The End of the Wilkins Line: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Siblings”

The Unconventional Wilkins Siblings: Three Brothers, Three Tragedies, and One Lone Sister

Richard R. Wilkins: 1831-1852 (Maternal Second Cousin 3x Removed)
Samuel M. Wilkins: 1839-1915 (Maternal Second Cousin 3x Removed)
Edward Wilkins: 1840-1901 (Maternal Second Cousin 3x Removed)
Eliza Wilkins: 1842-1913 (Maternal Second Cousin 3x Removed)
 

I was intrigued when I ran across the Wilkins family while studying the descendants of the Weir family. Richard, Samuel, Edward and Eliza Wilkins were the children of James Weir Wilkins and Elizabeth Poag. The four siblings seem to have had all the advantages. Their father was a farmer, merchant and school commissioner and seems to have provided the family with a comfortable living. The family seems to have been well-liked; James Wilkins was known locally as Uncle Jim according to one news item I found. Yet all three brothers never married or fathered children, and all met tragic ends. The lone daughter, Eliza, also never married, devoting all her energy to her local church and charitable works. What caused these siblings to choose their unconventional paths?

Richard Wilkins is perhaps the most mysterious of the four siblings due to the lack of information about him. He was the eldest of the Wilkins children, born around 1831. He appears on the 1850 census along with his parents and siblings. He is listed as being 19 years of age, and the occupation entry lists him  as “at school”. This seems odd; he was too old to still be in high school. Perhaps he was attending college, although I have found no records to confirm this hypothesis.

Just two years later, his death appears in the Kentucky state death records. It is an interesting entry. It states that Richard was a single male, age 21, and was born in Madisonville, Kenturcky to James and Eliza Wilkins. This is all routine and expected. However, while all the other deaths reported on the page took place in Kentucky, Richard’s entry states that he died June 1, 1852 “near Fort Kearney Nebraska”. Cause of death is listed as “cholera” and a further notation states that Richard was “en route to California”. 

Richard Wilkins death record

So Richard had left home, perhaps to seek his fortune in the goldfields of California as the 49ers gold rush had begun just three years earlier. Curiously, the local newspaper did not run an obituary or death notice for him, or any articles announcing his decision to move west, despite the family’s prominence in the community. Richard was not buried with the family either; he must have been buried in Nebraska. Why was his death ignored by his family and community?

Second son Samuel Wilkins was born in 1839, and appears on census records in 1860, 1870 and 1880 living with his parents and siblings. As for occupation, Samuel is listed as a “laborer” in 1870 and a scribble that might read “wagoner” in 1860. However, by 1880, at age 41, the census shows he was unemployed, as were his aged father and his remaining siblings. Perhaps Samuel’s loss of employment marked the beginning of mental illness. Samuel died at age 76 on September 25, 1915 from a cerebral hemorrhage while he was a resident at Western State Hospital in Hopkinsville, an institution for the mentally ill. The newspaper notice stated that he had been a patient for twenty years, meaning he was institutionalized around 1895, about a decade after his father’s death.

The final son, Edward, was born in March of 1840. He seems to have never held a job or did any kind of work, but lived off his father’s earnings. Even his Civil War draft record lists “nothing” as his occupation. 

Edward's Civil War draft record

The only census where he lists an occupation was the 1900 census, taken when he was already sixty years old. He claimed he was a “capitalist”, which sounds a little smart-alecky to me. He died at age 61 in Madisonville, Kentucky. The obituary was very interesting, calling him “the most unique character in Hopkins County”. I suspect this was not a compliment. He was described as being “known as one of the handsomest men in the county, and was prominent in social circles, being wealthy and of a good family.”

The article went on to describe how he fell in love and became engaged to a local girl, but she jilted him. “He began to drink heavily. For some time past he had not been in his right mind. He left real estate to the value of $20,000.” Perhaps, like his brother Samuel, Edward suffered from mental illness.

As for the final child, daughter Eliza Wilkins, she never married and never worked, living with her father until his death in 1885, and then living at a home on Sugg and Seminary Streets in Madisonville. The obituary in the local paper described her as a Presbyterian who was “a worker in the church much of the time. When the end came she was ready as indicated by her conversation with friends during her last illness. She did many acts of charity unpretentiously, and had great love for animals, especially those crippled or mistreated.” Another newspaper said she lived “a long and useful life”.

From the description, I surmise that she was very religious and may have been a cat lady or the canine equivalent—at the very least, she was a little eccentric.

So all four of James Weir Wilkins and Elizabeth Poag’s children seem to have struggled to fit into their community. James supported his children for his entire life. Once he died, they seem to have floundered, having failed to launch careers and families of their own. Despite the Wilkins family’s prominence in the town of Madisonville, Kentucky, it appears the Wilkins children were troubled. James Weir Wilkins and his wife Elizabeth Poag were first cousins—their mothers were sisters. Could this close genetic relationship have been part of the problem? Did mental illness run in the family? The Wilkins siblings leave me with many unanswerable questions.  

Sources:

1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880 United States Census. Ancestry.com. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7667/records/39425881?tid=81812584&pid=262650250655&ssrc=pt

Kentucky, U.S., Death Records, 1852-1965. Ancestry.com https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1222/records/307132?tid=81812584&pid=262650328964&ssrc=pt

“Four Deaths at Hospital”. Hopkinsville Kentuckian. Hopkinsville, KY. September 28, 1915. Newspapers.com.

U.S., Civil War Draft Registrations Records, 1863-1865. Kentucky. Snd. Class 1. Ancestry.com

“Unique Character of Madisonville Dead.” Courier-Journal. Louisville, KY. May 2, 1901. Newspapers.com.

Laurel’s 1940’s Letters Home from Oberlin College: 52 Ancestors 2025 Prompt “Letters and Diaries”

A Glimpse of War-time College Life Through the Eyes of Laurel Jandy

Laurel Emily Jandy: 1926-2016 (Mother)

 

When my mother-in-law, Laurel Jandy Aird, died in 2016, the family gathered at her house to sort through the contents to prepare the house for sale and to divide up family photos, heirlooms and assorted memorabilia. My husband and I ended up taking home a marvelous treasure-trove of family letters, including vividly detailed letters his mother sent home from college. 

Laurel attended Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio in the early 1940s during World War II. Her letters paint an amazing picture of the campus during the war years. She describes little incidents and makes brief references that send me searching Google for explanations. What my husband and I learned in school as “history” was right there on campus—Laurel was a part of it. My understanding of the World War II era is enriched with every letter I read.

Laurel in 1944

What sort of topics am I learning about? How about Japanese internment? While I have visited the Manzanar historic site in California and knew the basics about the United States’ shameful treatment of its Japanese-American citizens, I realized I had a lot more to learn when I ran across a passage in one of Laurel’s letters.

Laurel mentions turning down a dance invitation from a young man named Sada, “a Japanese from a relocation center.” Apparently the government enjoyed sugarcoating reality with euphemisms in the 1940s as much as they do today. We now call sites like Manzanar internment camps—relocation sounds as if the Japanese confined there were refugees, not loyal American citizens who had been ripped from their homes, jobs and businesses, shipped to these remote, ill-equipped camps, and subjected to prejudice and cruelty.

Laurel didn’t seem to share the prejudice of the era, remarking that Sada was “unusually fine looking and a fairly good dancer” and that she had ridden to college with him on the same bus. She explains that she just didn’t feel like attending a formal dance that night, preferring to catch up on her own interests, and she had turned down two other invitations by other young men earlier.

I was fascinated, not having known that some internees were allowed to attend college. I started researching and found an Oberlin Alumni magazine article about the war-era Japanese students, which included a list of all the students.

I discovered that Sada’s full name was Sadayoshi Omoto. He was born on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, and he was sent to Manzanar with his family in June of 1942.  Sada was one of over forty Nisei students Oberlin had enrolled during the war. The war office had ordered West Coast colleges and universities to deny admission to interned Japanese Americans, apparently believing they would use their education to somehow attack the homeland or provide assistance to Japan. Some of those West Coast college presidents and administrators were appalled and tried to find places for their students elsewhere. After all, these young men and women were Nisei, the first generation born in America—native-born citizens in other words. Oberlin’s president stepped up when contacted by an administrator at the University of Washington, enrolling 17 Nisei in 1942 alone.

Oberlin’s alumni magazine published an article in Fall 2013 describing recent research conducted by history majors on the campus’ experiences with Nisei students. The undergraduates interviewed several surviving Nisei students, and reviewed college and city records to prepare their papers. According to their research, the city of Oberlin vowed to welcome and embrace the students, with the Oberlin News-Tribune editorializing that,

“We do not believe there are any Oberlin citizens who are so lacking in common humanity, or whose patriotism is of such an empty, bombastic variety as would allow them to adopt the attitude of Parkville’s mayor.” (Explanatory note: Parkville, Missouri had rejected students who tried to enroll in a college there.) “If so, they surely do not deserve the name of Oberlin, and we wish them elsewhere.”

1940s postcard of Oberlin College Men's Dormitory

The college itself was so welcoming that within a month of arriving, a Japanese transfer student named Kenji Okuda was elected student body president, attracting national media attention, resulting in AP, UPI and Time Magazine articles.

After the war, most of the Nisei students left Oberlin to complete their degrees at their original West Coast universities, but several students stayed and became alumni. Laurel’s classmate, Sada Omoto, had served in the war as a linguist before enrolling at Oberlin. He graduated from Oberlin in 1949 with a BA in art, marrying a woman he met there. Omoto remained in Ohio, completing a Ph.D. in Art History at Ohio State University. Over the next 40 years, he taught American and Asian art at several Midwest universities, becoming tenured at Michigan State, where he taught for 30 years and served as department chair.  He and his two wives raised four children, and he remained in the area following retirement. He continued creating art and organizing art exhibits until his death at age 90 in 2013.

Sada Omoto

I found Sada Omoto’s story fascinating. Without that paragraph in Laurel’s letter home that week, I would never have known about Oberlin’s choice to take in Nisei students and would never have learned about Omoto’s life after Oberlin.

I am so grateful that Laurel wrote these amazing letters, that she saved them for over sixty years, and that we chose to keep them following her death. I will continue to read the letters and keep researching things she talks about. I also plan to scan the letters and share them with all of Laurel’s grandchildren so that they too can have history brought to life through her life and experiences.

Sources:

Laurel Aird letters. Family collection.

Oberlin Vouches for Them”. Oberlin Magazine. Fall 2013 issue. https://issuu.com/oberlin/docs/oberlin_alumni_magazine_-_fall_2013

Oberlin Magazine. Winter 2014 issue. Obituary for Sadayoshi Omoto, Class of 1949. https://issuu.com/oberlin/docs/13110201

Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community media, including video clips of an interview with Sada Omoto. https://bijac.org/artwork/memorial-on-bainbridge-island-sada-omoto-oh0095/

Obituary for Sada Omoto. https://www.collegeart.org/news/2013/08/21/sadayoshi-sada-omoto-in-memoriam/

“Islander, Teacher and Artist Sadayoshi Omoto Passes Away. Richard D. Oxley. Bainbridge Island Review. Mar 13, 2013. https://www.bainbridgereview.com/news/islander-teacher-and-artist-sadayoshi-omoto-passes-away/