Nana and Babu
Our maternal grandparents, George Caleb Palmer and Bernadina
("Bernadine" or "Dina" or "Dean") Verhagan, were called "Babu"
and "Nana" by Paul, and those names stuck with us grandchildren ever
after.
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There is a wonderful story about how they met and married. Babu was
the local manager of the California Fruitgrowers Exchange in Spokane,
Washington, and he would go every night to the Davenport Hotel
(which still stands) where Nana, some years his junior, braved singing
operatic tunes to further her career. In 1917 that was a pretty gutsy
thing to do for a young woman all on her own.
Night after night she received a bouquet of roses from Babu, along with
a note asking her to join him for dinner. Annoyed by these attentions,
she finally sent him back a note saying she would accede to his
persistent requests, but only if he promised to stop sending her flowers
backstage, and only if it was understood she would accept for one dinner
only.
He agreed, they had dinner, and three weeks later they were married.
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This whirlwind courtship made news in the local newspaper, as you
see here.
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You can also read from the article that before her Spokane engagement
she had been performing for 19 weeks at the Multnomah Hotel in
Portland. Below are photos of her from that time.
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Before moving with her family to Portland, she had also been in the
chorus of the New York Metropolitan Opera, and according to our mother,
she had also sung live on the radio.
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We grandchildren were lucky every now and then to hear her sing in
an unguarded moment, such as when she thought she was alone in the
kitchen, a marvelous voice indeed, a contralto's range. But otherwise
she never performed for us, other than to whistle some melody now and
then when the mood struck her. It was like the warbling of some magic
ethereal bird. On road trips to Iowa she might warble for as much as an
hour. It was mesmerizing.
Nana (upper left-hand corner), one of the "Portland Belles" of the Multnomah Hotel
Bernadina Yakiva Verhagen, a "High Class Vocal Entertainer"
Below is the civil marriage certificate for Nana's parents, between Gustavus Verhaegen (note the original spelling of the last name) and Maria Petronella van den Brande. The marriage took place in the town of Hulst in Holland (where Nana was born), in the province of Zeeland, on March 9, 1893. He was 23 and she 24. The document says he was at that time a resident of Antwerp and "by profession a coach driver" (Dutch: "van beroep koetsier"). She is noted as a domestic servant.
Gustavus was said to have sung at the court of the Dutch king and as a soloist at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp. He was also something of a wandering husband, as Paul points out in his opening paragraph to We Never Said Goodbye. Maria and her kids went chasing after him when he took off from New York to San Francisco. (We recall Nana's recollection of living through the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that devastated the city). Once in San Francisco, Gustav famously said he was going out to buy some cigarettes and left for Alaska. It took the family another 10 years to finally track him down in Nevada.
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Nana had two sisters, Josefina ("Aunt Jo"), Maria ("Aunt Marie") and a brother, Richard. These siblings all remained in the Bay Area.
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According to one Dutch genealogical website (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/west-europese-adel/I32562.php), "Petronella van den Brande" is the family name of minor nobility (a barony) in Western Europe. At that website, reference is made to another Maria Petronella van den Brande who died in 1826, 43 years before Nana's mother was born. Both Marias lived in the province of Zeeland, and I have to think they were related.
Mom always thought her "Grandma Marie" had some Spanish ancestry, perhaps dating back to the time when The Netherlands was under the Spanish Crown from 1581 to 1714. Glenna says "Petronella" does not sound Spanish to her.
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Interior of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, where it was said that great-grandfather Gustavus Verhaegen, a tenor, sang before the Dutch royal family:
We never heard Babu sing a note, but thanks to modern
technology, here he is singing his favorite song, "Mammy"
They have professional photos taken of themselves in Spokane
George and Laurie Palmer
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