Music

The Watkins Family

Berdine and Martha Watkins
Names of Children


1909 at Redondo Beach with Blanche and Freedom....... In 1920 at home.

Berdine and Martha were from Georgia and had 12 children. Trudy was in the middle and was born in Rome, Georgia, but raised in Tennessee. She used to talk about "the beautiful Tennessee hills."

Trudy told Athleen that, as a very young child, Martha's mother rode on a railroad flat car, fleeing Sherman and the Union Army as they marched and burned their way to the sea during the Civil War.

Madelon remembers her mother saying that Martha's mother escaped on the back of a horse. She had just walked out her front door and a young boy on a horse rode by and told her the Union Soldiers were coming and she better get out. She said, "okay let me up" and off they rode.


Blanche ... 1922 - Athleen, back right, with some of Josie's children ... Chambers
Josie's children: Leonard, Dorothy, Lillian, Lessley

"Here is my picture, Trudy. I was just coming home from school and got snapped. Write me a letter. From your sister, Blanche"

"Hello, Trudy. How are you. Had this taken coming from school. Tell Athleen hello for me. Always From Chamber"


Athleen, Trudy Watkins Hoskins, Julia Watkins ... Josie Watkins Perkins ... Madelon Perkins


Monique and Madelon.....2010 - Madelon Perkins Marks, Tom, Monique Marks Conklin.
2007 - James and Lillith.
Monique and Lillith are Madelon's daughters. James is Lillith's son. Madelon raised James.


Monique at Whittier Narrows

Gertrude (Trudy) and Howard Hoskins
Lillian Athleen b. 1904


Trudy, Howard - Athleen about 1906, San Francisco, CA

Howard Hoskins was a widower with three small sons. When he and Trudy married, they moved back to San Francisco, where his sons were. The boys loved their new little sister, and were very affectionate with her.

In San Francisco, Trudy enrolled in song and dance classes and later joined a dance troupe because it was her heart's desire to become an actress. When the troupe left for Hawaii, Trudy, expecting a child, was unable to go. Athleen was born in San Francisco. After Trudy separated from her husband, She raised her child alone, moving first to Los Gatos then to Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, Trudy worked as a domestic in private homes and in hospitals.  Sometimes she could have Athleen with her. At other times, Athleen was boarded in people's homes. When she grew older, to pay for her room and board, Athleen was a "mother's helper," meaning she washed dishes, took care of the young children, cleaned the house. This in addition to going to school. Trudy visited her when she could and took her to the homes where she worked, showing her the beautiful houses and the children she cared for.



Trudy, around 1914, and with her mother, Cornell, CA

Athleen and Suzie



Athleen's best memories are of when she was 10-12 and she and Trudy lived in Cornell, close to where Magic Mountain is now. Trudy ran the General Store. Then she became the librarian and the postmistress. They lived in a small cabin with no heat. Athleen remembers waking in winter mornings to find the water in the wash basin frozen. She used to tell us how she would pull the wings off a butterfly, put the body on a bent safety pin and go fishing for trout in a nearby stream. And she loved to read. The neighbor had a donkey, Susie, who was Athleen's best and only friend along with a rooster and a cat. They all went riding together.

Suzie would hold her breath when mother would saddle her to make her stomach large. As they were riding, Suzie would let out her breath and lower her head and stop - and mother, the rooster and the cat would go sliding off. One day after the neighbor and his donkey moved away Athleen received some money from her Dad to buy a coat. Trudy said, "Do you want a coat or do you want Suzie"?

So they took the bus to Boyle Heights near East Los Angeles and got Suzie and walked home, sleeping under the road signs at night. But Athleen had her Suzie back. Once when I was little we were out riding in a car and mother said, "There is Suzie". We stopped and she went to the fence and called, "Suzie" ..... and a little donkey walked over so I could pet her nose. Athleen left high school to attend a business school in Los Angeles. Except for the time Nancy and Carol were small, she worked in a clerical or secretarial field until she retired at the age of 70 from the City of Los Angeles.

The whole Watkins family eventually moved to Los Angeles, also. I remember Aunt Etty and their house in Bell, I think. It was a rural area and there was a goat farm down the road where I had my first taste of goat milk. Another neighbor had some dairy cows and a bull. Carol and I sat on the corral fence, watching the bull and then got the fright of our lives as the bull started to charge towards us! The friendly farmer came out and explained that you usually leave the bull alone! Then he treated us to fresh milk, straight from the udder! It was icky-warm. It wouldn't have been so startling if we had known ahead of time that it would be warm. But how were we to know, we two little city girls!

Aunt Blanche took me out to coffee once when I was a young teenager and she told me she would buy me my first make-up. She never did...


1. Howard's mother, Mary Hoskins and his sisters, Ethel, standing, and Estelle.
2, 3 Unidentified family members

Athleen and Ferdinando Marzo 1927
Rose Nancy 1930 and Carol Ann 1934

Ferdinando and Athleen, left-back, camping out around 1928. This is really roughing it! Athleen had not seen her father since she was very little. After they were married, Ferdinando hired a detective to find him, and Athleen was able to see her father again not too long before he died.


Mother and Nancy, 1931 - Playhouse, 1938 - Daddy and Carol, 1935
1753 Wooster St., Los Angeles, CA

Daddy made this playhouse for us in 1938. He did all the paintings, everything - made the sections at work, and put them together at the house. The neighbor kids helped us stamp down the linoleum floor. Our playhouse had running water and a mail slot. One night mother put a mattress on the floor so we could spend the night here

There was a bitter custody battle, covering about three years, which Athleen won. Nancy, 11, and Carol, 7, were then put into the Children's Home Society orphanage for a year and then Athleen transferred them to Villa Cabrini, a girls' boarding school in Burbank, where they finished out their schooling. Athleen went back to work as a secretary. She loved to dance and at one ballroom she met Sol Hittelman, whom she later married.

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