Roaring Twenties

Bernie and Jennie were married in 1921, and ten months later their first child Bob was born. Every two years thereafter another son was born: Warren in 1924, Dick in 1926, and Allen in 1928. During that time period the Eighteenth Amendment, which banned the sale of alcoholic beverages, had been in effect since 1919. Bernie managed to stay employed in various activities during that time period. Before Bob was born, Bernie was a chauffeur/butler and Jennie a chambermaid. After Bob was born, Bernie became a truck driver hauling dirt out of the tunnels for a construction company building a new line for the New York City subway system.

At some point the family lived in a large house in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Jennie’s parents, Andrew and Frieda Anderson, and her two younger sisters, Violet and Helen, all lived with Bernie and Jennie and the boys for a while. Then they moved to a second floor apartment on 4th Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets. When a fire broke out in the apartment, the family moved to Bay 8th Street. By then the older boys enjoyed Sunday school at the Lutheran church at 46th Street and 4th Avenue, so Andrew offered to drive them from their Bay 8th apartment to the church every Sunday morning in his “Tin Lizzie,” the Model T Ford he owned.

During the twenties Bob was the only child to have started school in the first grade, though it is not known what school he attended.

Not much else has been passed down in the family history of those early years in the twenties. Here is a link to what life was like in the US during that time period. Of course, the Nelson family was just as hard hit by Black Thursday, October 24, 1929, the start of the Great Depression that plagued the nation during the thirties.