Hold on to Your Hats! Margaret Smith Martin: Thirty Years as a Milliner
Margaret Elizebeth Smith Martin: 1846-1912 (Maternal Great-Grandaunt)
While examining records pertaining to Great-Grandaunt
Margeret Smith Martin, I was taken aback by her death certificate. Margaret
died on April 22, 1912 at age sixty-six. The doctor recorded the cause of death
as “Angina Pectoris and Nervous Prostration”. The angina was chest pain, of
course, but nervous prostration? A bit of research told me that in the early
1900s, that diagnosis was given to patients exhibiting exhaustion caused by chronic stress and
overwork. The doctor also provided a contributing cause of death: “Hard Work.”
I had to know more about this woman who the doctor believed
had literally worked herself to death.
Margaret Elizebeth Smith was born February 16, 1846 to
parents Elijah F. Smith and Nancy Vanlandingham Weir in Muhlenberg County,
Kentucky. She was the fourth of their eleven children, and was my husband’s
great-grandfather Willis Smith’s older sister.
Margaret married young, at age sixteen, in 1862 during the early
days of the Civil War. Her husband, David H. Martin, was a twenty-five-year-old
farmer. While he registered for the Union draft, I have found no record that
David Martin served during the war.
Margaret and David had three children between 1864 and 1868, son John and daughters Naomie Emma and Lula Bell “Lucy”. David farmed and ran a store of some sort early in the marriage. Then in 1892, he started a tobacco manufacturing company, producing plug tobacco.
As the news article above notes,
this type of business had the potential to build a fortune. However, I don’t
believe David Martin was one of the lucky ones. It appears the family needed
more money than he was able to bring in, so Margaret turned to the millinery
trade.
When she put her millinary business up for sale in 1910, she
stated that she had been in business for 31 years. This means she started her
business in 1879. While the 1880 census states she was “keeping house”, she
must also have been earning money designing and selling hats. While milliners
usually deal only in women’s hats, it appears that Margaret sold children’s
hats as well, as the advertisement below shows.
I have been unable to locate newspaper advertisements for her business during the early years. She placed frequent ads in the local Greenville newspaper starting in 1908. She even ran a thank-you message for her customers.
She ran some clever promotions to spur sales. The brief item below shows
that she offered a gold watch as a prize for customers who made a purchase. In
addition, she ran clearance sales.
She made hats for all income levels in her community as
well. One advertisement noted that her hats sold for prices ranging from 35 cents to $20.
Her work as a milliner was not her only business. She also
ran frequent advertisements selling “Black Minorcas Eggs”, so she was raising
chickens as a side hustle.
.JPG) |
| Black Minorca hen, known for laying large, white eggs. |
Margeret continued working until sometime in 1910 when she
put her business up for sale and her house up for lease. She died just two
years later from, according to her physician, the complications of hard work.
Her obituary supported the death certificate’s assertion,
reading in part:
“She was a woman of nerve and untiring energies, devoting
her life to the betterment of her family. She was engaged in the millinery
business for many years, and although often meeting with misfortune and
adversities, yet she was courageous and bore her misfortunes with fortitude, always
cheerful in her undertakings. She continued in business until wearied and
weakened with complicated disease…”
It sounds as if Margaret exhibited great personal strength
throughout her life, and provided not just important but essential financial
and emotional support to her husband and children. I am grateful that a bluntly
worded death certificate led me to this unexpectedly inspiring woman.
Sources:
Advertisements from the Greenville Record and the Madisonville
Hustler.1908-1910.
“Death of Mrs. David H. Martin”. Greenville Record.
April 25, 1912. Greenville, Kentucky. Accessed on Newspapers.com.
“A New Tobacco Manufactory Probable.” Owensboro Weekly
Messenger. Dec. 29, 1892. Owensboro, Kentucky. Accessed on Newspapers.com.
“No. 283 Draws the Gold Watch.” Greenville Record.
Apr. 7, 1910. Greenville, Kentucky. Accessed on Newspapers.com.
