Kate, What a story! Thank you so much for sharing it... and for the perspective I hope we all share. Alison in California -----Original Message----- From: iowa-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:iowa-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Kate Foote Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 2:07 PM To: Sharon Becker; iowa@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [IOWA] ilnesses of emigrants "Sharon Becker" <srbecker@iowatelecom.net> wrote: > > I remember my grandmother and great-grandmother and mother making lye > soap out in the back yard. They had a giant (okay, I was a little kid > - it looked like it was huge) cast iron kettle and used a wooden > paddle to stir the concoction. I can understand how someone's long > skirts could catch fire as most of the lady's attention was focused on > stirring the pot or keeping one eye out for the children. > > My mother grew up on a farm in the beginning of the 20th century. They had no electricity or indoor plumbing and they were always struggling to feed and clothe their many children. (Mom was the oldest of 13 - nine grew to adulthood.) Like Sharon's grandmother, my grandmother also made lye soap out in the back yard. On one occasion she was distracted by a cow in her "kitchen garden" - and while she was tackling that bovine 2 year old Marcella picked up the bottle of lye and drank from it. She lived for an agonizing two days. My grandmother never spoke of the children she lost, but my mother never recovered from the death of Marcella. Mom must have been about 10 or 11 when that baby died but she talked about her, with tears in her eyes, the rest of her life. She also told me about the 1918 flu epidemic. She, herself, did not get the flu, but she spoke of caring for her parents and siblings all alone and the terror she felt that she would be left an orphan- she was nine years old. After three days an uncle came by to check on them. When he saw how bad things were he told my mother he would ride to town and get the doctor, which he did, only to return and tell my mother that the doctor had died the day before. At one point my grandmother called mom to her bedside for help; grandma was having a miscarriage. When it was over grandma told my mother that she knew she was going to die soon and she told mom that she would trust her to always take care of the other children. Nine years old!! Can you imagine the horror of it? Yet neither grandma or grandpa or any of the children died from that flu - my mother grew up to become a nurse and at one time even had her own nursing home. She did private nursing well into her 70's and was always the first to be requested by all the doctors. But mom never forgot those hard years. She hated farms and poverty (and the lack of contraception for women.) She attended school in the one room school house that her father and uncles had built - eight grades and every student was a sibling or a cousin. When she announced that she wanted to go to high school everyone was shocked! After all, she was just a poor farmers daughter, she was needed to help at home, and she was a female to boot! But she was determined. She told me how she saved and how she and her mother "reworked" a dress her aunt gave them, and she spent her savings on a pair of "ladies" shoes (the first shoes she ever had that weren't someone's old boots.) Grandpa drove her in the buckboard to the nearest town with a high school, twenty-five miles, and she took a job working as a maid for a family there. She was given room and board, time off to attend school, church on Sundays, and one Saturday a month. She graduated with honors, went on for nurses training, and then returned to that town to marry the son of one of the leading families. (That's another whole story.) My mother never lived on a farm again. I was the only person with her when she died. She had been in and out of consciousness for hours, then around three AM she awoke crying. She was incoherent but kept talking about "the children" and "someone must help to save them." Then she suddenly calmed, and (I'm not sure how to explain this...) she seemed to me to be looking at something, or someone, near her bed. A smile came on her face and she clearly said, "Oh, Marcella." And then she passed. Genealogy should never be just about names and dates - the stories we have that are passed to us are held in trust, we are obliged to tell them and pass them on. Blessings, Kate _____________________________________________ For additional information concerning how the list works, how to sub and unsub and list rules, visit http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~richard/ialist/ _____________________________________________ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to IOWA-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message