Stars and flowers

As the daughter of the family historian, one of the hardest things to contend with is the physical and emotional weight of the records and artifacts passed down through the generations. My family was blessed by having prolific writers: we count easily a half-dozen journals, from the sweet recounting of a teenage girl's wardrobe and school crushes to the hefty and pensive journal of a Civil War chaplain (and that of his wife and son). These all have a physical presence as well as capturing not only our family's history, but the history of our country at a key moment.

After my mother died of Alzheimer's, I had the arduous task of combing through disorganized piles of family and historical research (she was a published historian), interspersed with decades-old bank statements and direct mailers for things she would never buy. Deciding what to keep and what to discard, what to take to my home and what to let go, was a difficult decision, complicated by my difficult relationship with my mother. As I can now take time to comb through her work and read her journals (yes, she kept journals as well), I have come to better understand and admire her accomplishments. 

But by far and away, the most difficult piece has been what to do with her unfinished projects. I admit to the same overachieving tendency that she had: to start projects. It's a little like knitting a sock, and wondering if you will have enough yarn to complete it; will I have enough days to complete them? Adding my mother's projects to the pile adds a new level of stress--I have my own projects! Is my time to be used finishing hers? 

As I dig through the piles of family artifacts, I find a box  labeled "Civil War blanket" which I always assumed was the blanket that my GGG Grandfather had used many a night on the cold, hard ground. Instead, I find what looks to be odd scraps, but turns out to be a partially pieced Ohio Star quilt top with a label pinned to it. It was begun by a great aunt in 1867, the year she turned 19, the year she graduated from Hamline, and the year she was married. In less than two years, she died of consumption, leaving behind a bereaved husband and an unfinished quilt. 

Underneath that box is another dress box with stacks of hexagonal "flowers" destined for a grandmother's garden quilt. Some of the fabrics I can identify from my mother's scrap pile as being from garments she sewed for us; others appear to be of her mother's and grandmother's vintage. 

Turning the work to the wrong side, I can see that all the stars and flowers are hand-stitched. These two incomplete quilts are a physical reminder of how our time is borrowed. Stiches in time.

I keep chipping away at my own projects, but I have also found a local quilter who is enthusiastic about helping finish both quilts. Hers will add a third generation of hands and stiches to the mix. I find comfort in being able to honor these women, and to wrap myself in their handwork, and I hope they will share that same sense of accomplishment when you can fold up a beautiful thing, and say to yourself, "done." 

Ella's quilt: begun in 1867, finished in 2023

Waste not, want not

In the 1920's, my Great Aunt Ruth Richardson came to Sutherlin, Oregon as a bride. One of her letters written back home to family in Northfield, Minnesota talks about when she went out to the springhouse to get some butter for her mother-in-law:

"And this is what I saw - shelves all the way around filled with jars and jars of canned fruit! I am going to offer to get the butter and cream every meal and count them.

"...Tonight I went after butter again, and I asked Mother Morgan if she would think me dreadfully snoopy if I counted the fruit jars. Now, darling, you simply have to believe me - there were six hundred quarts, and jars and jars of jam, preserves and chow chows, and a big immense jar of wonderful pickles. There were the most wonderful assortments of fruit, meat, fish and vegetables, and she had done it all herself. She is just so nice and modest about it; I'd think anyone who had done that ought to broadcast over the radio. And then she said in that nice quiet voice of hers that I am learning to love and respect, "But I canned a few more this year than usual." And what do you think she said? That two hundred of them were for us. Jim had bought the jars and sugar and she canned them."

The first time I met my husband’s aunt, she was in the kitchen of her farm in Southern Germany, cutting brown bits off a head of cauliflower, her fingernails blackened by soil and paring. My father-in-law did much the same with shriveled apples, taking them one by one from a cardboard box next to his chair. I recall being repulsed by the condition of the produce; indeed, it was the kind of stuff you would see in dumpsters in this country, never in the stores. But these people had been through a war on their own soil, and knew what being hungry was like. For my generation, who has lived in a world at war for nearly their entire life, there is no shortage, no hardship.

As I child I remember my mother parking close to the fence at the bank so my brother and I could stand on the hood of the car and pick blackberries while she did her banking. We had purple tongues when she returned, but there were enough for some on ice cream later, and even more that she turned into jam. She enlisted our help in stirring jam and canning peaches. In fact, on the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, we put up peaches: as the person with the smallest hands, my job was to neatly layer the cut and peeled peach halves in the mason jar so my mother could pour the hot syrup over them. When we cleaned out my parent's home, there was still one lone jar of "Moon Peaches" on a shelf in the pantry. They're past their prime, discolored with time, but I still packed them up (along with boxes of jars), and they sit on my pantry shelf with the other canned goods. 

And there are more than a few, as my family and friends have learned that if they bring home fruit (or pick it from the trees on our suburban lot), jam will be made. As I take my first jam of the season down to the shelves in the garage where they reside, I check seals and rotate the jars (older jam near the door, newer jars on the left). I also took the opportunity to channel my ancestor and count the jars, and did you know, there were 126 jars of jam, and 36 of applesauce! I will share some with friends who have been trained to return jars, but my family will enjoy the lion's share of the bounty and I admit to a great deal of satisfaction from seeing them, rows of soldiers ready for toast.

Yes, there is jam available to us on the supermarket shelves and farmer's market, but we all prefer following in the footsteps of our predecessors and sweating through the hot days of summer so we can spread a little sunshine on our toast on a wintry morning. 

Summer in a jar

Highs and lows

We all have them in our lives, the highs and lows, all part of the texture and color of our lives. But some folks seem to attract drama that heightens the peaks and deepens the valleys.

Take my 9th great grandmother, Sarah Warren. She was born in Watertown, Massachusetts in 1643, a heavily Puritan colony. As was correct for a young woman, she married a man named Robert Prince in the age of nineteen, and they had two sons, most certainly a high point for them. It was common in those days to live close to family, and Robert purchased a 150-acre parcel in Salem, adjacent to his sister and her husband, Captain John Putnam. A great setup: family support right next door, and the prospect of two strapping young men to help maintain their farm.

Unfortunately, good things rarely last, and Robert died prematurely in 1674, leaving Sarah with a farm and two young boys (10 & 12) to care for. He left the land to his sons, with Sarah as the trustee, and his brother-in-law the executor. Sarah hired an indentured Irishman (much younger than herself), Alexander Osborne, to help with the farm. And then, to make matters worse in a small community, she fell in love with him and married him--after having lived under the same roof with him.

She might have survived this transgression with a smudge on her reputation. But for whatever reason, she tried to break her late husband's will and take control of the farm for herself and her new husband. This caused a huge rift in the family, as Capt. Putnam defended her childrens' rights. The whole issue took its toll on Sarah, whose health began failing, which meant she was not always present at Sunday meetings. This, combined with her independence and efforts to upset the "natural" order of things means that she was a threat to the stability of the village and its inhabitants--in particular, the powerful Putnam family.

In early 1692, Thomas Putnam, his brother Edward, and two others rode to Salem to file complaints against Sarah Osborne, Sarah Good, and Tituba for wreaking "mischief" against Ann Putnam Jr. and three local girls. Despite the fact that she had been bedridden for over a year, she was arrested and taken to Salem for questioning. Despite her insistence that she was not a witch, she was jailed based on the testimony of three pre-teen girls. She spent nine days in prison--shackled to prevent her from wreaking more "mischief"--before she died on May 10, 1692, the first victim of what became known as the Salem Witch Hunt.

University of Virginia student Meghan Carroll in her paper "Salem Witch Trials in History and Literature" asks:

"Is a woman who betrays her society's social and family conventions worthy of an accusation of witchcraft? Not in today's society, but in seventeenth century New England these offenses were socially and economically serious, and a threat to the divinely sanctioned social order. Specifically, the Putnam family's economic interests and inheritance grew less secure by Sarah's attempt at social and economic independence. Consequently, but not surprisingly, it was members of the Putnam family who accused Osborne."

The phrase "witch hunt" has been bantered about recently, and at a time when women are finding their social and economic gains eroding in a society still governed by men protecting their economic interests. It does beg the question about the assumption that we have come a long way.

Interior of the old dungeon, old witch jail, Salem, Mass., circa 1935

A cut branch

Anyone who has carried their genealogy back more than a century, or who has spent time walking the rows in a cemetery will note the number of children born to a family is much higher than we consider "normal." Likewise, the number of children--and mothers--who die, usually shortly after the birth seems very high from our modern perspective. A few entries from a name study underway illustrates how our understanding of conception, birth control, and general health has expanded over the years, and how that plays out in real terms for real people:

• Barbara, born in 1698, married Anton in Betra, then part of Prussia, when she was 19. She bore 13 children, 8 of whom died as infants. She died at the age of 45, shortly after giving birth to a boy named Anton; the baby also died within days of his birth.
• In the same village, Magdalena married Johann when she was 25 (8 months after their first child was born). She bore 10 children, only half of whom lived to adulthood. In 1777, she and five of her children died in a 6-month period, likely from illness, possibly smallpox.
• Felicitas married Johann in Betra, Prussia, when she was 21 years old in 1778. She bore 12 children, of whom 6 died before the age of one. She died one year after the birth of her last child, at age 44. 
• Afra was born in Betra in 1822, and married Johann Baptist when she was 22--the day after the birth of her first child. She bore four more children, of whom three made it to adulthood. She died 9 months after her last child was born. She was 29.
• Christina married yet another Johann when she was 28 years old. She had one child seven years later, followed by a son when she was 55. That baby lived three months; she died a month after he did in the winter of 1869. 
• Olga was born in Betra in 1888. She never married, and was a midwife. According to baptismal records, she had three children. It is unclear if she gave birth to them herself, or "found them in the swamp" as her family explained it--possibly unwanted children of her clientele. One child died at 6 months of age, and one was killed in WWII by friendly fire.
• Margaret, a first generation immigrant from Betra, married Harry in Pennsylvania in 1911, when she was 22 years old. She had one child three years later, who died within hours of his birth. She never had any other children. 

Mother and child

Print block

 In a letter to a cousin, my mother relates a tidbit about a cousin for whom she had great affection: 

"I do remember […] Edna Beck Kiesler. She had been a Christian missionary in India, and retired to Berkeley; my mother and I went to her house for tea one time, and the furnishings were the carved tables and screens she had brought from India. […] Edna was a lovely woman."

It made sense that my mother would be attracted to a remarkable, independent woman with a graduate degree: in addition to being a missionary, she was a PhD, and a mother of three children. The Beck family was known for their adventuresome streak, having come to California not overland from the east coast, but rather by ship from Tasmania. 

Edna herself writes a lovely letter to her aunt Jessie and Eugene Cutting, dated May 6, 1902:

"Thinking you would be more interested in hearing from me from my new home than from one of the numerous ports where we landed. I deferred writing until now, when I have had time enough to form a few notable impressions of this very foreign land.  You can imagine how one's former ideas are completely upset by meeting day after day conditions and circumstances so entirely opposite to one's training and environments.  To see camels travelling back and forth in front of one's home as often as one has heretofore seen horses; to drive along the street and find an elephant carelessly filling his spacious trunk with water, then transferring it quietly to the oesophagus, an elephant twelve feet high, then led away by a small boy not more than three and a half feet high; to find men dressed in attire resembling skirts and women wearing pantalons, all the things are a little bit startling! Do you wonder I needed some time to clear my wondering and amazed brain?

How thankful I was to reach the end of my journey-almost seven weeks long. My rest at Honolulu and visit with you was so delightful - it was like another taste of home. I was quite willing to prolong it.

[…a description of the trip, via Japan (Tokyo and Nagasaki), China (Shanghai and Hong Kong), and Singapore...]

We stayed in [Penang] port one day and then started for Calcutta - at the beginning of the new week we found ourselves landing at Calcutta, the city of palaces. Calcutta, a noisy, very dirty place - with few palaces, if any. My journey from Calcutta up through the country to Apere was made alone, lasting two days and two nights.

My new home is delightful - I am very fond of the work, the people, the country."

In my mother's art supplies was a hefty hand-carved wooden block used to print fabric. Given its typically Indian design and our family history, it is reasonable to believe that this block made the trip back with Edna when she returned to retire in her native California. 

Edna's print block and pattern rubbing

On the shelf

My mother was a debutante, back when "coming out" meant a young lady was presented to society as being available for suitable young men to consider as marriage material. The houses in her neighborhood had ballrooms and staff for such festivities, and personal shoppers were standing by to make sure she was wearing a different evening frock for each event, in case a picture should make it into the society pages. And they did.

From the time she graduated from high school to the time she married, her name features in dozens of columns dubbed "World of Women" and "Pauline's Causette." She is usually throwing or attending a party to celebrate pending nuptials for her sorority sisters, or among the bevy of matching bridesmaids pictured in grainy black and white. 

After she graduated from high school, she moved on to college, where she joined a sorority. For a young women who had grown up as an only child, it brought her a special joy, and she kept in contact with the brides-elect for the rest of her life, even when distance separated them. 

From her stories, both told and written, we know there were several gentlemen deemed suitable by her parents, but as things got serious, there always seemed to be flaws. Her father invested a small fortune in tennis lessons, piano lessons, and even cooking lessons: none of them really "stuck." She didn't play tennis well; she was tone deaf so couldn't hear the wrong notes when she played piano. But it wasn't always her: there was the fellow who was an artist--not a financially viable prospect, though we do have a lovely oil he gifted her.

After I sifted through her scrapbooks, I checked to see what else online archives could provide me, and I struck gold. In the early 50s, when she is very much was still "viable"--and an undergrad, I note, the papers refer to her in passing as a bride-elect; then the wedding date is set for the summer after her graduation, with the usual list of attendants and happy parents. Only thing is, I have never heard of the fellow, and it appears that wedding never happened. 

The papers go quiet for a few years as most of her friends are now married (right out of college, naturally). I know from my mother that she was interested in pursuing graduate studies, but her father insisted that she prove she could make enough to support herself. The unspoken message was that if she wasn't going to get married, she'd have to learn to make her own money. So, together with two other sorority sisters, she rented an apartment, and landed herself a job as a secretary at Del Monte. 

There is a glimmer of hope in 1954 when one paper notes that she caught the bridal bouquet--of one of her roommates. And then a terse, almost sad mention in the spring of 1958 noting that she joined the Spinsters and Dames Ball: "… the sole spinster of the contingent." 

There is a happy ending--before she was officially "on the shelf" an article notes that her parents "informally announce" the pending nuptials--this time to my father. She was 27.

End of the line

When doing a surname study, women become less consequential, as the tradition of taking a husband's name--and giving that same surname to progeny--effectively ends the line for the study's purpose. A woman magically appears when she marries into the line; parents are noted, but siblings, cousins, etc. are not added or investigated. Daughters fall into two categories: those who died without marrying (sometimes early, sometimes outliving their parents by several decades), and those who marry and have loads of children, but with a different surname. Both effectively end the surname line. 

But the women are there, as it takes two to tango, and there would be no lines at all without them. 

As many genealogists know, the interesting stuff is between the lines: the birth, marriage, and death records provide us with a general framework, but things get interesting when we find their footprints and fingerprints elsewhere: a census record that shows relatives living with siblings, parents--or just next door. Ship manifests that show who travelled to the new world as a family, and who ventured out on their own. Newspaper clippings about women buying and selling property (once they were widows, of course). 

There are heartbreaking moments too. The 1900 census is hard because of columns 11 and 12: number of children born, and number living. According to the census instructions for the enumerators, "stillborn children are not to be counted." Stillborn children didn't count in Catholic tradition, since the child never "lived" and could not be baptized, adding to the heartbreak.

This is echoed in cemeteries: today, there are separate sections, festooned with balloons and stuffed animals, for children who die--a practical solution, since modern young parents are unlikely to have purchased a family plot. But a mere two generations ago, young parents did purchase a family plot, because children didn't always make it, and that was a known entity. The family plot may contain one large stone with "father" and "mother" marked on it; other, smaller stones will say "son" or "daughter" -- all with the names and dates and perhaps a solemn or humorous epitaph. And then there may be even smaller stones, with just initials or "baby" or "child" with one date. 

Every now and then, a stone will include a woman's maiden name. I'm guessing it's that generation's family historian who made sure it happened. We silently bless this person, as it gives us one more search avenue--especially when it comes to searching for her obituary. We note with a sigh how often the "maiden name of mother" field is left blank on a death certificate.

Widows, as mentioned above, enjoyed a certain freedom and a higher level of risk. A young woman with small children needed to remarry to have the financial support for her family. There are plenty of entries of children who are surrendered and adopted out, along with work house entrances for the mothers. There are very few exits, except to the pauper's graveyard next door. But for those who made it to the new world, and whose husbands had built an estate with a bit of land and some money in the bank, there was some breathing room. She often had a house--paid off--where some of her adult children (and if she was lucky, grandchildren) lived, so she had some financial stability as well as no risk of loneliness.  

Every now and then, a newspaper clipping lets us know a woman has appeared in court, usually the wronged party in divorce proceedings, but more often on the defense for having used her feminine guiles for less than upstanding activities. At least one widow of a saloon keeper plead ignorant that she had to renew her liquor license, but the bench was lenient (and likely a customer in this one-saloon town). 

In a small town, newspapers tell us tales of young misses who might belong to a social club, or entertain cousins from out of town, or who sing and/or play piano for a school production. These young ladies, nearly always described in flowery terms, are the ones who become engaged, marry (with equally flowery reporting) and lose their surname to history.