across the street from the McCart family at 1118 Ensor Street.
Young Barb remembered being taught by nuns from the order of the School Sisters of Notre Dame such as Sister Lavina , Sister Dellarosa (her class forced the strict nun into retirement), and Sister Mary Giovanni (her last teacher in eighth grade). In 1912 she studied such subjects as Religion, Universal History, Grammar, Composition, Penmanship, Arithmetic, Algebra, National Philosophy, Spelling, Hygiene, Sewing, Bookkeeping, Shorthand, Typewriting, Drawing, During her last year she completed Krone's System of Commercial Writing.
Barbara McCart also met her future husband at a meeting of the St. James Dramatic Circle in East Baltimore. Maurice Rassa introduced George Adelhardt to the group. There was only one empty seat left next to Barbara and she called out with excitement, "Yeah, come on and sit next to me!" Of course, the Dramatic Club consisted of many of the people mentioned before such as Ed Horten, Ed Hart and his sister, Frank Metz, Maurice Rassa, Frank Herbert, Margaret Voelker later Bisker, Clara Zang and many others. Later Barbara's best friend Mary Engles joined the group. George and Barbara had much in common since they had attended the same church and school just a few years apart. Barbara acted in many of the plays performed for the parishioners and community. One time George played the part of a waiter and his character had to bring a live English shepherd dog on stage. One night after rehearsal, tall and skinny Ed Hart asked Barbara if he could walk her home. She grabbed George, who was innocently standing near her, by the arm and announced that George was taking her home already. She didn't want to go home with Ed. Walking Barb (as George called her) home from play practice became their routine and their dating relationship developed into day trips to the Bay Shore Amusement Park on the Chesapeake Bay and other romantic spots like visiting the McClure family farm in rural Eldersburg to the west in Carroll County. The McCarts liked George and the Adelhardts felt that Barbara was a nice Irish girl. Barbara thought that George's father was an "inquisitive old buzzard." According to her, one Sunday when George and Barb were out on a date, Barbara "Mom" McCart was sitting at the front window on Ensor Street holding her youngest daughter Margie who was ill. John Adelhardt came up to the window and spoke with concern in his heavy German accent.
"You know my son, Johann?" he asked.
"Who?" she replied.
"My son Johann. He goes with your daughter."
" You mean, George?" asked Barbara.
"Yes, George. I just wanted to know what kind of house where she lives"
And with that remark John Adelhardt left without another word.
When they met, Barbara was working for the United States Fidelity and Guarantee. Barbara was a good typist and she still owned an old Royal manual typewriter complete with ringing carriage bell 50 years later. During her last three years there she worked in the auditing department with 30 men and only two women.
They were married the following April 23, 1919 at St. James Catholic Church by Redemptorist Father John Meier. Her father Joe McCart walked Barbara down the aisle in her white gown and white mantilla. Her brown hair was parted in the middle and curled into shoulder length ringlets. George was dressed in a black tux and tails with a white tie and carnation and his curly dark blonde locks were parted on the side and brushed back. According to Barbara, her maid of honor and best friend Mary Engles wore a pink dress and her other bridesmaid Barbara Adelhardt (George's sister) wore a blue dress. Barbara's first cousin Jim McCart was George's best man and her brother Andrew McCart and one of George's co-workers named Kleiderlein were ushers. After the Mass and ceremony, a breakfast was held at the McCart home on Ensor Street. Photos were snapped in the backyard. That afternoon the newlyweds left from Union Station and rode a train to Philadelphia where they stayed with Barbara's great uncle Jimmy Clark and his two children, John and Mabel. They spent the rest of their three-day windy and cold honeymoon at the Kentucky Guest House in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Barbara was most likely a fan of the legendary Irish-born tenor and Italian opera singer – John Frances McCormack. During this time he performed concerts all over America and eventually became a U.S. citizen. He made recordings on Victrola discs of such classics created out of America's Tin Pan Alley publishing genre of popular tunes such as "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" and "My Wild Irish Rose." Barbara liked to sing these songs herself:
My wild Irish Rose, the sweetest flower that grows.
You may search everywhere, but none can compare with my wild Irish Rose.
My wild Irish Rose, the dearest flower that grows.
And some day for my sake, she may let me take the bloom from my wild Irish Rose.
For many years on Barbara's birthday in September, the couple would take the Dreamland ferry and cruise down the Chesapeake Bay to Solomons Island for the day with their married friends - Ethel and Roland Baum. The men would wear suits. Throughout his life George would never go outside without carrying his dress hat – a straw hat in the summer or a felt hat in the winter. The women would dress in suit jackets and long skirts with wide-brimmed hats. Barbara quite often wore a hat (especially to church) and in later decades this became smaller in size sometimes with a net that covered her eyes.
Women's suffrage had been a political controversy in America for some time. As the debate became heated in 1916, James Cardinal Gibbons, the ninth Archbishop of Baltimore had sent an address to the convention of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage in Washington, DC. But despite his and the condemnations by others, in May and June of 1919, both the House of Representatives and the Senate in a special session had passed the Nineteenth Amendment granting all U.S. women the right to vote. On August 26, 1920, following ratification by the necessary thirty-six states, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted into law. Both Barbara and George voted in their first election that November. Barbara became a life long Democrat and later had served as judge at the elections for two years.
At the same time George and Barbara were renting an apartment at 2118 Hoffman Street and George was working at the National Biscuit Company as a wholesale commercial salesman (as confirmed by the 1920 U.S. Census records). They lived there for three years. One day the landlady Miss Hattie and her mother told Barbara that she was going to sell the place. Finding her crying at home, George suggested that Barb look for a new place to live. A few weeks later Miss Hattie changed her mind and decided not to sell, but the Adelhardts felt they better move anyway. In 1922 they moved into another apartment at 1047 Aisquith Street - on the same street as St. James Church.
It was here that they began their family. On November 30, 1923 they had their first-born child which they named Mary Margaret.
In 1926, George got a loan from his father and bought a brick row home with marble steps at 1419 Federal Street across the street from P.S. #20, a large public high school.
Their second child George John, Junior was born on October 30, 1929. Although the Great Depression had occurred, the Adelhardts thought it was a better time to have another child and on May 5, 1935 welcomed their daughter Carlita Barbara.
Barbara said that she and George never had behavior problems with their children … when she told them to do something, they did it. Later she would be frustrated when she felt that her grandchildren and their generation would need to be reminded multiple times of their parent's expectations. When the children were ill, Barbara would give them castor oil for digestive problems or hot lemonade and aspirin for colds. She rubbed their chests with goose grease when they were congested. She would mop their sore throats by tying raw cotton around a drumstick and dipping it in solutions. She said the kids would "scream murder."
Encouraged by the United Service Organization and other military morale strategy, Americans like Barbara wrote cards and letters to the young men who were serving their country. Of course she had her own close, personal reasons since she received V-mail (letters photographed on microfilm, shipped, and then enlarged and printed) from her youngest brother Bill McCart who was serving as a private in the army forces in the China-Burma-India region. There were many other Baltimorians unknown to her with whom she corresponded including brothers Dominic and Lewis Sciabarrasi, Corporal Tony Amarel, Lieutenant Mary C. Eby, and Private Joseph E. Lemax. She collected these notes, postcards, letters, photos and many newspaper clippings from the war and subsequent occupation and arranged them in a scrapbook.
They finally purchased a home at 5104 Richard Avenue just off of Harford Road in the Hamilton neighborhood of Northeast Baltimore. They took out a mortgage which paid the previous owner $5500.
The Adelhardts took many bus trips during the 1950's and later decades with many friends such as Nettie and Frank Zeiler, Margaret Sebald, and Jim and Mary Harrington (children of the late Milton and Catherine Harrington) that they knew from the old East Baltimore neighborhoods and St. James Church. George and Barb enjoyed going to Atlantic City, New Jersey and to Miami, Florida (with Mary and Ed Horten), and multiple visits to the Canadian Niagra Falls, the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania and Lake George in upstate New York. Newer friends from their bus trips included neighbors Ann and Albert Musciano, Elizabeth Fick, Ethel and Joe Merryman, Barbara Trimble, and Ann Horten (Ed and Mary's niece) and her best friend Charlotte Lookingbill. Over the years Ann and Charlotte became frequent guests at Adelhardt family gatherings on holidays. One of their biggest adventures by bus was a trip across the U.S. to California in 1967. Barbara did not enjoy the long trip. It seems that a "very nasty" man was telling such bad jokes on the bus that George had to tell him to stop. After the two-week trip, the whole family met George and Barbara at the Trailways Bus Terminal. When Barbara got off the bus her son Junie asked if she had a good time. Barbara sarcastically remarked that if she hadn't gotten home when she did, that she would have been locked up in an insane asylum. Barbara collected painted souvenir china from her travels all over the states and hung the dishes on the wall along her long staircase landing at home.
Barbara now endured two losses (Mary Margaret months before) within the one year. As she had aged she suffered with gastrointestinal problems and had to have her gall bladder removed. She developed a hiatal hernia and diverticulitus, which caused her digestive system to convulse, and forced her on a special diet. As a widow she continued to live in the Richard Avenue home and renovated the upstairs bedrooms into a second living area for her childhood friend Margaret Voelker Bisker, widow of the late Walter. Barbara was able to take a plane trip to Utah to visit her grandchildren during this time. In 1984 she suffered a series of falls and mini-strokes which made it very difficult for her to take care of herself. Because of the amount of around the clock care needed for Barbara, Carlita moved her mother to the Chapel Hill Convalescent Home closer to her home in Randallstown in Baltimore County, west of the city. The Richard Avenue house was sold and Mrs. Bisker found a new place to live. Barbara continued to live at Chapel Hill for the next four years. Despite Carlita's weekly visits and efforts to bring Barbara by wheelchair to family events and to her home on holidays, Barbara became lonely and withdrawn with depression. More mini-strokes seemed to cause dementia or an intermittent loss of memory. Many relatives did visit Barbara at Chapel Hill on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday and she was able to hold her first great grandchild. Family members celebrated with a party in her honor at Carlita's home. She lived about another year and died of another stroke on October 14, 1988 at age 91. Barbara's funeral Mass was held at St. Dominic's Church in Hamilton and she was buried next to George at the Gardens of Faith Cemetery on Belair Road in Baltimore County. The plaque on their grave reads "Together Forever."
Young Barbara had long brown hair with a reddish tint and wore it rolled and in pigtails at 12 years old until her early twenties.
Young Barbara always liked to sing. She met her best friend Mary Engles when they were nine years old. Mary lived across the street from the McCart family at 1118 Ensor Street.
Young Barb remembered being taught by nuns from the order of the School Sisters of Notre Dame such as Sister Lavina , Sister Dellarosa (her class forced the strict nun into retirement), and Sister Mary Giovanni (her last teacher in eighth grade). In 1912 she studied such subjects as Religion, Universal History, Grammar, Composition, Penmanship, Arithmetic, Algebra, National Philosophy, Spelling, Hygiene, Sewing, Bookkeeping, Shorthand, Typewriting, Drawing, During her last year she completed Krone's System of Commercial Writing.
Barbara McCart also met her future husband at a meeting of the St. James Dramatic Circle in East Baltimore. Maurice Rassa introduced George Adelhardt to the group. There was only one empty seat left next to Barbara and she called out with excitement, "Yeah, come on and sit next to me!" Of course, the Dramatic Club consisted of many of the people mentioned before such as Ed Horten, Ed Hart and his sister, Frank Metz, Maurice Rassa, Frank Herbert, Margaret Voelker later Bisker, Clara Zang and many others. Later Barbara's best friend Mary Engles joined the group. George and Barbara had much in common since they had attended the same church and school just a few years apart. Barbara acted in many of the plays performed for the parishioners and community. One time George played the part of a waiter and his character had to bring a live English shepherd dog on stage. One night after rehearsal, tall and skinny Ed Hart asked Barbara if he could walk her home. She grabbed George, who was innocently standing near her, by the arm and announced that George was taking her home already. She didn't want to go home with Ed. Walking Barb (as George called her) home from play practice became their routine and their dating relationship developed into day trips to the Bay Shore Amusement Park on the Chesapeake Bay and other romantic spots like visiting the McClure family farm in rural Eldersburg to the west in Carroll County. The McCarts liked George and the Adelhardts felt that Barbara was a nice Irish girl. Barbara thought that George's father was an "inquisitive old buzzard." According to her, one Sunday when George and Barb were out on a date, Barbara "Mom" McCart was sitting at the front window on Ensor Street holding her youngest daughter Margie who was ill. John Adelhardt came up to the window and spoke with concern in his heavy German accent.
"You know my son, Johann?" he asked.
"Who?" she replied.
"My son Johann. He goes with your daughter."
" You mean, George?" asked Barbara.
"Yes, George. I just wanted to know what kind of house where she lives"
And with that remark John Adelhardt left without another word.
When they met, Barbara was working for the United States Fidelity and Guarantee. Barbara was a good typist and she still owned an old Royal manual typewriter complete with ringing carriage bell 50 years later. During her last three years there she worked in the auditing department with 30 men and only two women.
They were married the following April 23, 1919 at St. James Catholic Church by Redemptorist Father John Meier. Her father Joe McCart walked Barbara down the aisle in her white gown and white mantilla. Her brown hair was parted in the middle and curled into shoulder length ringlets. George was dressed in a black tux and tails with a white tie and carnation and his curly dark blonde locks were parted on the side and brushed back. According to Barbara, her maid of honor and best friend Mary Engles wore a pink dress and her other bridesmaid Barbara Adelhardt (George's sister) wore a blue dress. Barbara's first cousin Jim McCart was George's best man and her brother Andrew McCart and one of George's co-workers named Kleiderlein were ushers. After the Mass and ceremony, a breakfast was held at the McCart home on Ensor Street. Photos were snapped in the backyard. That afternoon the newlyweds left from Union Station and rode a train to Philadelphia where they stayed with Barbara's great uncle Jimmy Clark and his two children, John and Mabel. They spent the rest of their three-day windy and cold honeymoon at the Kentucky Guest House in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Barbara was most likely a fan of the legendary Irish-born tenor and Italian opera singer – John Frances McCormack. During this time he performed concerts all over America and eventually became a U.S. citizen. He made recordings on Victrola discs of such classics created out of America's Tin Pan Alley publishing genre of popular tunes such as "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" and "My Wild Irish Rose." Barbara liked to sing these songs herself:
My wild Irish Rose, the sweetest flower that grows.
You may search everywhere, but none can compare with my wild Irish Rose.
My wild Irish Rose, the dearest flower that grows.
And some day for my sake, she may let me take the bloom from my wild Irish Rose.
For many years on Barbara's birthday in September, the couple would take the Dreamland ferry and cruise down the Chesapeake Bay to Solomons Island for the day with their married friends - Ethel and Roland Baum. The men would wear suits. Throughout his life George would never go outside without carrying his dress hat – a straw hat in the summer or a felt hat in the winter. The women would dress in suit jackets and long skirts with wide-brimmed hats. Barbara quite often wore a hat (especially to church) and in later decades this became smaller in size sometimes with a net that covered her eyes.
Women's suffrage had been a political controversy in America for some time. As the debate became heated in 1916, James Cardinal Gibbons, the ninth Archbishop of Baltimore had sent an address to the convention of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage in Washington, DC. But despite his and the condemnations by others, in May and June of 1919, both the House of Representatives and the Senate in a special session had passed the Nineteenth Amendment granting all U.S. women the right to vote. On August 26, 1920, following ratification by the necessary thirty-six states, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted into law. Both Barbara and George voted in their first election that November. Barbara became a life long Democrat and later had served as judge at the elections for two years.
At the same time George and Barbara were renting an apartment at 2118 Hoffman Street and George was working at the National Biscuit Company as a wholesale commercial salesman (as confirmed by the 1920 U.S. Census records). They lived there for three years. One day the landlady Miss Hattie and her mother told Barbara that she was going to sell the place. Finding her crying at home, George suggested that Barb look for a new place to live. A few weeks later Miss Hattie changed her mind and decided not to sell, but the Adelhardts felt they better move anyway. In 1922 they moved into another apartment at 1047 Aisquith Street - on the same street as St. James Church.
It was here that they began their family. On November 30, 1923 they had their first-born child which they named Mary Margaret.
In 1926, George got a loan from his father and bought a brick row home with marble steps at 1419 Federal Street across the street from P.S. #20, a large public high school.
Their second child George John, Junior was born on October 30, 1929. Although the Great Depression had occurred, the Adelhardts thought it was a better time to have another child and on May 5, 1935 welcomed their daughter Carlita Barbara.
Barbara said that she and George never had behavior problems with their children … when she told them to do something, they did it. Later she would be frustrated when she felt that her grandchildren and their generation would need to be reminded multiple times of their parent's expectations. When the children were ill, Barbara would give them castor oil for digestive problems or hot lemonade and aspirin for colds. She rubbed their chests with goose grease when they were congested. She would mop their sore throats by tying raw cotton around a drumstick and dipping it in solutions. She said the kids would "scream murder."
Encouraged by the United Service Organization and other military morale strategy, Americans like Barbara wrote cards and letters to the young men who were serving their country. Of course she had her own close, personal reasons since she received V-mail (letters photographed on microfilm, shipped, and then enlarged and printed) from her youngest brother Bill McCart who was serving as a private in the army forces in the China-Burma-India region. There were many other Baltimorians unknown to her with whom she corresponded including brothers Dominic and Lewis Sciabarrasi, Corporal Tony Amarel, Lieutenant Mary C. Eby, and Private Joseph E. Lemax. She collected these notes, postcards, letters, photos and many newspaper clippings from the war and subsequent occupation and arranged them in a scrapbook.
They finally purchased a home at 5104 Richard Avenue just off of Harford Road in the Hamilton neighborhood of Northeast Baltimore. They took out a mortgage which paid the previous owner $5500.
The Adelhardts took many bus trips during the 1950's and later decades with many friends such as Nettie and Frank Zeiler, Margaret Sebald, and Jim and Mary Harrington (children of the late Milton and Catherine Harrington) that they knew from the old East Baltimore neighborhoods and St. James Church. George and Barb enjoyed going to Atlantic City, New Jersey and to Miami, Florida (with Mary and Ed Horten), and multiple visits to the Canadian Niagra Falls, the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania and Lake George in upstate New York. Newer friends from their bus trips included neighbors Ann and Albert Musciano, Elizabeth Fick, Ethel and Joe Merryman, Barbara Trimble, and Ann Horten (Ed and Mary's niece) and her best friend Charlotte Lookingbill. Over the years Ann and Charlotte became frequent guests at Adelhardt family gatherings on holidays. One of their biggest adventures by bus was a trip across the U.S. to California in 1967. Barbara did not enjoy the long trip. It seems that a "very nasty" man was telling such bad jokes on the bus that George had to tell him to stop. After the two-week trip, the whole family met George and Barbara at the Trailways Bus Terminal. When Barbara got off the bus her son Junie asked if she had a good time. Barbara sarcastically remarked that if she hadn't gotten home when she did, that she would have been locked up in an insane asylum. Barbara collected painted souvenir china from her travels all over the states and hung the dishes on the wall along her long staircase landing at home.
Barbara now endured two losses (Mary Margaret months before) within the one year. As she had aged she suffered with gastrointestinal problems and had to have her gall bladder removed. She developed a hiatal hernia and diverticulitus, which caused her digestive system to convulse, and forced her on a special diet. As a widow she continued to live in the Richard Avenue home and renovated the upstairs bedrooms into a second living area for her childhood friend Margaret Voelker Bisker, widow of the late Walter. Barbara was able to take a plane trip to Utah to visit her grandchildren during this time. In 1984 she suffered a series of falls and mini-strokes which made it very difficult for her to take care of herself. Because of the amount of around the clock care needed for Barbara, Carlita moved her mother to the Chapel Hill Convalescent Home closer to her home in Randallstown in Baltimore County, west of the city. The Richard Avenue house was sold and Mrs. Bisker found a new place to live. Barbara continued to live at Chapel Hill for the next four years. Despite Carlita's weekly visits and efforts to bring Barbara by wheelchair to family events and to her home on holidays, Barbara became lonely and withdrawn with depression. More mini-strokes seemed to cause dementia or an intermittent loss of memory. Many relatives did visit Barbara at Chapel Hill on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday and she was able to hold her first great grandchild. Family members celebrated with a party in her honor at Carlita's home. She lived about another year and died of another stroke on October 14, 1988 at age 91. Barbara's funeral Mass was held at St. Dominic's Church in Hamilton and she was buried next to George at the Gardens of Faith Cemetery on Belair Road in Baltimore County. The plaque on their grave reads "Together Forever."
The first child born to Barbara and Joe McCart was a girl named Barbara (after her mother) and was born on Defender's Day (the Maryland celebration of the bombing at Fort McHenry during the War of 1812) on September 12, 1897. Father William Kessel at St. James Catholic Church baptized her on September 19th and her godmother was her mother's Aunt Barbara Herbert according to the baptismal registry.
Young Barbara had long brown hair with a reddish tint and wore it rolled and in pigtails at 12 years old until her early twenties.
Young Barbara always liked to sing. She met her best friend Mary Engles when they were nine years old. Mary lived across the street from the McCart family at 1118 Ensor Street.
Young Barb remembered being taught by nuns from the order of the School Sisters of Notre Dame such as Sister Lavina , Sister Dellarosa (her class forced the strict nun into retirement), and Sister Mary Giovanni (her last teacher in eighth grade). In 1912 she studied such subjects as Religion, Universal History, Grammar, Composition, Penmanship, Arithmetic, Algebra, National Philosophy, Spelling, Hygiene, Sewing, Bookkeeping, Shorthand, Typewriting, Drawing, During her last year she completed Krone's System of Commercial Writing.
Barbara McCart also met her future husband at a meeting of the St. James Dramatic Circle in East Baltimore. Maurice Rassa introduced George Adelhardt to the group. There was only one empty seat left next to Barbara and she called out with excitement, "Yeah, come on and sit next to me!" Of course, the Dramatic Club consisted of many of the people mentioned before such as Ed Horten, Ed Hart and his sister, Frank Metz, Maurice Rassa, Frank Herbert, Margaret Voelker later Bisker, Clara Zang and many others. Later Barbara's best friend Mary Engles joined the group. George and Barbara had much in common since they had attended the same church and school just a few years apart. Barbara acted in many of the plays performed for the parishioners and community. One time George played the part of a waiter and his character had to bring a live English shepherd dog on stage. One night after rehearsal, tall and skinny Ed Hart asked Barbara if he could walk her home. She grabbed George, who was innocently standing near her, by the arm and announced that George was taking her home already. She didn't want to go home with Ed. Walking Barb (as George called her) home from play practice became their routine and their dating relationship developed into day trips to the Bay Shore Amusement Park on the Chesapeake Bay and other romantic spots like visiting the McClure family farm in rural Eldersburg to the west in Carroll County. The McCarts liked George and the Adelhardts felt that Barbara was a nice Irish girl. Barbara thought that George's father was an "inquisitive old buzzard." According to her, one Sunday when George and Barb were out on a date, Barbara "Mom" McCart was sitting at the front window on Ensor Street holding her youngest daughter Margie who was ill. John Adelhardt came up to the window and spoke with concern in his heavy German accent.
"You know my son, Johann?" he asked.
"Who?" she replied.
"My son Johann. He goes with your daughter."
" You mean, George?" asked Barbara.
"Yes, George. I just wanted to know what kind of house where she lives"
And with that remark John Adelhardt left without another word.
When they met, Barbara was working for the United States Fidelity and Guarantee. Barbara was a good typist and she still owned an old Royal manual typewriter complete with ringing carriage bell 50 years later. During her last three years there she worked in the auditing department with 30 men and only two women.
They were married the following April 23, 1919 at St. James Catholic Church by Redemptorist Father John Meier. Her father Joe McCart walked Barbara down the aisle in her white gown and white mantilla. Her brown hair was parted in the middle and curled into shoulder length ringlets. George was dressed in a black tux and tails with a white tie and carnation and his curly dark blonde locks were parted on the side and brushed back. According to Barbara, her maid of honor and best friend Mary Engles wore a pink dress and her other bridesmaid Barbara Adelhardt (George's sister) wore a blue dress. Barbara's first cousin Jim McCart was George's best man and her brother Andrew McCart and one of George's co-workers named Kleiderlein were ushers. After the Mass and ceremony, a breakfast was held at the McCart home on Ensor Street. Photos were snapped in the backyard. That afternoon the newlyweds left from Union Station and rode a train to Philadelphia where they stayed with Barbara's great uncle Jimmy Clark and his two children, John and Mabel. They spent the rest of their three-day windy and cold honeymoon at the Kentucky Guest House in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Barbara was most likely a fan of the legendary Irish-born tenor and Italian opera singer – John Frances McCormack. During this time he performed concerts all over America and eventually became a U.S. citizen. He made recordings on Victrola discs of such classics created out of America's Tin Pan Alley publishing genre of popular tunes such as "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" and "My Wild Irish Rose." Barbara liked to sing these songs herself:
My wild Irish Rose, the sweetest flower that grows.
You may search everywhere, but none can compare with my wild Irish Rose.
My wild Irish Rose, the dearest flower that grows.
And some day for my sake, she may let me take the bloom from my wild Irish Rose.
For many years on Barbara's birthday in September, the couple would take the Dreamland ferry and cruise down the Chesapeake Bay to Solomons Island for the day with their married friends - Ethel and Roland Baum. The men would wear suits. Throughout his life George would never go outside without carrying his dress hat – a straw hat in the summer or a felt hat in the winter. The women would dress in suit jackets and long skirts with wide-brimmed hats. Barbara quite often wore a hat (especially to church) and in later decades this became smaller in size sometimes with a net that covered her eyes.
Women's suffrage had been a political controversy in America for some time. As the debate became heated in 1916, James Cardinal Gibbons, the ninth Archbishop of Baltimore had sent an address to the convention of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage in Washington, DC. But despite his and the condemnations by others, in May and June of 1919, both the House of Representatives and the Senate in a special session had passed the Nineteenth Amendment granting all U.S. women the right to vote. On August 26, 1920, following ratification by the necessary thirty-six states, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted into law. Both Barbara and George voted in their first election that November. Barbara became a life long Democrat and later had served as judge at the elections for two years.
At the same time George and Barbara were renting an apartment at 2118 Hoffman Street and George was working at the National Biscuit Company as a wholesale commercial salesman (as confirmed by the 1920 U.S. Census records). They lived there for three years. One day the landlady Miss Hattie and her mother told Barbara that she was going to sell the place. Finding her crying at home, George suggested that Barb look for a new place to live. A few weeks later Miss Hattie changed her mind and decided not to sell, but the Adelhardts felt they better move anyway. In 1922 they moved into another apartment at 1047 Aisquith Street - on the same street as St. James Church.
It was here that they began their family. On November 30, 1923 they had their first-born child which they named Mary Margaret.
In 1926, George got a loan from his father and bought a brick row home with marble steps at 1419 Federal Street across the street from P.S. #20, a large public high school.
Their second child George John, Junior was born on October 30, 1929. Although the Great Depression had occurred, the Adelhardts thought it was a better time to have another child and on May 5, 1935 welcomed their daughter Carlita Barbara.
Barbara said that she and George never had behavior problems with their children … when she told them to do something, they did it. Later she would be frustrated when she felt that her grandchildren and their generation would need to be reminded multiple times of their parent's expectations. When the children were ill, Barbara would give them castor oil for digestive problems or hot lemonade and aspirin for colds. She rubbed their chests with goose grease when they were congested. She would mop their sore throats by tying raw cotton around a drumstick and dipping it in solutions. She said the kids would "scream murder."
Encouraged by the United Service Organization and other military morale strategy, Americans like Barbara wrote cards and letters to the young men who were serving their country. Of course she had her own close, personal reasons since she received V-mail (letters photographed on microfilm, shipped, and then enlarged and printed) from her youngest brother Bill McCart who was serving as a private in the army forces in the China-Burma-India region. There were many other Baltimorians unknown to her with whom she corresponded including brothers Dominic and Lewis Sciabarrasi, Corporal Tony Amarel, Lieutenant Mary C. Eby, and Private Joseph E. Lemax. She collected these notes, postcards, letters, photos and many newspaper clippings from the war and subsequent occupation and arranged them in a scrapbook.
They finally purchased a home at 5104 Richard Avenue just off of Harford Road in the Hamilton neighborhood of Northeast Baltimore. They took out a mortgage which paid the previous owner $5500.
The Adelhardts took many bus trips during the 1950's and later decades with many friends such as Nettie and Frank Zeiler, Margaret Sebald, and Jim and Mary Harrington (children of the late Milton and Catherine Harrington) that they knew from the old East Baltimore neighborhoods and St. James Church. George and Barb enjoyed going to Atlantic City, New Jersey and to Miami, Florida (with Mary and Ed Horten), and multiple visits to the Canadian Niagra Falls, the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania and Lake George in upstate New York. Newer friends from their bus trips included neighbors Ann and Albert Musciano, Elizabeth Fick, Ethel and Joe Merryman, Barbara Trimble, and Ann Horten (Ed and Mary's niece) and her best friend Charlotte Lookingbill. Over the years Ann and Charlotte became frequent guests at Adelhardt family gatherings on holidays. One of their biggest adventures by bus was a trip across the U.S. to California in 1967. Barbara did not enjoy the long trip. It seems that a "very nasty" man was telling such bad jokes on the bus that George had to tell him to stop. After the two-week trip, the whole family met George and Barbara at the Trailways Bus Terminal. When Barbara got off the bus her son Junie asked if she had a good time. Barbara sarcastically remarked that if she hadn't gotten home when she did, that she would have been locked up in an insane asylum. Barbara collected painted souvenir china from her travels all over the states and hung the dishes on the wall along her long staircase landing at home.
Barbara now endured two losses (Mary Margaret months before) within the one year. As she had aged she suffered with gastrointestinal problems and had to have her gall bladder removed. She developed a hiatal hernia and diverticulitus, which caused her digestive system to convulse, and forced her on a special diet. As a widow she continued to live in the Richard Avenue home and renovated the upstairs bedrooms into a second living area for her childhood friend Margaret Voelker Bisker, widow of the late Walter. Barbara was able to take a plane trip to Utah to visit her grandchildren during this time. In 1984 she suffered a series of falls and mini-strokes which made it very difficult for her to take care of herself. Because of the amount of around the clock care needed for Barbara, Carlita moved her mother to the Chapel Hill Convalescent Home closer to her home in Randallstown in Baltimore County, west of the city. The Richard Avenue house was sold and Mrs. Bisker found a new place to live. Barbara continued to live at Chapel Hill for the next four years. Despite Carlita's weekly visits and efforts to bring Barbara by wheelchair to family events and to her home on holidays, Barbara became lonely and withdrawn with depression. More mini-strokes seemed to cause dementia or an intermittent loss of memory. Many relatives did visit Barbara at Chapel Hill on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday and she was able to hold her first great grandchild. Family members celebrated with a party in her honor at Carlita's home. She lived about another year and died of another stroke on October 14, 1988 at age 91. Barbara's funeral Mass was held at St. Dominic's Church in Hamilton and she was buried next to George at the Gardens of Faith Cemetery on Belair Road in Baltimore County. The plaque on their grave reads "Together Forever."
Young Barbara had long brown hair with a reddish tint and wore it rolled and in pigtails at 12 years old until her early twenties.
Young Barbara always liked to sing. She met her best friend Mary Engles when they were nine years old. Mary lived across the street from the McCart family at 1118 Ensor Street.
Young Barb remembered being taught by nuns from the order of the School Sisters of Notre Dame such as Sister Lavina , Sister Dellarosa (her class forced the strict nun into retirement), and Sister Mary Giovanni (her last teacher in eighth grade). In 1912 she studied such subjects as Religion, Universal History, Grammar, Composition, Penmanship, Arithmetic, Algebra, National Philosophy, Spelling, Hygiene, Sewing, Bookkeeping, Shorthand, Typewriting, Drawing, During her last year she completed Krone's System of Commercial Writing.
Barbara McCart also met her future husband at a meeting of the St. James Dramatic Circle in East Baltimore. Maurice Rassa introduced George Adelhardt to the group. There was only one empty seat left next to Barbara and she called out with excitement, "Yeah, come on and sit next to me!" Of course, the Dramatic Club consisted of many of the people mentioned before such as Ed Horten, Ed Hart and his sister, Frank Metz, Maurice Rassa, Frank Herbert, Margaret Voelker later Bisker, Clara Zang and many others. Later Barbara's best friend Mary Engles joined the group. George and Barbara had much in common since they had attended the same church and school just a few years apart. Barbara acted in many of the plays performed for the parishioners and community. One time George played the part of a waiter and his character had to bring a live English shepherd dog on stage. One night after rehearsal, tall and skinny Ed Hart asked Barbara if he could walk her home. She grabbed George, who was innocently standing near her, by the arm and announced that George was taking her home already. She didn't want to go home with Ed. Walking Barb (as George called her) home from play practice became their routine and their dating relationship developed into day trips to the Bay Shore Amusement Park on the Chesapeake Bay and other romantic spots like visiting the McClure family farm in rural Eldersburg to the west in Carroll County. The McCarts liked George and the Adelhardts felt that Barbara was a nice Irish girl. Barbara thought that George's father was an "inquisitive old buzzard." According to her, one Sunday when George and Barb were out on a date, Barbara "Mom" McCart was sitting at the front window on Ensor Street holding her youngest daughter Margie who was ill. John Adelhardt came up to the window and spoke with concern in his heavy German accent.
"You know my son, Johann?" he asked.
"Who?" she replied.
"My son Johann. He goes with your daughter."
" You mean, George?" asked Barbara.
"Yes, George. I just wanted to know what kind of house where she lives"
And with that remark John Adelhardt left without another word.
When they met, Barbara was working for the United States Fidelity and Guarantee. Barbara was a good typist and she still owned an old Royal manual typewriter complete with ringing carriage bell 50 years later. During her last three years there she worked in the auditing department with 30 men and only two women.
They were married the following April 23, 1919 at St. James Catholic Church by Redemptorist Father John Meier. Her father Joe McCart walked Barbara down the aisle in her white gown and white mantilla. Her brown hair was parted in the middle and curled into shoulder length ringlets. George was dressed in a black tux and tails with a white tie and carnation and his curly dark blonde locks were parted on the side and brushed back. According to Barbara, her maid of honor and best friend Mary Engles wore a pink dress and her other bridesmaid Barbara Adelhardt (George's sister) wore a blue dress. Barbara's first cousin Jim McCart was George's best man and her brother Andrew McCart and one of George's co-workers named Kleiderlein were ushers. After the Mass and ceremony, a breakfast was held at the McCart home on Ensor Street. Photos were snapped in the backyard. That afternoon the newlyweds left from Union Station and rode a train to Philadelphia where they stayed with Barbara's great uncle Jimmy Clark and his two children, John and Mabel. They spent the rest of their three-day windy and cold honeymoon at the Kentucky Guest House in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Barbara was most likely a fan of the legendary Irish-born tenor and Italian opera singer – John Frances McCormack. During this time he performed concerts all over America and eventually became a U.S. citizen. He made recordings on Victrola discs of such classics created out of America's Tin Pan Alley publishing genre of popular tunes such as "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" and "My Wild Irish Rose." Barbara liked to sing these songs herself:
My wild Irish Rose, the sweetest flower that grows.
You may search everywhere, but none can compare with my wild Irish Rose.
My wild Irish Rose, the dearest flower that grows.
And some day for my sake, she may let me take the bloom from my wild Irish Rose.
For many years on Barbara's birthday in September, the couple would take the Dreamland ferry and cruise down the Chesapeake Bay to Solomons Island for the day with their married friends - Ethel and Roland Baum. The men would wear suits. Throughout his life George would never go outside without carrying his dress hat – a straw hat in the summer or a felt hat in the winter. The women would dress in suit jackets and long skirts with wide-brimmed hats. Barbara quite often wore a hat (especially to church) and in later decades this became smaller in size sometimes with a net that covered her eyes.
Women's suffrage had been a political controversy in America for some time. As the debate became heated in 1916, James Cardinal Gibbons, the ninth Archbishop of Baltimore had sent an address to the convention of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage in Washington, DC. But despite his and the condemnations by others, in May and June of 1919, both the House of Representatives and the Senate in a special session had passed the Nineteenth Amendment granting all U.S. women the right to vote. On August 26, 1920, following ratification by the necessary thirty-six states, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted into law. Both Barbara and George voted in their first election that November. Barbara became a life long Democrat and later had served as judge at the elections for two years.
At the same time George and Barbara were renting an apartment at 2118 Hoffman Street and George was working at the National Biscuit Company as a wholesale commercial salesman (as confirmed by the 1920 U.S. Census records). They lived there for three years. One day the landlady Miss Hattie and her mother told Barbara that she was going to sell the place. Finding her crying at home, George suggested that Barb look for a new place to live. A few weeks later Miss Hattie changed her mind and decided not to sell, but the Adelhardts felt they better move anyway. In 1922 they moved into another apartment at 1047 Aisquith Street - on the same street as St. James Church.
It was here that they began their family. On November 30, 1923 they had their first-born child which they named Mary Margaret.
In 1926, George got a loan from his father and bought a brick row home with marble steps at 1419 Federal Street across the street from P.S. #20, a large public high school.
Their second child George John, Junior was born on October 30, 1929. Although the Great Depression had occurred, the Adelhardts thought it was a better time to have another child and on May 5, 1935 welcomed their daughter Carlita Barbara.
Barbara said that she and George never had behavior problems with their children … when she told them to do something, they did it. Later she would be frustrated when she felt that her grandchildren and their generation would need to be reminded multiple times of their parent's expectations. When the children were ill, Barbara would give them castor oil for digestive problems or hot lemonade and aspirin for colds. She rubbed their chests with goose grease when they were congested. She would mop their sore throats by tying raw cotton around a drumstick and dipping it in solutions. She said the kids would "scream murder."
Encouraged by the United Service Organization and other military morale strategy, Americans like Barbara wrote cards and letters to the young men who were serving their country. Of course she had her own close, personal reasons since she received V-mail (letters photographed on microfilm, shipped, and then enlarged and printed) from her youngest brother Bill McCart who was serving as a private in the army forces in the China-Burma-India region. There were many other Baltimorians unknown to her with whom she corresponded including brothers Dominic and Lewis Sciabarrasi, Corporal Tony Amarel, Lieutenant Mary C. Eby, and Private Joseph E. Lemax. She collected these notes, postcards, letters, photos and many newspaper clippings from the war and subsequent occupation and arranged them in a scrapbook.
They finally purchased a home at 5104 Richard Avenue just off of Harford Road in the Hamilton neighborhood of Northeast Baltimore. They took out a mortgage which paid the previous owner $5500.
The Adelhardts took many bus trips during the 1950's and later decades with many friends such as Nettie and Frank Zeiler, Margaret Sebald, and Jim and Mary Harrington (children of the late Milton and Catherine Harrington) that they knew from the old East Baltimore neighborhoods and St. James Church. George and Barb enjoyed going to Atlantic City, New Jersey and to Miami, Florida (with Mary and Ed Horten), and multiple visits to the Canadian Niagra Falls, the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania and Lake George in upstate New York. Newer friends from their bus trips included neighbors Ann and Albert Musciano, Elizabeth Fick, Ethel and Joe Merryman, Barbara Trimble, and Ann Horten (Ed and Mary's niece) and her best friend Charlotte Lookingbill. Over the years Ann and Charlotte became frequent guests at Adelhardt family gatherings on holidays. One of their biggest adventures by bus was a trip across the U.S. to California in 1967. Barbara did not enjoy the long trip. It seems that a "very nasty" man was telling such bad jokes on the bus that George had to tell him to stop. After the two-week trip, the whole family met George and Barbara at the Trailways Bus Terminal. When Barbara got off the bus her son Junie asked if she had a good time. Barbara sarcastically remarked that if she hadn't gotten home when she did, that she would have been locked up in an insane asylum. Barbara collected painted souvenir china from her travels all over the states and hung the dishes on the wall along her long staircase landing at home.
Barbara now endured two losses (Mary Margaret months before) within the one year. As she had aged she suffered with gastrointestinal problems and had to have her gall bladder removed. She developed a hiatal hernia and diverticulitus, which caused her digestive system to convulse, and forced her on a special diet. As a widow she continued to live in the Richard Avenue home and renovated the upstairs bedrooms into a second living area for her childhood friend Margaret Voelker Bisker, widow of the late Walter. Barbara was able to take a plane trip to Utah to visit her grandchildren during this time. In 1984 she suffered a series of falls and mini-strokes which made it very difficult for her to take care of herself. Because of the amount of around the clock care needed for Barbara, Carlita moved her mother to the Chapel Hill Convalescent Home closer to her home in Randallstown in Baltimore County, west of the city. The Richard Avenue house was sold and Mrs. Bisker found a new place to live. Barbara continued to live at Chapel Hill for the next four years. Despite Carlita's weekly visits and efforts to bring Barbara by wheelchair to family events and to her home on holidays, Barbara became lonely and withdrawn with depression. More mini-strokes seemed to cause dementia or an intermittent loss of memory. Many relatives did visit Barbara at Chapel Hill on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday and she was able to hold her first great grandchild. Family members celebrated with a party in her honor at Carlita's home. She lived about another year and died of another stroke on October 14, 1988 at age 91. Barbara's funeral Mass was held at St. Dominic's Church in Hamilton and she was buried next to George at the Gardens of Faith Cemetery on Belair Road in Baltimore County. The plaque on their grave reads "Together Forever."
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