Skip to main content

Poverty's wages

In a binder of her research and speculation my mother puts to paper the answer she has come up with as to why her maternal grandmother, Susan, was so estranged from Susan's daughter, my grandmother, Ruth, that she refused to attend her  wedding.  And apparently became a "ghost" to the family throughout much of Mom's childhood, though she visited from time-to-time and died at the Walker's windy hilltop home in 1944.

Before her 1916 marriage to a teacher (and future dairyman, farmers' cooperative leader, legislator, UVM board member, etc.) William Walker, Jr.,  Ruth was working as a teacher in the Northeast Kingdom and sending her wages, all but 50 cents a week (the cost of her room and board), back home.  (Women teachers probably earned less than $100 per month at this time.)  It was this loss of family income that lead to the split, according to Betty's best knowledge.

A century's perspective gives context to great-grandmother Susan's parsimony.  In 1900, Susan's husband, my great-grandfather, Forest Duke, was a laborer, in 1910 a carpenter-farmer on a mortgaged farm.  In 1920, Susan was divorced with 3 kids,  still at home on the same mortgaged farm.  Great-grandpa Duke removed to south of the border and established a new family.  

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Milo Fine and Anthony Cox August 30, 2025. An Appreciation with Digressions.

Studio Toile d’Angles was carved out of a near north Minneapolis lot and erected next door to the home of Milo Fine, Minnesota’s least compromised multi-instrumentalist, composer and instigator of modern music.  Rectangular and sunk in the land, it is maybe 18 x 30 feet; the roof points to high north and descends covered with solar panels toward the south and inside meets a wall ten feet above the floor. A kitchenette and bathroom are in a back corner. No street shoes permitted.  Twenty or so moveable padded chairs, a couch and cushions are set in loose rows seven feet from Cox and his cello. The front row audience is six feet from the end of Fine’s black lacquer Bosendorpher Imperial piano. It is nine feet six inches long and includes nine notes lower than a concert grand’s 88. Debussy, Bartok and Ravel were early adopters. Capable, I am sure, of near-Richter scale waves, Fine’s often emphatic playing still left space for Cox’s bowed, plucked, tapped, and picked cello.  ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Refugees All

Among my forebears are the Schwenkfelders, reformation-era sectarians who emigrated from Silesia (now part of southwestern Poland) to Pennsylvania in 1700s, with stops in several German states and the Netherlands. These were followers of Caspar Schwenkfeld, who in the early 1500s had earned the enmity of Martin Luther because of doctrinal disputes.  They were despised by both Catholics and Lutherans.  The main issues in contention were whether infants should be baptized ("no" said my folks) and whether bread and wine were really Jesus's flesh and blood in communion ("no" said  my folks).  They thought that individuals' direct and unmediated pursuit of salvation through faith in Jesus and God was the way.     As minor states in the region became increasingly sectarian and rulers came and went, the pacifist Schwenkfelders, who also believed in strict separation of church and state, became targets. Their books were burned. Those who hid the books were...
Post a Comment
Read more

Flashing Negatives

Flashing Negatives  Mississippi, south-bound at summer solstice  endorphins wheeling  eyes down  sensing  without seeing:        a loss in the leaves        a disappearance  and again        a break in the phone line        an absence  and again        a topped-off light pole        a vanishing  and again  and again       and now,        a flashing eclipse in a bough.  The gorge’s green palisade drops  and I am jarred because  a high-looping stone’s throw  west of my shoulder,  wings are beating my cadence and keeping pace.  That fierce-eyed, lovely, troublesome symbol spirit  casting performance art in raptor shadows.  Dr. Kramer (Captain of the Carl Jung) called:       “I’ve got those m...
Post a Comment
Read more