Saturday, June 22, 2024

Lorene in Her Own Voice: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Storyteller”

 

Lorene Smith Jandy’s Memoir Showcases Her Storytelling Talent

Lorene Edith Smith Jandy: 1903-1994 (Maternal Grandmother)

 

When I first met “Gram Jandy”, it was late in her life. She had become legally blind and was living in an assisted care placement. But she was still a very active woman and was intensely interested in the world and people around her. She had an amazing talent for chatting up anyone she met and learning an amazing amount about their lives, which she could then recount later. She was a natural born storyteller—not in the “tall tales” or fictional type of story, but in an oral history sort of storytelling. Her children and grandchildren (including my husband) tended to roll their eyes when she’d launch into a story about someone they’d never met and would never, ever meet. However, she also had amazing stories about her family. 

Lorene before she lost her vision

Luckily for her descendants, she dictated a memoir of sorts about her life and family that is a delightful source of information now that she is gone. Perhaps the most charming thing about the memoir is that it sounds like Lorene—it captures her quick topic changes, her way of expressing things, and her non-linear storytelling.  

Here is a small sample from her memoir:

“Albert Elias was Willis Smith's second son. He was educated at the University of Kentucky, where he was a sprinter, and at Chicago Theological Seminary. He married Otilda (Tillie) Herrin

and they lived and worked all their lives in the east Kentucky mountains, where they reared a family of four children--Frances, Willis, Harvey, and Albert. My brother Albert was a minister and Tillie an economics teacher. Until Albert's death, they gave their entire lives to the mountain

people. Just after we visited them in 1930, when Laurel was four, Albert was fatally burned while cleaning a chicken shed with gasoline. He panicked, shouted for Tillie, and ran down the hill,

fanning the flames. He died that night with his lungs seared and full of fluid.

 

“Foolishly, all through the mountains, people built their chicken sheds and outhouses up above the main house, where they could contaminate the wells. Albert lived lower down the mountain by a creek, which would overflow and flood the house. Many outhouses (one- or two

holers) didn't even have doors, just a curtain. Toilet paper as we know it was an unheard-of luxury to the mountain people. You wiped with corncobs or shucks or used the pages of outdated Sears

Roebuck catalogues, from which you could get colored print on your seat. The used paper was stored in a can and then burned. In Fredonia and other towns, the outhouses were painted to match the houses—high style!”

This really shows her style of talking—one minute she’d be talking about a specific person, and then she’d move on to society in general, and then back to the person, or even on to an anecdote about a totally different individual. It was very entertaining. Not exactly easy to follow, but fun all the same. I love the details about outhouses, especially the tidbit about getting colored ink on your bottom from using catalogs as toilet paper.

 

Lorene in college

In glancing back through her memoir, I realize how much information I have yet to mine from it about her extended family. While I have names and dates, I don’t have the lovely details, like this little gem:

“When Nannie broke her hip as an old lady, she refused medical treatment because of her Christian Science beliefs, and lay in bed some six months for the bones to mend, after which she got up and went about her life again.”

Dates and documents would never be able to paint that picture of a determined woman of strong beliefs and high pain tolerance!

 

Lorene with oldest daughter, Laurel. Around 1928.

I wish I’d had the chance to chat with Lorene more. I would have loved to hear more stories about her family and her life in rural Kentucky, as a young married woman in Detroit, and during her travels with her husband in Ethiopia later in life. She was an amazing, gregarious, and kind-hearted woman.

Monday, June 3, 2024

Disease, Death and Young People in the 1920s: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Health”

Even the Young Were Not Immune: Elliott Siblings Die Weeks Apart

Estella Geneva Elliott: 1895-1926 (Maternal Second Cousin 3x Removed)
Leonard Allen Elliott: 1895-1926 (Maternal Second Cousin 3x Removed)

 

Even in the 1920s, infectious diseases ravaged families, killing young people in the prime of their lives. Siblings Estella and Allen Elliott died within weeks of one another at the young ages of 31 and 27. They each suffered from two different diseases that were sadly all too common before health advances tamed them later in the century.

Estella Geneva Elliott and Leonard Allen Elliott were born to parents James Franklin Elliott and first cousin 4x removed Emma Ara Moseley. They were the sixth and seventh of James and Emma’s eight children, and they were born in Kansas.

Leonard Allen, known as Allen, married Emma Reese on August 8, 1917. They were quite young—Emma was 16 and Allen was 17. He worked as an electrician until he registered for the draft in 1918. By the 1920 census he was a father; his daughter Louise was born May 7, 1918.  He was in business with his brother-in-law, but the census record appears to state they were “storage bat men”. This is a puzzling phrase and must be a transcription error of some sort. By the time of the 1925 Kansas State Census, he was working as a carpenter.

A death notice that appeared in the August 26 Dodge City Journal stated that Allen died of typhoid fever at his mother’s home. An obituary a few days later stated that he was “highly esteemed in the community.”

“Although only 27 years old, Mr. Elliott had mastered two trades and had enjoyed success along both lines of work. He was a good mechanic and for three years was proprietor of the Copeland garage. For a time he was a contractor at Wichita and at Winfield. Following his return to Dodge City he constructed ten of the substantial residences of the town, in which he took great pride.”

It is unclear how Allen was exposed to typhoid. Typhoid fever had been much more prevalent at the turn of the century than by 1926, but there were still tens of thousands of cases reported in 1926, although the death rate was only 6.5 per 100,000 people. Immunizations were available, but many people waited to get one until there was a local outbreak.

Gridley Light, Aug 6, 1926

Typhoid fever is caused by the Salmonella Typhi bacterium, and is spread through contaminated food, water and other liquids. Contamination often occurs when infected people prepare or serve foods or drinks, but water sources can also be contaminated by sewage carrying the bacteria. While typhoid cases were dropping in Kansas in 1926, infections and deaths were covered in the newspapers, along with advice on how to avoid infection and encouragement to get immunized.

Iola Register, Jan. 14, 1926

Allen’s older sister, Estella Elliott, died just fourteen weeks after Allen; she succumbed to tuberculosis at age thirty-one. Estella attended the Dodge City High School, and following graduation became a school teacher. Her obituary said that “she had taught near Montezuma and in Moscow and Copeland, endearing herself to the people of Southwest Kansas.” She then “taught in the Dodge City junior high school and the second ward and Lincoln grade schools… “

The obituary also stated that:

“Owing to her zeal in Christian work, her keen interest in the progress and well being of her pupils, and her deep affection for the members of her large family circle, Miss Elliott had derived a great deal of enjoyment from life, although she had been a great sufferer for the past seven or eight years.”

Hillcrest Tuberculosis Sanitarium in Topeka--possibly where Estella was hospitalized in 1926

Tuberculosis was often a slow killer, as was apparently the case with Estella. She had been able to continue working until the previous February when, after a bout of flu, her tuberculosis worsened, forcing  her to resign her teaching post and move into a Topeka sanitarium “in a vain effort to combat the white plague.” Of course now, in modern times, teachers are tested for exposure to tuberculosis and if they test positive, they are not allowed to work with children. Yet Estella apparently continued to work with children for some six years after contracting the disease. Hopefully, none of her pupils caught the disease from her.

Allen and Estella were buried in Maple Grove Cemetery in Dodge City.



The deaths of Allen and Estella Elliott at such young ages are an important reminder of the benefits of modern medicine. Today typhoid has nearly been wiped out in the United States due to widespread vaccinations. Sadly, Allen was never immunized even though the vaccine was available in 1926. He would never have gotten ill if he had been born today. And thanks to the development of various antibiotics, tuberculosis infections can now be cured. Estella’s “white plague” is no longer a death sentence. The miracles of vaccines and treatments for the killer diseases of the past and for new diseases like COVID should be embraced with gratitude.

Sources:

Typhoid Rates in 1926. CDC Public Health Reports Vol 43, January 13, 1928. file:///C:/Users/bandr/Downloads/cdc_68406_DS1.pdf

Obituary for Allen Leonard Elliott. Page 2 of The Dodge City Daily Globe, published in Dodge City, Kansas on Tuesday, August 31st, 1926. https://dodgecitypl.historyarchives.online/viewer?k=elliott&i=f&by=1926&bdd=1920&d=07011926-09011926&m=between&ord=k1&fn=the_dodge_city_daily_globe_usa_kansas_dodge_city_19260831_english_2&df=1&dt=10&cid=3063

Allen Elliott Dies of Typhoid. The Dodge City Journal, published in Dodge City, Kansas on Thursday, August 26th, 1926

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tuberculosis

L.E.Smith in the Archives: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “In the Library”

  Lucius Ernest Smith’s Papers and Photographs: Held in the Presbyterian Church Historical Society’s Archives Dr. Lucius Ernest Smith: 187...