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a.
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Note: b Putnam County Ohio, 17 May 1906. She married Chester Carlysle Jenkins, 5 March 1927. Chester was born in Hudson, Michigan on the 5 April 1908, died May 1989. He was the son of Lewis and Mary (Colwell) Jenkins, who resided most of their married life in Rushmore, Ohio with several interim years in Hudson, MI. Many Vandemark cousins remember spending time at Grandpa and Grandma Jenkins and eating strawberries with home made ice cream and cookies. Chet had a brother Carl who died Oct. 1974 in Kalamazoo, MI.
Otha spent her early childhood in Union county Ohio. At five years old she walked to a one room school house and it was cold to walk, Clarence her father would take her on the horse. One time she was waiting in the middle of the mud road for her father and her boots got stuck in the mud, she had to stay and scream until her father came to get her. At seven, she was sent to Vyhalia Centralized School, the first centralized school.
Theodore Roosevelt was president when she was born. In her early memories transportation was a horse and buggy, and out house with the Sears Catalog for tissue paper and a pump for water was the plumbing, they cooked on wood stoves, washed clothes with washboard and homemade soap, ironed their clothes with flat irons heated on the wood burning stove (three going at once).
They preserved foods by canning fruits, vegetables and smoking meats. On the north side of the house, a tile lined hole would keep butter and milk cool. Another method of preserving fruits and vegetables at the time, was to bury them in a straw lined hole in the middle of a field. Later they had an ice box that held a block of ice on top. Fields were plowed with a team of horses and a single plow. Entertainment was plays given at the schools by the school children, but the county fair was the highlight of the year. When dating Chet, an evening out was two movies (black and white) with the actors mouthing words with the words flashing on the screen. Between the movies was a half hour of live vaudeville. Her first experience with radio was a radio brought over by her uncle Clarence (Derb) Brant and could be listened to by one person at a time with earphones. Each child got to listen to Santa Claus, one at a time. Today Otha lives in an apartment in Saginaw, MI.
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