Shakin' the Family Tree

1881 letters from Eada Belle...

2016-05-21T12:37:56Z

I have always dreamed of finding a long forgotten diary from one of my ancestors, and envied those who have.

However, our family does have some letters and telegrams, including two from my great great grandmother, Eada Belle Parrish, written in March 1881 to her father, and her favorite brother. Both letters were written after she had recovered from a bout of measles.

The town of Memphis, KS is now Garland, in Bourbon County. The school she refers to is the one at which she hoped to teach. We know she was a teacher for a time preceding her marriage to Fred Chapin. At the time she wrote these letters, she was attending school (university?) herself.

Memphis, Kansas
March 19th, 1881
Mr. B A Parrish

Dear father,

Your kind and welcome letter was received some time ago and I have delayed answering on account of being sick with the measles. I was very sick for a few days but have gotten over them now. I missed one month of school on account of them. Our school is out now. I expect to go back to Bro. John's before long. Father, I would like so much to see you and all the rest. Bro. Henry talks of going to Ky. next fall by land, if he does I don't know but what I shall come with them. I am well satisfied here. I think you might come and pay us a visit and see how you like this western country. It is a beautiful country I think, and is a good fruit country.I know you would like that there was an abundance of apples raised last season. If you were here you could have all the apples you would want. This has been the severest winter I ever saw, and still continues to be winter. Farmers have done no plowing yet and a great many are not done gathering corn. It has been snowing for the last three days and is very cold. I think this is a hard country on old people on account of the winters.

Pop, I think you are partial towards me. I don't think any more praise is due me than any of the rest of the family. I always tried to do any duty whether I succeeded or not.

As to the people here, I like them generally very well. They are more on an equality. Those who have means do not feel themselves above common people. As to marrying here, I suppose a girl could do as well here as anywhere, but I am not caring anything about that just now. I expect I was cut out for an old maid.

Well Pop, I guess I have written as much as will interest you now. I guess Charlie and Wessie and little Mary have grown considerable since I left home. Kiss them for me. How is Ma's health now? Tell her that I would love to see her very much. Excuse this ill-composed letter, as I am not much of a hand to write letters. This leaves all tolerable well at present, and hoping it will find you all the same. I will close for a time. Mine and sister Lydia's letter together will make you a pretty good letter.

My love to all and write soon to your daughter,

Eada B. Parrish

Some notes about the letter above.

Eada was 21 years old when she wrote this letter. She did not marry Fred Chapin until 1885, when she was 26.

Henry and Lydia Parrish were Henry Clay Parrish, Eada's oldest brother, and his wife, Lydia Conklin, with whom Eada was living at the time.

John was John Parrish, fourth in the line-up of Eada's brother's and sisters. He and his wife Gertrude lived in Mitchell, KS.

Ma was Melvina Crume, the second wife of Benjamin Abraham Yeager Parrish. She was Eada's step-mother. Eada's own mother, Minerva Hamilton, died in 1865 when Eada was 6, so it's likely Melvina was the only mother figure Eada remembered.

Charlie, Wessie and Mary were Eada's half brothers and sister. Charlie was the oldest and was born when Eada was 8 years old.

This has been the severest winter I ever saw, and still continues to be winter. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote of The Long Winter, and Barbara E. Boustead, Ph.D. wrote, "Both meteorological records and historical accounts indicate that the winter was particularly long, snowy, and cold," in her 2014 dissertation, THE HARD WINTER OF 1880-1881: CLIMATOLOGICAL CONTEXT AND COMMUNICATION VIA A LAURA INGALLS WILDER NARRATIVE. (See this link for the entire paper.)

Memphis,Kansas
March 20th, 1881
Mr. Daniel Parrish and wife

My dear brother and sister,

After some delay I take the silent pencil in hand to try to answer your kind and welcome letter which found me sick in bed with the measles, or smeasles, as Dink calls them. I caught them at school and had them first, so I was able to help wait on Lydia and the children when they had them. I was not able to read your letters, but Lydia read them for me.

Well Bro and sister, I don't know what to write that will interest you. News is scarce at this time. With me, about all the talk is the cold weather, which is disagreeable. It seems like we will have a backward spring. There is no farming done yet. Dan, I recon you and sister have moved to yourselves by this time. I would like very much to step over and take tea with you. I know we would have a jolly time. I guess I will come over and live with you now as you have always promised me I should. You must tell me where you are going to reside. Sister, when I saw you last I did not think that the distance would separate us that does now, nor was I not thinking you would ever be my dear little sister. I am happy to know you are so well pleased with my Bro. He is a dear, good brother. You must take good care of him, also of your dear self.

Dan, I wish you were close enough that I could come to see you and sister. I would like it much better. Do you think of coming west any way soon? If I stay here I wish you would come. I believe I like Missouri better than I do Kansas. I am going back to Kansas in a short time. I will either try teaching or will go to school. We received a letter from sister Emma. She seems to be discouraged about going to school where she is. Wishes she had come to see us in place of going to school.

Sue, I would love to see you and Dan so much I don't know what to do. Is Sina married yet? Give my love to her, also to the rest of your father's family. Dan, who did Fin Young sell to? I guess there has been several changes made since I came away in that neighborhood. I recon little Becca is quite a woman by now. If you move away it will seem to her like all are gone.

I will close for a time, sister. Lydia is going to write to you. Bro, you and sister must write soon to me and tell me all the news. This leaves all well at present,, and hoping it will find you both the same. I will close by asking you to excuse all imperfections and write soon. My love and best wishes to you both.

I am, as ever, your affectionate sster

Eada B Parrish.

Some notes about the letter above.

Eada's brother, Daniel Braden Parrish, was a newlywed at the time of this letter. He and Susan E Morton married on 17 Nov 1880 in Breckinridge Co., KY.

Emma was Eada's older sister by two years. I don't have a lot of information about her, other than she never married, she taught school in Illinois and she was buried in Grayson Co., KY. I do not know where she is buried.

Sina was one of Susan Morton's relatives.

Little Becca was the youngest of the children of B A Parrish and Minerva Hamilton. She married Ulysses Grant Bond in 1883, divorced him in 1889, married Webster Taylor in 1906, divorced him, and married her final husband, James Shea, in 1910. She had two children with her first husband. Her son, Steven Washington Bond, lived in shack beside a railroad yard in Lewiston, ID, and was crushed to death when he fell into a pit containing a locomotive turntable in the rail yard. His grave in Normal Hill Cemetery is unmarked.

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Musing on death, and dying at home

2014-04-20T14:31:43Z

I got death certificates in the mail Friday - four of them - for a great grandfather, great grandmother, and two great-great grandparents.

Fred and Eada Parrish Chapin, Victor Claude Balding, and Mary Mathilda, "Tildie" Wharton Burris.

They were related to each other not by blood but by marriage, so I can only use any similarities in causes of death as they apply to me, and other common descendants of the multiple blended families.

The years of death are 1938 (Fred Chapin and Tildie Burris), 1944 (Eada Chapin), and 1945 (Pop Balding).

And as I laid them out side by side, I noticed something else.

Three of the four of them died at home - or at the home of a child, where they had been living. (That's the multi-generational family living under one roof thing that was the rule instead of the exception until after World War II.) They were surrounded by people and things that were familiar, and even if in a small way, comforting.

And it struck me.

What a grand way to die...

The aftermath of World War II not only saw a change in the way American families lived, but also how - and where - they died.

Prior to World War II, only in exceptional circumstances did people die in hospital beds instead of in their own beds, in their own homes, or a home of relatives (frequently their children) that had become their home.

My paternal great grandmother, Tildie Burris, died on 26 May 1938 at the home of her daughter, Emma Burris Crites. Her death certificate notes that she died of chronic nephritis, or kidney disease as we would say now. It also says the doctor saw her for three days leading up to her death and she was in a partial coma. As has been noted by memories of her grandchildren, some of whom said she got "mean" in her later years, the certificate says she had senility.

The next death in the chronology was my great-great grandfather, Fred Chapin, on 29 Dec 1938. He died at Baptist Hospital of prostatic hypertrophy - a condition in which the prostate gland becomes enlarged. He also had kidney disease - a combination of which we recognize today as dangerous for older men. His doctor attended him (Fred was also diagnosed with senility) from 28 Nov 1938 to the date of his death. I'm going to guess that he was only hospitalized for part of the 32 days his doctor cared for him.

On 2 Dec 1944, my great great grandmother, Eada Chapin, died at the home of her daughter, Hattie Chapin Balding, of a heart attack. There is no note on the certificate of senility, but it does say she had arteriosclerosis.

Only a little more than a month later, my great grandmother, Hattie Chapin Balding, was present at the death of her husband, Victor Claude "Pop" Balding, when he died at home - in the same house - of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Some of those deaths were sudden, some weren't.

But I am sure now - whether I leave suddenly, or because of a lingering illness - if at all possible, I'd like to die at home.

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The tragic end of another "orphan" relative...

2014-02-08T15:33:49Z

I wrote about my naughty, naughty auntie recently in this post.

I have now found all of Rebecca Parrish's husbands' dates of death and final resting places. Alas, not Rebecca's...

rainbow often helps me out with research dilemmas, and does a fine job.

When rainbow commented on the entry about Rebecca Parrish, I mentioned that Rebecca's son with Ulysses Grant Bond - her first husband - was unaccounted for.

rainbow went to work and found a bunch of information for the 14 year old "Stevie" I found living with his dad in the 1900 census in South Leitchfield, Grayson Co., KY.

Stephen Washington Bond was named for his paternal grandfather. He was my first cousin, 3 times removed.

It's been hard to account for how he spent his life. His father didn't die until 1948, and stayed close to home. Very close to home. Ulysses Grant Bond is buried in the same cemetery as his parents, five year old daughter, siblings and grand nieces and nephews in Caneyville, Grayson Co., KY.

Stephen could have stayed close to his dad, but seems to have had some wanderlust that took him all the way across the country.

In the 1910 census, he was employed at the Hot Lake Sanitarium in Union Co., OR. Click here, and here for photos from 1940 and the time during which Stephen would have recognized the building, which also served as a hotel. This photo shows the destruction of one of the buildings in the complex by a fire on 7 May 1934.

On 12 Sep 1918, Stephen registered for the draft for World War I in Santa Barbara Co., CA. He gave his occupation at that time as an oil pipeline worker for Associate Oil Co. of the same county. He listed his dad as his next of kin on the card.

And after that, I cannot find Stephen Washington Bond - not in the 1920, 1930, or 1940 censuses, which leads me to believe that my cousin may have been what was then called a hobo.

The next time I can locate him (thanks to rainbow) is at the time of his tragic death on 11 Nov 1951, in Lewiston, Nez Perce Co., ID.

MAN IS CRUSHED TO DEATH IN PIT
Pensioner Perishes on Rails of Engine Turntable

Lewiston, Idaho, Nov. 11 (AP)

An elderly pensioner was crushed beyond recognition last night under a locomotive turntable in the railroad yards of East Lewiston.

The victim was identified as Stephen Washington Bond, 65. He lived in a shack about 150 feet from the turntable.

Police theorized that Bond slipped and fell into the turntable pit sometime after 10:30 last night. He was last seen alive leaving a Lewiston tavern at that time.

Lay on Track

Officers said Bond had apparently struck his head on a rail in the pit. They believe he was seriously injured by the blow but that he managed to drag himself 77 feet across the pit where he collapsed.

He lay beside the track upon which the turntable revolves as it swings around the reverse [of] the direction of the locomotives.

The table was used during the night, and Bond was crushed by the tremendous weight of the table and the engine it carried.

William Hart, turntable operator, found the body early this morning when he noticed some coins and a shoe beside the turntable. A hat and an unopened can of coffee were lying beside the crushed body.
Source: The Spokesman-Review, 12 Nov 1951

Perhaps Stephen chose to live in that little shack by the railroad because of his memories of the sanitarium where he worked in 1910. Maybe he was just very poor or anti-social - or a combination of those or other things. Telling the story of the orphan relatives is never easy.

I've asked for the necessary corrections to Stephen's Find a Grave memorial to make it more complete.

And I'd love to know more about the little boy whose mother left his life all those years ago.

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Naughty, naughty auntie...

2014-02-05T16:24:47Z

Actually my second great grandaunt, Rebecca A Parrish.

She was the daughter of Benjamin Abraham Yeager Parrish and Minerva Hamilton, and younger sister to my great great grandmother, Eada Belle Parrish.

Rebecca was married three times.

Her first marriage was to Ulysses Grant Bond. They were married in Kentucky in 1883.

According to her next marriage record, Rebecca divorced Bond in February 1899. That's what she said on her marriage license in Perry Co., IN when she married Webster Taylor on 28 Nov 1906.

I haven't yet done the research to find out what happened to Webster Taylor.

But on 2 Jun 1910, Rebecca Parrish Bond Taylor was getting married again - this time to James A Shea.

She had shaved a couple of years off her age, and said she had been married once before, a marriage that ended in the death of her spouse in 1892.

I wonder if James Shea knew about Rebecca's previous marriages?

I wonder if he also took some creative license with the "facts" he gave the clerk on this marriage record?

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Abraham Hamilton Parrish, 1856-1915

2012-10-31T03:21:16Z

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The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated. ~Plato
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That 19 year old staring at the camera was one of my cousins.

We are only distantly related, Ham and I.

First cousins, five times removed.

He was the son of Abraham Lincoln Parrish, Jr. and Susanna Elizabeth Snelling. Born in 1856 in Knox County, MO, Abraham Hamilton Parrish was known to family and friends as Ham.

He had one sister, and seven half siblings from his father's marriage to Anna Evans.

He would marry in 1887, and have two sons.

He died in 1915 - alone, at State Hospital Number 2 in St. Joseph, Buchanan County, MO.

He was buried in the cemetery there - a graveyard for patients who either had no family, or no family members willing to claim their bodies.

That cemetery is all but forgotten now, and a state prison occupies the land where the State Hospital was.

Perhaps Ham's mental state had deteriorated due to his uncontrolled epilepsy by the time he was admitted to State Hospital Number 2 on 19 Dec 1899.

His wife, Margaret Gragg, had divorced him and remarried on 11 Dec 1898.

I expect it wasn't a very merry Christmas for Ham that year.

A piece of his medical record survives, from a five year period of time from 1903 through 1908.

It was clear his epilepsy was still uncontrolled.

Mar 16 1903 Quiet except when disturbed by seizures. Doing well physically. Very dull mentally.
July 22 - about the same.
May 15 1905 - staff (?) reports no improvement mentally
June 10 - general health very good. eating and sleeping well.
Jany 6 1906 - general health good. mentally no improvement.
Feb 6 - Remains about the same. eating and sleeping well, and causes no trouble.
Mar 9 - no change
Apr 12 - no change
May 17 - physical condition good. Has frequent convulsions and at times is badly confused
Aug 5 - I can see no improvement in his condition. He eats and sleeps well.
Sept 25 - no change
Oct 23 - no change
Jany 9 1907 - general health good. No improvement mentally.
April 25 - very little change. has numerous convulsions at times is badly confused.
Aug 7 - [illegible] a bite to the second finger of the right hand from another patient
Sept 15 - had to amputate finger today
Oct 20 - wound has healed. and he is in his general condition physically and mentally

Ham died on 25 Aug 1915, at the age of 59. That's just 6 years older than I am now.

His death certificate lists his cause of death as status epilepticus, which is a very grand way of describing a brain that just won't turn off the juice, and that stays in a state of persistent seizure. It is an acute, prolonged epileptic crisis.

I had a young client once with uncontrolled epilepsy. Shortly before her death, I visited her and her mother in her hospital room, where her doctors had her in a light coma. I could still observe seizure activity.

She died too, shortly after I went to see her.

I can't go visit Ham's grave in real life.

But I can leave a remembrance on his memorial at Find a Grave.

And I'll meet him on the other side.

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Sympathy Saturday: I was on a roll...

2012-08-04T14:10:10Z

I found another leg of my Parrish family last night.

My Parrish family made its way from Virginia to Kentucky, where some of them hunkered down for several generations.

But many more continued to move - on to Indiana and then to Missouri, where my g-g-grandfather, Fred Chapin, met and married Eada Belle Parrish in Vernon County on Christmas Eve in 1885.

Eada's second cousin, William Henry Parrish, was six years older than she was.

His family had lived in Knox County since at least the early 1850s. William was born in Knox County on 2 Mar 1853.

As far as I can tell, William and his wife, Cordelia Anna Davis, lived and worked in Knox County all their lives, raising five children together.

William and Cordelia's life together ended on 24 Jun 1924, when a tornado ripped through Knox County. Their death certificates say they died of the injuries they suffered in a cyclone. Their gravestone also notes the manner of their deaths.

I don't know if Eada got word of the tornado, or of her cousin's death. I can't find news coverage of the event, but for a while last night, I sat very thoughtfully at my computer, trying to imagine what it must have been like for my 71 year old cousin and his 67 year old wife as a funnel cloud exploded their world, and took them into the next one.

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Sympathy Saturday: Eada B Parrish and Fred Chapin

2011-12-31T14:45:20Z

These are the obituaries for my great-great grandparents, Eada Belle Parrish (1859-1944) and Fred Chapin (1858-1938).

Fred Chapin

Fred Chapin, 80, of 913 North Valmar street, died at a Little Rock hospital at 1:30 p.m. Thursday. He is survived by his wife, a daughter, Mrs. V C Balding of Little Rock; a sister, Mrs. Essie Finn of Altoona, Pa.; seven grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. Funeral services will be held at the P H Ruebel & Co. chapel at 4:30 p.m. Friday in the charge of the Rev. Hay Watson Smith. Burial will be in Oakland cemetery. Pallbearers will be Joe D Williams, E V Balding, R Ellington Balding, and Marvin Balding.
Published on Friday, 30 Dec 1938, in the Arkansas Gazette

Mrs. Eada B Chapin
Octogenarian Dies.
Mrs. Eada B Chapin, aged 85, died at the home of her daughter, Mrs. V C Balding of 217 Denison street, at 7:30 a.m. Saturday. She had been a resident of Little Rock for 50 years. Also surviving are seven grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Funeral services will be held at the Ruebel Funeral Home at 10 a.m. Monday by the Rev. Marion A Boggs. Burial will be in Oakland cemetery. Pallbearers will be W L Terry, L C Gring, J S Holtzman, W M Brandon, J D Williams and Lt. Eugene Balding.
Published on Sunday, 3 Dec 1944, in the Arkansas Gazette

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Madness Monday: William Tuttle Parrish

2011-12-26T14:30:55Z

For the longest time, I thought perhaps William Tuttle Parrish was a brother to my great-great grandmother, Eada Belle Parrish, but I could not connect the dots.

According to the 1900 census of Lake, Vernon Co., MO, William T Parrish was born in June 1850 in Kentucky. I also found him in the 1880 census, just five years or so after he married Sarah Hamlet Bridgewater on New Year's Eve in 1874 in Vernon County.

But I couldn't go back any farther with him, and certainly did not find him in the home of Eada's parents, Benjamin Abraham Yeager Parrish and Minerva Ann Hamilton, both of whom were also born in Kentucky, as were Abraham's parents.

When I received an email contact from a Parrish researcher, who was descended from the father of Sarah Hamlet Bridgewater, I made another stab at trying to identify the parents of William T Parrish, and also to find his date of death, which I have placed between 1900 and 1910 in Vernon Co., MO.

I couldn't find a death record on him at the Missouri SOS State Archive, but I did find out what his middle name was.

From his the death certificate of his daughter, Cinderella H E Parrish Walker, who died on 1 Jul 1930 in Vernon County.

Tuttle. He was William Tuttle Parrish.

And that led me to a set of possible parents - William Allen Parrish (1819-1883, Clark Co., KY) and Katherine Tuttle (1819-1908, Clark Co., KY).

They had an infant son, William, in the 1850 census, and also in their home in the 1860 and 1870 censuses. Their William was not in their home in 1880.

So now, it's on to contact some of the William Allen Parrish family researchers to see if we may have a match.

None of them have information about William Parrish after he left his parental home.

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Those Places Thursday: Lakeland Asylum, Jefferson Co., KY

2011-10-19T17:52:52Z

also known as Central Kentucky Asylum for the Insane

It hasn't been uncommon for me to find some of my kinfolk committed to asylums of one kind or another.

But in the case of one of my many times removed Parrish cousins, I wonder why.

Sudie Parrish Vittitow was three months shy of her 74th birthday when she died at Lakeland Asylum on 25 Feb 1936.

Sad, but telling that the place where she had lived for three years thought she was Sadie instead of Sudie.

A simple Google search tells some horror stories about the care and treatment at the place where Sudie lived for 3 years, 3 months and 13 days after her commitment - like how in the 1930s, cold showers, insulin injections, lobotomies and shock therapy were used to "cure" the patients, many of whom were just old and had dementia.

Some people say the place is haunted.

Sudie was the daughter of William Foster Parrish and Elizabeth Holbert. She was born on 15 May 1862 in Nelson County, KY, as were most of her ten siblings. She had a twin sister named Sallie.

She married twice, first to Samuel Vittitow, from whom she was divorced, and then to his cousin, Anthony, who died in 1929.

Altogether, Sudie had 8 children, including sons Clarence and Charlie, who had lived in their parents' home well into their adult years - and up to and including the 1930 census, when they were living with their newly widowed mother as men in their 30s.

So why was Sudie committed to an asylum?

I guess I'll have to wait and ask her on the other side...

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