Imprints

 

Finding resemblances in the family photos from previous generations may be the one process which has enticed many into the pursuit of their family history. Think of every expectant couple, now proud parents of a newborn, with whom relatives share baby pictures of the previous generation with comments on how junior's eyes look like grandpa's—how often has that scenario repeated itself?

After posting a month of research articles on the family linked with the rescued photographs of Marilyn Sowle Bean, I couldn't just abandon the topic without sharing a few more from her collection (which I'll continue to do on weekends this month, as well).

Pulling out the one I chose for today's post, I found myself enticed into that same tendency of spotting recognizable features. Only this time, it wasn't so much a facial feature or a single trait I spotted, as much as a reaction to the overall impact of seeing the photograph.

The picture itself was tiny, what we'd now call a wallet-sized photograph. The label on the reverse, while helpful in providing the date—1931—left only the inked message, "Dad and Mother, Hollywood, Cal." In a similar hand, someone else had penciled in, "G'ma + G'pa Sowle."

Ah, the surname. Now, that is helpful—but which Sowle? It is hard to determine the perspective of the person labeling the photograph, when I can't figure out just who did the writing—Marilyn? Or her mother?

Judging by the appearance of the two people in the picture, the photograph couldn't have represented Marilyn's own parents, David and Olive Brague Sowle, for 1931 would have been only three years after Marilyn's own birth. Marilyn's paternal grandparents, Joe and Dora Sowle, might have followed their son to California that early—or perhaps they were just visiting their son's new home.

Wherever they were posing for their picture, I wish I could tell on account of just one detail: the extreme difference in their height. But then it struck me: if Joseph Leslie Sowle was as tall and lanky as that photo made him out to be, I am no longer surprised that tiny Marilyn chose for herself a mate as tall and slender as her own husband turned out to be.

Years ago, I had shared the photo of newlyweds Marilyn and Earle Bean, an impromptu shot composed as a joking commentary on the disparity of their relative height. But seeing the photo of an aging Joe and Dora Sowle—if that is indeed who they were—with Joe towering over his wife, makes me wonder whether that image was imprinted on Marilyn's young mind. Sometimes in life, we tend to move toward the familiar scenarios from our past, as if in hopes of replicating that in our own generation. Marilyn certainly did.

Photographs: Above, 1931 picture of Dora Moore and Joseph Leslie Sowle in Hollywood, California; Below, Marilyn Sowle and Earle Raymond Bean at unidentified location after their 1948 wedding; both pictures currently in possession of author.

 

Remembering the Last Leaf on a Branch

 

Genealogy, as a pursuit, is designed to memorialize those whose branch in the family tree extends beyond their own generation. But life, as we know it, doesn't always include branches without end.

Something is calling out to remember that last fading leaf on the branch. In researching Marilyn Sowle Bean's family history, thanks to the stash of photos I found at a local antique store, it didn't take me long to find such a tale. Even though the photo is now faded—as you'll see, it had to have been at least one hundred years old—I've got to share it, if only to remember someone who turned out to be the last leaf on his branch of the Moore family tree.

Let's trace our way back from Marilyn, former owner of the photograph, to the man captured in that hundred year old photograph. We've talked about Marilyn's dad, David Moore Sowle, and shared a photograph of David, being held as an infant by his mother, Dora Moore Sowle.

In following the Moore line back through David's mother Dora, I uncovered an obituary for her father which, in one brief article, gave me the background information to guide the search for that family. That, as it turned out, was a fortunate discovery, for he possessed the rather common name of John A. Moore.

At John's passing in 1908, The La Crosse Tribune gave the news in a front page headline mentioning the deceased was a county pioneer. The newspaper noted that John, age seventy at his passing, had come to Onalaska from Maine "in the early fifties, when the country was first being settled."

The April 10, 1908, headline was enough to prompt further research questions. For one, it mentioned John was the father of a "supervisor"—presumably a local political figure. I had to read further to see just how this county pioneer was connected to his community—which led to the family's story.

John Moore was indeed father of a county supervisor, his son Abel Nutting Moore. Abel's parents, John and his first wife Sylvia Nutting, also had a daughter Clara who, at the time of her father's 1908 passing, resided in Los Angeles.

John apparently lost his first wife and married, secondly, a Michigan woman named Arcelia Delamater, with whom he also had two children. The eldest of this second marriage was Dora, the young wife of Joseph Sowle whom we saw yesterday, posed with her newborn son. Nearly ten years after Dora's birth, John and Arcelia announced the arrival of their son Sidney C. Moore.

Not much can be said about young Sidney, other than that I now possess a photograph of the man. Born March 12, 1893, in his parents' adopted hometown—the lumber town of Onalaska, Wisconsin, where his father was known as a "pioneer"—Sidney did not leave much of a paper trail of his personal history. 

At the time of his father's death, the Tribune noted Sidney's age as fifteen. By the time the 1910 census was taken, Sidney and his mother were living in the household of his older sister Dora and her husband, along with baby David. His draft registration in 1917 revealed Sidney had already served in the Wisconsin National Guard, and that he was currently working in La Crosse as a locomotive fireman. His last appearance in any document I could find was in Milwaukee, where according to the 1920 census, he worked in a chemical plant. A headstone marked simply "Sergt. Sidney C." tells us Sidney died sometime that same year.

With no obituary that I could find, nor any other record of what became of the man, I can't help but feel a wistful sense of futility in posting the photo I found with the simple inscription, "Sydney C. Moore, G'ma's younger brother." Sidney's gone. His sister Dora, too, long gone. Even the woman who wrote that note is not only gone, but gone long enough for her photo collection to have ended up for sale at an antique shop. Even if there is no one left to remember Sidney Moore, I still feel the need to share his one picture here.

Photo, undated but taken before 1920, labeled "Sydney C. Moore, G'ma's younger brother," from a collection sold at a local antique store, once belonging to Marilyn Sowle Bean, currently in possession of the author.

Excerpt from front page headlines of The La Crosse Tribune of April 10, 1908, courtesy of Newspapers.com.

Family Photos Span the Generations

 

Even if I have none of my own to enjoy, I still find it fun to watch a family's photos trace the changes reaching backwards in time through the generations. Finding that stash of Marilyn Sowle Bean's family pictures at a local antique store, thanks to notification from a genealogy-loving student, has afforded me such an opportunity.

When I had first interviewed Marilyn, so many years ago, about her family history, I remembered her telling me about her dad, David Moore Sowle, and his sister. She mentioned how the family had moved from La Crosse, Wisconsin, to Los Angeles—a big change in so many ways. Although she did share some information on her mother's Norwegian ancestry, she really didn't say much about her father's parents, except to mention that they, too, had made the move to Los Angeles. And yet, come to find out, she did have at least one photo of her paternal grandmother from those early years.

One photo of Marilyn's dad was neatly labeled, "David M. Sowle, high school grad, 1924, 16 yrs. old." I couldn't help but laugh when I spotted the hairstyle from nearly one hundred years ago—not because it was so different, but because I've seen echoes of that same style in the past few years, as well.

Beyond that point in time, there was nothing until the era of baby pictures. In one, aggravatingly trimmed from a post card and leaving only the tantalizing sign of a letter written to "Dear Joe," was the note identifying a snapshot of baby David at fifteen months. It was dated August 10, 1909. I couldn't help but compare it to a similarly aged shot of his only daughter, Marilyn, and wonder just how much she favored her father. She certainly acted like she was a "Daddy's girl" even from comments she made to me so many years later.

Slipping back even further into the family's history was a photo of an infant David posed with his mother, Dora Moore Sowle. Though the photo—cut, once again, from a picture post card—was undated, I already know that David was born May 5, 1908. Whether Dora was modeling the height of current fashion, I can't tell, but let's just say this wasn't an informal setting she dressed for.

Dora, the "Gram" in the photo with Aunt Jo I shared last week, came from a family with a long history in the logging region around Onalaska, Wisconsin. At least, in several newspaper articles on the family, the phrase "pioneer family" was often mentioned about the Moore family.

Among the few photos on this part of Marilyn's family, there was one picture included of Dora's brother, which of course prompted me to do a bit of research on this family. Though the photo wasn't very clear, tomorrow we'll take a look and learn a bit about Dora's family, mainly in hopes that someone researching that family line might be interested in receiving a copy of that photo. 

Aunt Jo

 

I guess the next worst thing to inheriting a collection of family pictures with no labels is to receive labels but no context. Marilyn's Aunt Jo was one of those relatives.

From the collection of family photographs I rescued from a local antique shop—thanks to a tip from a local genealogy-loving student—I had no problem at all spotting the photos of Aunt Jo. When I ran across the label on the first picture, I remembered instantly who Aunt Jo was. I recalled Marilyn sharing family stories which featured Aunt Jo favorably—although I can't exactly remember what the stories were about, or how Aunt Jo figured into Marilyn's family constellation. But she was there, undoubtedly there.

Now that the rescued photographs provided the prompt, I tried to see what I could find on Aunt Jo. I learned, for one, that "Aunt" was not just a title of respect bestowed upon a parent's friend, but a true blood relative of Marilyn's father, David Moore Sowle. Aunt Jo, David's sister, was born Josephine Lucille Sowle in Onalaska, Wisconsin, on June 22, 1913, five years after her brother's arrival in the household.

Aunt Jo likely moved to California with her parents, Joseph Leslie and Dora Moore Sowle, a break from the rest of the extended family, who had been in the La Crosse county area for generations. Living in California in the same household as Joe and Dora at the time of the 1940 census, Josephine was listed under her maiden name, but the record indicated she had been divorced. In California? Or Wisconsin? I couldn't find any record of that.

A year later, a twice-divorced man from Illinois by the name of Elza Glenn Smith enlisted in the army and was stationed at Los Angeles harbor. A year after that, he and Aunt Jo were married in a ceremony at Fort MacArthur.

Beside just one more detail, that is all I could learn about Marilyn's Aunt Jo from some online sleuthing. Other than the fun pictures I spotted in that rescued collection from the antique store, each one carefully labeled in Marilyn's hand with only the words, "Aunt Jo," all that was left were the memories kept by the niece she must have doted on. With no children of her own to keep her memory alive, Josephine Lucille Sowle Smith died in Los Angeles in 1957, still in her early forties.

     

Photographs: The above two pictures were labeled by Marilyn simply as "Aunt Jo" but the last one had the year, 1934, and the explanation, "Aunt Jo, Gram + Gramp," likely Marilyn's grandparents Joe and Dora Sowle.

Mollie's Story

So many times, as we research the lives of the women in our ancestry, we find nearly a blank slate. To find the answers to our questions about the basic details of a woman's life, it is sometimes easier to glean the details from a male relative's records. Such was the case with the older sister of Alta Barnes, the one whose family photographs I found in an antique shop in northern California.

When I first started researching, based on the information I found in the original photograph of Alta and her two older sisters, I thought perhaps Alta had subsequently lost both sisters, due to their apparent poor health. It was that serendipitous find of the newspaper cache at the Arkansas City library in Kansas that showed my assumption was wrong. Mollie, the oldest of the three girls in that original photograph, lived well into her eighties. I just had to find the right surnames by which to trace her life's story.

The first clue was a brief mention on the social page of the Arkansas City Daily Traveler on Friday, August 7, 1925:

Mrs. Roy Fresh, Silverdale, and sister, Alta Barnes, are spending this week with their aunt, Mrs. Charity Hume.

That was it, just a fraction of a column inch on page five, but it provided a married name for at least one of Alta's sisters. I didn't yet know who it was, but the clue was gratefully noted.

I later learned that Mr. Fresh was Orin Roy Fresh, and that he and the Barnes girl—it turned out to be Mollie—had followed the path of so many others in the Barnes family and had gotten married just over the state line in Kay County, Oklahoma, in 1924.

When I found the other photo postcards besides the one I originally located, there was one featuring Mollie, front and center on the steps outside the door to a humble building. True to the tradition of the other postcards from Alta's family, this one had several labels on the reverse. One, at the very center of the card, said simply, "Aunty." A second note, in a different hand and type of ink, added, "Miss Mollie Barnes," and on a second line, explained, "Hardy."

Perhaps someone else thought "Hardy" needed more explanation, for yet another pen and handwriting style added, "Okla.," lest anyone assume it referred to Mollie's married name.

I have yet to find any documentation showing Mollie's residence in Hardy, Oklahoma—wherever that is. In both the 1930 and 1940 census, Roy and Mollie were living in Creswell Township in Cowley County, Kansas, the same county in which Mollie had lived almost her entire life.

I found little else on Mollie until 1958. The year of 1958 must have been a rugged year for Mollie. Barely six weeks after she lost her father at the end of October, her husband succumbed to "a lingering illness" on December 14. Like many other members of the Barnes family, Mollie buried her husband at Parker Cemetery in Arkansas City. And, after another twenty six years, she was laid to rest at his side.

That isn't quite the end of the story, though, for only a few years after Roy's death, in the 1962 obituary for Alta's own husband, I found mention of Mollie once again—only this time, she was referred to as "Mrs. Mollie Moore." Yet, by the time of her own passing in 1984, I could find no obituary in the Arkansas City newspaper, though I did find a funeral notice. Though family members were there to serve as her casket bearers, there was no listing of survivors.

Since there was no mention of the details anywhere else, it was back to her first husband's obituary to search for any details on Mollie's life. It was there that I learned the couple had moved to their property just outside Arkansas City in 1926, where Roy operated a saw mill. The couple also operated a farm at a different property near Dexter.

The main clue in this life review, however, was that Roy and Mollie had no children, possibly the reason why very little was mentioned about Mollie's passing so many years later. No mention of descendants, no work outside the home—other than the (surely demanding) businesses the Fresh family operated—and no significant community memberships all added up to a sadly lacking obituary when it was Mollie's time to say goodbye.

Above: Undated photo postcard labeled "Miss Mollie Barnes, Hardy, Okla." Photograph currently in the possession of the author.

“Wall” is For…

When it comes to nicknames, what may seem at first to be clues can turn out to be misleading.

There is a photograph tucked among my grandmother’s belongings that had me stumped for a long time. Unlike those many snapshots we all find in our elder relatives’ collections, this one actually was labeled. On the reverse of the picture, written in my grandmother’s distinctive hand using a green, fine point pen, was the explanation:

Wall Smith

March 1949

For the longest time, I figured the name “Wall” was doomed to signify “Brick Wall”—only the most recent in a long line of puzzles I wasn’t solving very successfully.

Then, while working on my mother’s cousin Sarah Martha Moore McKinnon’s line, I realized from a letter Sarah Martha’s mother Lummie had written that “Wall” was a nickname for Sarah Martha’s father, Wallace Moore.

“Wall is for Wallace,” I thought triumphantly to myself, and raced back through my files to find that abandoned—and totally unrelated—photograph of Wall Smith. Now, all I had to do was search through online records for a Wallace Smith to figure out who this mystery person was!

Well…everyone knows what it is like to search for someone named Smith. Even knowing this picture likely came from my grandmother’s roots in Florida, I couldn’t make any names, dates and circumstances come together sufficiently to reveal who “Wallace Smith” might be. The only thing I could do to provide any further hints was to blow the thing up on PhotoShop and look for details in the photographic field.

I did find one: the doormat at the entry of the official-looking building just behind Wall Smith bore the legend, “Bank of.” But Bank of what? The rest of the label was cut out of the picture.

Thankfully, we all benefit from the comments blog readers share, and I was most grateful for A Family Tapestry reader Far Side, who suggested I sort all my mystery photos by size and even by border design. Doing so, I found three other prints of that design—all, by the way, labeled by my grandmother with that same date: March, 1949. Evidently, my grandmother had taken a trip and visited a number of people at that time.

One of those other photos featured Wall Smith and a woman. They were standing in front of the same imposing building as I had seen in the other picture. On the reverse of this snapshot, my grandmother had written:

Lula and Wall

March 1949

While I still knew absolutely nothing of who this “Wall” might be, “Lula” provided me with a big hint. My grandmother had a childhood friend from Fort Meade named Lula. While I had never heard my grandmother talk about Lula, I had seen enough written notes about this friend to recall her full name: Lula Childers. But even then, I needed my mother’s cousin to clue me in on the correct pronunciation—it’s not CHILD-ers, like we would pronounce the word “child,” but the name was pronounced with a short “i” as in CHILL-ders.

Could Lula Childers be the “Lula” who was “Wall” Smith’s wife? I took a look at what could be found at FamilySearch.org. Sure enough, there was a Lula Virginia Childers who married someone by the name of William Wall Smith in Hernando County, Florida, on July 20, 1948. Likely, that “Wall” came from William’s mother’s maiden name.

Just in case there were more than one Lula Childers in Florida at that time, it was encouraging to find the Application for Marriage License also at FamilySearch.org. There, I learned that Lula was forty eight years of age at the time of her marriage, and that she was a school teacher. More important was that little detail on the document revealing that she was born in Fort Meade.

The application form also told me that forty five year old William “Wall-Smith” lived in Clearwater, had been born in Tampa, and was a bank clerk. The photo I had found of the mysterious “Wall” was likely taken just outside the front door of his place of employment. And, taking this second photograph of Lula and Wall, treating it the same way with PhotoShop as I had done to the other picture, I could see on the doormat the last three letters of the conclusion to the label, “Bank of —.” Whatever the name, I could now tell the mat was labeled, “Bank of —ter.”

Clearwater?

Finding the dots connected between the mysterious “Wall” Smith and the Lula Childers I knew to be my grandmother’s friend, it now opened the way for me to muddle through the other two photographs with that same border design. Though they contained no surnames in their labels, the clues from these first two photographs were enough to get me started on another productive search.

A Melancholy Homecoming

Anyone who had followed the Davis and Moore family returning in 1952 to Erwin, Tennessee, from Wallace and Lummie’s new retirement residence in Phoenix was joining in a somber gathering. True, it must have been difficult to have lost Wallace Moore in such an abrupt and tragic manner. But a return to the Davis family home town also accentuated the fact that there were more who had gone on before than there were still among the living.

For whatever reason the choice was made, Wallace Moore—and later, his wife, Lummie Davis Moore—planned to return to their roots at the time of their burial. They were buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in Erwin, as were many of Lummie’s relatives.

When Lummie returned to Tennessee with the remains of her husband, she was no doubt joined by her daughter and son-in-law, Sarah Martha and Cyril J. McKinnon. Lummie’s next youngest sister, Mabel Martin, likely soon arrived by rail from New Jersey. And Jack Davis, their baby brother from Columbus, Ohio, would have been there too, along with his wife, Ruth.

Their youngest sister, Mary Chevis, would not have been with them, though. She had lost her life to cancer nearly ten years prior, having not even attained the age of fifty. Her husband, H. M. Chitwood, had preceded Chevis by nearly three decades.

And their mother, Martha Cassandra Boothe Davis, though long-lived herself (to eighty eight years of age), had passed away six years prior. Their father, William D. Davis, had been gone for over forty years.

Funerals serve that double reminder of those others who are no longer there to carry that newest loss in the family. I imagine, in the Evergreen Cemetery after Wallace Moore’s burial, family members wandered to spot headstones of those they remembered from times past—perhaps to mourn again and, thankfully, to reminisce.

Though I’ve found enough of a stash of remembrances about Lummie and her family in my aunt’s personal papers, there is nothing I can find on her sister Chevis, and not much more than a newspaper clipping regarding Mabel. Even so, I’d like to add to that limited stash from what I’ve been able to find through my own research. In the next few days, please join me as I review more railroad trivia, tales of workplace hazards turned tragic, missing children and glimpses of girlhood dreams of glamour. Each of these Davis siblings—and their stories—needs to be remembered, if only for a moment.

What About Wallace?

You may have wondered, in all the details of Lummie Davis Moore’s recuperation from her serious fall in May, 1962, who the man was behind her relieved exclamation that, “Thank God and Wallace Moore I can take care of it myself.”

It was easy to assume that Wallace Moore was Lummie’s husband. And, from the few remarks that peppered the narrative, that he was long dead.

Then, too, in the earlier posts on this family’s life with their young daughter, Sarah Martha Moore McKinnon, we discovered that the reason they were living in Honduras was on account of his occupation with the railroads of that country.

From governmental documents, we’ve been able to glean the facts about his parentage—father named Mose Moore and mother reported to have the maiden name Sarah Good—and his birthplace in the little town in eastern Tennessee named Limestone.

I can’t, however, say I knew much about the man, himself, though. He seemed to be the quintessential invisible corporate man.

Once I realized, in transcribing those letters from Lummie to her brother Jack, that she was closing in on the date of her death, I had pulled up a copy of her death certificate from Arizona’s free online resource to check all the details. In doing that, it occurred to me that, though he was buried in Tennessee, perhaps Wallace had also died in Arizona.

I decided to try my luck at looking up his death certificate in that same website.

It was there.

I wasn’t quite prepared to learn what I saw, once I read over the details of this document. How difficult a time it must have been for Lummie.

Just to double check the details (after all, one can never be entirely sure with just one documented report), I tried my hand at finding his obituary online.

Once again, I found what I was seeking: a news report-cum-obituary confirming the details I had just learned. It was published in The Arizona Republic on Saturday, August 23, 1952. Apparently—and for no reason I’d ever be able to glean—Lummie’s husband chose, one afternoon in their home in Phoenix, to take his own life.

In addition to his wife, the only other survivor listed was his daughter, not yet married but living in Baltimore, Maryland.

How little there was to know about his life. He took his secrets with him.

            The body of Wallace Moore, 76, who was found dead with a bullet wound in his head in his home Thursday, will be taken to Erwin, Tenn., for funeral services and burial.

            Sheriff's deputies said investigation indicated that Mr. Moore had committed suicide. He lived at 5319 N. Seventh Ave.

            Born in Limestone, Tenn., Mr. Moore came to Phoenix about two years ago. He had lived in Honduras for 30 years and was a retired superintendent of the mechanical department of the United Fruit Co. there.

            Survivors include his wife, Lumie, of Phoenix, and a daughter, Miss Sarah Martha Moore, of Baltimore, Md.

Confusion Despite Official Documents

Sometimes, in researching our family history, the data dump can morph into an avalanche of dull, dry dates, places and names. With the information overload we subject ourselves to by focusing on getting the facts, we can find ourselves losing sight of the people we originally sought to know.

I confess that exact thing happened as I was collecting the details for Lummie Davis Moore, the woman whose two letters I had just transcribed and posted here in the past week.

Even in the midst of attempting to draw up a timeline of her life to help sift through the clues, I missed one very important fact. In the middle of the narrative of these two letters, I lost sight of the woman’s impending death. It wasn’t until just a few days ago, when in the process of pasting the hyperlink to her page on my very outdated yet publicly-accessible Rootsweb tree, I happened to notice the year of her death: 1962.

“That’s funny,” I thought to myself, “That’s the same year as these letters.”

“Huh?!”

Yes, wallowing in the midst of all this family history overload, I got slapped in the face by that very detail. I have no idea how I had missed it.

It was sad to realize that—even disappointing. It was as if I were reliving that episode in my grand-aunt’s life with her, hoping for the best for her recovery.

Yes, Lummie was infused with an upbeat attitude, seemed restless and full of energy despite her serious injury—but, as often happened to those whose aging hips suffered a fracture, while focusing on the bone that needed mending, the patient was caught unawares with a side effect of the long healing process.

In many cases, the risk to those recuperating from hip repair is pneumonia. As it turned out in Lummie’s case, her decline was not at all that type of lingering misery, but an almost instantaneous attack: she fell to a case of coronary thrombosis. According to the death certificate, length of time between onset and death was five minutes.

While the quickness of the attack may have been merciful for Lummie, I can only imagine how brutal the news must have been for her daughter. Sarah Martha, recently returned home in the Baltimore, Maryland, area with a newborn daughter of her own, was too far removed from Lummie’s Phoenix home to know anything more than the type of news her mother had been sharing with her own brother in the letters we’ve just read.

Piecing together the story now—over fifty years later—I’m encountering a lot of gaps. The fact that there are discrepancies in the official documents doesn’t help. While I’m overjoyed to see the State of Arizona provide genealogical researchers with free access to their online death records through—thankfully!—the year 1962, I’m a bit stymied by the fact that some dates and details don’t line up in the certificate issued after Lummie’s passing.

According to Lummie’s death certificate, she was the daughter of Will David, which of course should be Davis. That became the first clue tipping me off that this document may not be one hundred percent reliable. Of course, it’s pretty hard to demand any family member to answer a barrage of questions one hundred percent accurately under duress of a family death. Perhaps that is why Lummie’s son-in-law, C. J. McKinnon, was listed as the informant instead of her own daughter.

However, when it comes to the date of death, that would seem to be factual information—not something swayed by how distraught the family might have been feeling.

Yet, the death certificate indicates Lummie’s date of death to have been July 19, 1962.

That causes problems when we seek out her obituary record. First, though Lummie claimed many friends in her residence of the past twelve years, I’ve been unable to locate any mention of her death in the Phoenix area newspapers so far. However, I did find an obituary for Lummie in her home town, Erwin, Tennessee.

Published in The Erwin Record, it was dated July 13, 1962—six days before Arizona had recorded her passing (for which I can’t help but recall the statement attributed to Mark Twain, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”).

To resolve such a records dilemma, don’t think it will help to resort to the cemetery’s grave marker. Apparently—at least according to the volunteer transcriber—engraved in stone is the year, 1967. It will either take a trip to Erwin—or the good graces of a Find A Grave volunteer—to stop by Evergreen Cemetery to brush away the camouflaging wisps of Bermuda grass disguising that last digit in the engraving.

Somehow, local researchers in the Erwin area managed to unearth a date which agrees with the one I had always understood to be Lummie's date of death. According to the book, Cemeteries of Unicoi County Tennessee, by the Unicoi County Historical Society, it was on July 9, 1962, that the Moore and Davis families lost a mother, grandmother, and sister.

Perhaps it was in all the scramble to pack and move their belongings from Roanoke, Virginia, back to their old home in Columbus, Ohio—and then, suddenly, to have to return to the old Davis home in Tennessee, that was the cause of these two letters being tucked away by Lummie's brother and sister-in-law, Jack and Ruth Davis. And, for the next fifty one and a half years, to lay undisturbed in their hideout until another passing passed along the whole passel of papers to me.

Mrs. Lummie Davis Moore, formerly of Erwin, died unexpectedly Thursday in Phoenix, Ariz. Death was attributed to a heart attack. Funeral services will be held today (Wednesday) at 10 a.m. from the Boyd-DeArmond Funeral Home. Dr. Melvin Faulkner, pastor of First Baptist Church, will officiate. She was an Erwin native, the daughter of the late William and Cassie Booth Davis. She was the widow of Wallace Moore, who died in 1952. She had lived in Honduras, Central America, for the past 12 years. She was a member of the Women's Club and the Harmony Club in Phoenix. She was also a member of the Baptist Church. Surviving are one daughter, Mrs. C. J. McKinnon of Ellicott City, Md.; one sister, Mrs. Horace Martin, Erwin, and three grandchildren. Boyd-DeArmond Funeral Home in charge.

In Case Anything Should Ever Happen

If you’ve been reading along with me on these letters sent from Lummie Davis Moore to her younger brother Jack, you probably thought Lummie had brought the second letter to a close yesterday, when she signed off—unless you picked up a hint from her additional comment, post script, that “Friends and neighbors are taking care of everything at home.”

She wasn’t done there. In fact, it seemed hard for her to bring herself to a close, as she continued for two more pages. After all the confidence, the boasting of the certainty of faithful friends, and even the spunky spirit bemoaning the captivity of hospital confinement after hip surgery for an unfortunate fall, the façade began to crumble at the point of signing off her second letter in May, 1962.

Somehow, so far removed from family in her retirement location in Phoenix, Arizona, perhaps in all those hours of solitude, Lummie had begun to wonder if all her doctor’s promises would indeed come to pass. She began to write doubtful phrases like, “in case anything should happen ever,” and to share contact information for people who “will always know” how she was doing.

Perhaps the Mrs. Cook and Mrs. Finly Lummie referred to were retirees, just as Lummie was. One for certain—Mrs. Finly—was a snowbird from, coincidentally, Columbus, where Lummie’s brother Jack and his wife were planning to return.

Jack’s return to Columbus seemed imminent at this point. Did Lummie fear losing contact with her brother just when her own health might turn for the worst? Of course, there was always her own daughter, Sarah Martha—whom I’m presuming she referred to in this letter, using the nickname “Babe”—but somehow, Lummie seemed to have a hesitation about being a “nuisance” to her own daughter. How much reading between the lines here might yield in further family information is hard to tell on this point.

With one last plea for her brother to remember to keep her posted on his new address, Lummie put the final close on her letter.

Jack am sending you an address + Telephone no—whom you can call at any time to find out about me in case anything should happen ever—She in turn has your name and will give her your new address—She is my near neighbor—and will always know just how things are with me.

            Mrs. O. K. Cook

            532 W. Georgia Ave.

            Tel AM 5-4605

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

            Mrs. L. L. Finly

            3406 N. 38^th St.

            Tel AM 5-2727

You met this lady in Columbus (Minnie)

Friends have been wonderful—One has wheel chair for me, another brought me adjustable crutches and cane at least ½ doz[en]—have been offered—So am fine don’t worry—Did I send you Brochure of this place where I am—If not let me know and I will send you one—I sent Babe one and just don’t remember if I sent you one or not—but will—Let me know of your move—

                                    Love

                                                Lumie

When You Make Your Move

With a letter as filled with the basic disruptions of life as those Lummie Davis Moore was experiencing, sometimes you have to read between the lines to pick up further clues about the extended family.

In this brief letter I found among family papers, Lummie was writing to her brother Jack, following her unexpected fall after attending a bridge luncheon at a hotel near her home in Phoenix, Arizona. The two letters I’ve discovered so far indicate that fall occurred sometime around May of 1962. At that point, Lummie was nearing seventy six years of age. In contrast, her “baby brother” Jack was a mere sixty four.

Apparently, Jack and his wife, Ruth Broyles McClellan Davis, had managed to claim for themselves an early retirement. After each of their two daughters had come of age just after the war in the mid 1940s, Jack and Ruth had set to work to meet that financial goal.

At the time, the Davis family was living in Columbus, Ohio, where they had settled after leaving Denver, Colorado, sometime before the 1940 census. Twenty years of hard work brought the couple to the point where they felt they could claim their dream as a reality, and they packed up and moved to their personal paradise in Roanoke, Virginia.

I’m not sure why Jack and Ruth Davis chose Roanoke as their retirement haven, but I have some guesses. First, Virginia offered a bit more southern flavor than Ohio for these deep-South emigrants; it wasn’t exactly Florida, and it wasn’t Tennessee, but it most certainly was Southern.

Then, too, the city’s situation in a river valley close to the Blue Ridge Mountains would qualify it as scenic enough to satisfy Ruth’s penchant for taking long leisurely drives in the mountains.

For their grandchildren, however, the city of Roanoke created a few small problems. From my northern distance in far, far away New York, I, for one, was too young to figure out how to pronounce the city’s name, which provoked a universe of grief when it came time to perform on those obligatory thank you notes after Christmas and birthdays (and oh, how greatly this letter-writer would have preferred it if the city fathers had rather chosen to remain with the place's original name, Big Lick). I was eternally grateful that the Davises soon saw fit to return to Columbus—a name any grade school student was able to spell handily (well, at least until that era when Christopher Columbus’ monumental attainment became viewed as a politically incorrect blunder).

Discussions of their pending decision to move back to Columbus must have transpired between Jack and his older sister Lummie. Mentions of real estate transactions called to mind not only his former work experience as a real estate salesman, but his hope to invest wisely, should he purchase any land on his move back to Columbus.

I have no idea how long Jack and Ruth lingered over the possibility of retracing their steps and returning to Columbus, but Lummie’s letter provided a target time for the move by mentioning it in closing her letter to them from her convalescent hospital.

Sometimes, it’s the incidentals packed into the parenthetical phrases of mundane letters that provide the timelines—and the connections—we need to piece together our family history narratives.

I sit up now most of the day in fact all morning, can go all over [the] place in my wheel chair. At one p.m. I have sun bath, for 30” then good nap—am just coming along fine—but time goes slowly. Don’t worry about me have everything I need—Good food, wonderful attention. It’s just a matter of waiting—

            Let me know your new address, when you make your move.

                                    Love to all of you

                                                Lumie

Friends and neighbors are taking care of everything at home—

Going All Over the Place

How ironic to hear a woman who spent most of her adult life living and working in a foreign country exult in her ability to “go all over the place” at the convalescent facility where she has been confined, now, for weeks. Despite having had the misfortune of slipping on a puddle and falling—breaking a hip, in fact—Lummie Davis Moore was determined to remain cheerful and upbeat. Everything had a positive spin, if she could help doctor it.

When I found Lummie’s correspondence to her younger brother, Jack—the one we’ve already reviewed—it was stuffed, along with this second letter, in a business-sized envelope.

My only regret is Lummie's habit of dating the letter—actually, each of them—simply as “Thursday.” Other than the postmark on the one envelope remaining—marked May 25, 1962, out of Phoenix, Arizona, her residence in retirement for at least the past ten years—there is no way to know when Lummie’s ordeal began, and how long, exactly, she had been in this condition.

Broken bones do take time to knit back together—longer, as I’ve found out, for older bones—so I can understand Lummie’s lament that “the waiting seems endless.”

By the time of this letter—whenever it was—Lummie was recuperating at a place in Phoenix, Arizona, called White Angel Inn. Handily, Lummie was thoughtful enough to send her brother a copy of the facility’s brochure, which announced it represented “A New Concept in Convalescent Care.” Perhaps that was her way of letting her brother know that she was in good hands, despite her unfortunate recent accident.

If you go to your time machine and pull out your 1960s lenses to take a look, you can see there are all the comforts of home—a cheery dining room, a living room with television, a music corner and reading nook. Apparently, the bedrooms were equipped with a television—but not one you could watch while cuddled up under the covers, as its placement seemed to imply a sitting area beyond the beds. This being sunny Arizona, the perimeter of the building was equipped with patio seating areas.

No matter how up-to-date or accommodating the facility appointments, it still wasn’t enough to rescue Lummie from a serious dose of boredom, and that seems to come out more clearly in this second letter.

                                                           Thursday

Dear Folks—Am coming along—Just waiting for fractures to heal—Suffer very little, but am bored to death, the waiting seems endless—In 3 weeks more surgeon will make x Ray of condition and after that I hope to be in a device they call a walker. I expect to be here until about August—But Dr. thinks I will and will walk without a limp—I sit up now most of the day in fact all morning, can go all over [the] place

Flat on Her Back

What an ordeal my grand-aunt, Lummie Davis Moore, was suffering after slipping on a splash of water at the Phoenix hotel she was visiting. Though her detailed letter to her brother spelled out many of the medical details she endured, in these fourth and fifth pages, Lummie seems to wind down and let go of her brave façade.

When Lummie wrote, “This inactivity certainly goes hard with me,” I can hardly take in that paragraph without thinking of my own aunt, whose last year was so difficult for her after her own serious fall. She, too, hoped to be able to walk again, and until that point would have no recourse for dissipating any of that vital energy that remained with her well past the age when people handily dismiss such unfortunates as “elderly.”

Perhaps that tendency—shared by my aunt and her aunt—was an example of those traits bequeathed to us via our genes.

Then, too, the ominous insertion of the promise to “let you know if anything goes wrong” seemed so out of place, trailing such an upbeat letter—even if it was from someone who was “writing lying flat on my back.”

Even then, she had a quick comeback, making travel promises for the subsequent year, since this year’s trip would have to be canceled.

Her commitment to her baby brother to “visit you wherever you are” may have indicated that Jack Davis was already tiring of retirement life in Roanoke, Virginia. His subsequent move back to Columbus, Ohio, and re-entry into the sales force there, most likely again in real estate, may have already been part of a previous letter to Lummie. That may explain the enigmatic close to this 1962 letter, though I still have no idea who the “he” is to whom Lummie refers.

A side note about Lummie: as I work my way through the Davis family photos and papers, I am continuing to use the spelling I was first shown from the Davis family Bible. The birth entry, most likely written by Martha Cassandra Boothe Davis, Lummie’s mother, spelled her eldest daughter’s name as “Lummie.” Subsequent records I’ve recently found show the spelling alternately as Lumie, which you will see in her signature at the end of this letter to her brother Jack and his wife.

I am quite clueless as to what the name Lummie might be short for, but if for nothing else, I can at least vouch that it is a phonetic representation of how the family pronounced her name. Not knowing that, and reading it as signed below, “Lumie,” might make it hard for someone to know the correct pronunciation. Following the first mention I stumbled upon years ago, and continuing to adhere to that format that best helps people know how to pronounce it, I’ve decided to standardize these later transcriptions by maintaining the original spelling (though continuing to research using both spellings).

            So don’t worry, I am being well taken care of it is just a matter of sticking it out for about 6 months—but this inactivity certainly goes hard with me—and my big hope is that I am not lame.

            Hope you can read this—I am writing lying flat on my back—Write me when you feel like it and I will write often as I can—at [least] will let you know if anything goes wrong—Love to you both and Jack thank you again for

offering to come out—Some way, I felt like it was genuine. Will be home next summer + will visit you wherever you are.

            Am enclosing a clipping from morning paper you are going to be very interested in. He bought a choice piece of property.

                                                Love to all

                                                            Lumie

Not One Thing Left to Do

Have you ever had an elder relative who delighted in the number of cards received for a special occasion?

When I was a child, I remember my family traveling to visit an aunt, just a few days after her birthday. While she, by that time, was well into her sixties, she had not lost that magical, child-like delight over the occasion of yet another birthday. With our family encircling her in her living room, she was nearly breathless as she announced the exact count of how many birthday cards she had received—so far.

Perhaps that was a generational thing. I hardly remember any of those I know now—whose ages hover from just above mine to nearly equal my mother’s generation—taking such delight in counting their cards. From that generation, you are more likely to hear elicited a groan over the approach of yet another birthday.

Birthdays weren’t the only event which garnered such card-counting delight in that previous generation. I remember others reveling in the number of cards received for anniversary celebrations, too.

So it may not come as so great a surprise to read that Lummie Davis Moore knew the exact count of the cumulative get well wishes the Ladies’ Auxiliary had delivered to her hospital room in Phoenix, Arizona. And, reciprocally, it was probably de rigueur that each of those thoughtful socialite matrons and bridge luncheon companions insured that they got their card in the mail within the proper time frame. After all, someday they, too, would want to boast about their hundred-and-four cards.

Not to be too condescending of poor Lummie—after all, what did one do for days on end in an early 1960s hospital room thousands of miles removed from any relatives? If, from her letter, we can extrapolate any estimate of how long she had already been confined, both at the acute care hospital and at the rehabilitation facility, it was likely approaching three weeks already. In addition to that long span of time, we can tell from the continuation of Lummie’s letter below that she had been advised that she had months of difficult recuperation ahead of her, too.

Yet, if Lummie had nothing else, you may amply credit her for her spunk. She was determined to keep active and stay as independent as possible—with the possible caveat of gratitude that her husband, Wallace Moore, had, at his passing ten years prior, left her in such a position as to be able to maintain that level of independence.

Friends bring me everything. 104 get well cards so far—flowers perfume powder all sorts of things—Bless your heart for offering to come, but there is not one thing left to do—I will have to cancel my trip East for this year. Dr. says it will be Oct before I am walking with either crutches or a walker. The nurses take me all over the grounds in a wheel chair and roll me out in the sun—Lawyer Divelbess says those big places carry insurance to cover such as this, but if they don’t—thank God and Wallace Moore I can take care of it myself—I have taken myself to dining room a couple of times I am so anxious to learn to operate chair—it is going to be some time before I am back home, but friends + neighbors are taking care of everything there—So don’t worry.

Wonderful Break

How is it that the mundane—which on first inclination we'd tend to throw away—often turns out to contain, buried, the very clue we are seeking in our research?

Continuing a letter written in the midst of a hospitalization in May, 1962, from retired teacher, Lummie Davis Moore, to her baby brother (in his adult life, known as Jack R. Davis), we can glean quite a few details of her life. From the introduction posted yesterday, it is clear that Lummie had lots of friends and expected to be out and about, lively and engaged in a full life—that, despite her age approaching seventy six years by this point.

In the midst of all the medical—and potential lawsuit—details, the second page of this letter was surprisingly stocked with all sorts of positive comments on how “wonderful” everyone was in treating Lummie.

Best of all for me, though: in the midst of the letter, Lummie slipped in the very detail I had been seeking. There it was, though just a fragment of a sentence awash in a sea of words: a mention of her daughter, Sarah Martha Moore McKinnon. Now that I’ve found that little snippet, oh, how I wish Lummie had included a full date on the letter.

As she, herself, said, though, I suppose “it didn’t make any difference.” Somewhere, though still unnamed, there is a McKinnon daughter whom I can now claim as a new second cousin—whether or not I ever get to meet her.

I will never forget when Dr. McWilliams (after x ray was hurriedly made) come along side of stretcher introduced me to the Surgeon Dr. Tuverson + said Well it’s a fracture alright and we are taking you into surgery just as quickly as we can get you ready. It will be about 7 this evening—we will have to call your family—Who do you have? I protested over having them call Sarah Martha because that day she brought home from Baltimore hospital her new baby girl. But it didn’t make any difference. They called her any way. Lots of friends were with me and between 10 and eleven I was in my room and it was all over—In the meantime I had one of my friends call my lawyer Mr. Divelbess—and I was in hospital there for a couple of weeks with 4 doctors and Jack they + the hospital, together with friends, have been wonderful, simply the “Red Carpet Treatment.” Then they transferred me to this hospital for therapy + rehabilitation, and it’s simply wonderful here, nurses everywhere you look, wonder[ful] food and everything—Private Room here—friends bring me everything. 104 get well cards so far—