The Brown Kids in Louisville

After my first post on the 1950 Census, I received some comments back from my aunt and uncle, Peter Brown and Julia Brown Herrin, about their childhood in Louisville.

Pete replied:

I had forgotten the projects were called "Clarksdale". At the north end was a barber college where I would get a haircut for 25 cents. We went to school at Nicholas Finzer School. There was a silo type fire escape with a circular metal slide inside. Once a year the students could pay a penny to slide down. It was for cleaning purposes.

We also frequented an amusement park called Fontaine Ferry.

He included a photo of a slide from Fontaine Ferry Park: 

Devil's Backbone Slides at Fontaine Ferry Park

On this website about the history of Fontaine Ferry Park I found out that the park opened in 1905 and was closed for good in 1969. According to the site, "For the last 50 years of Fontaine Ferry, it cost 10 cents to get in for a full day of excitement."

I found this photo of the Nicholas Finzer School which was taken in 1923:

Courtesy of the University of Louisville Libraries¹

Julia told me that she went to St. John's Catholic School when she was 4 years old. It was a class with first and second graders. She fell asleep in class one day and one of the nuns brought her home from school. 

She remembered having her father's old black testament prayer book, while all of the other girls had white prayer books. She also remembered the nuns telling her that only Catholics went to heaven. She went home and cried about that. Her mother told her that was not true. The next year she started at Nicholas Finzer School. Then a year later the family moved to North Olmsted, Ohio and she went to Butternut Ridge School.

My mother told me that she also remembered going to the Finzer school. She recalls the family moving from Louisville to North Olmsted when she was 10 years old and it was at the beginning of the school year, making that about September 1952.

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¹ Herald-Post Collection. Nicholas Finzer Elementary School, Louisville, Kentucky, 1923. Digital image of 8 x 10 in. b&w photographic print. Archives & Special Collections, University of Louisville, Louisville. <https://hyku.library.louisville.edu/concern/images/fc65e53a-9d0d-47d9-b6d0-ac47784689bc> accessed 9 August 2022.^↩