After January 6, 1911

My dear Reader,  My Aunt Helen told me, ” I threw up all the way to Las Vegas, and cried all the way back to Charleston.”

The 2 grandmothers had made huge baskets of food for Ed and the six little girls to eat on the way out.  Helen got into the baskets very early and eat too much.  Thus the reason for throwing up.

As for the other, sadly, we all now know.

Another thing my Aunt Helen told me:  The day her mother died, Helen was home when her father came in the front door, passed her up (even though she kept asking him “How’s Mamma?”) and took the sitter, Mrs. Murphy (I will post the checks to Mrs. Murphy once I pour through some materials),  into a bedroom to talk to her.  He came out and left immediately.  Helen ran into her mother’s room and saw Mrs. Murphy going through the drawers and removing the white dress Minnie had worn in the picture she had taken holding her infant son in September.

Helen: “Those are Mamma’s clothes.  What are you doing with Mamma’s clothes?”

Mrs. Murphy:  ”Helen, Your mother is dead and she needs clothing to wear in her casket.”

Little Helen, who had just turned 10 years by 2 days, with tears, ran out of the house and down the street.  She blindly bumped into a black man who said:

Man:  ”Whoa little girl. You best git back inside your gate before your mamma finds yous out.”

Helen (sobbing): “My Mamma is dead.  This morning.”

The kind old man patted Helen on the head softly.  Aunt Helen said he was the first person who was kind to her upon learning her Mamma had passed.

Ed had left the house to send the astonishing gloomy telegrams to the McCartys, the Whalens and to his sister Maggie (Arcola, Ill.).  He purchased tickets to Charleston and made arrangements for Minnie’s body too.

Ed, his 6 little girls and Minnie in a casket left Las Vegas, New Mexico on the late afternoon train, back to Charleston, Illinois, January 6, 1911.  The small, but supportive,  group of friends Minnie and Hanna had met, along with her cousin, Bridget Kintz, a few nuns from St. Anthony’s Sanitorium and Dr. McClanahan all showed up at the station to see the family off.

In Kansas City, Ed and the six little girls were met by his sister Maggie Mc Taggart, her husband George and their 3 children, to help them the rest of the sad journey home.  While waiting for the train switching, he said to his sister, “I am going to go check on Minnie.”  He found, and in time,  the Sante Fe personal had misread “Charleston, Ill.” and they were putting Minnie on a train bound for Charleston, S.C.

Somewhere along the line of her illness, Minnie had told Ed she didn’t want to be buried alone and have to wait for him one day.  She asked to be buried next to her 2 younger siblings, Nora and Nellie,  whom both had died from tuberculosis too.  Thus, this is the reason Minnie and Ed are not together at the Mound Cemetery today.

The family home at the cor. of 10th and Adams was rented until July.  So this very brokenhearted family was placed amongst family.  Helen and Mary stayed with the McCartys along with Baby Edward.  Edna went to live with her Uncle Joe and Aunt Mayme, and Ed with the 3 youngest ones, twins Catherine and Margaret and little Agnes (my mother) with his parents.

Once the house became available and the furnishings arrived from Las Vegas, New Mexico, Ed set up house again.  Then he walked down to the McCartys to get his son who was now 1 year.  The McCartys “circled the wagon” and told Ed if he tried to take Edward, they would have the State put all his children in an orphanage (children were considered orphans in 1911 if the mother was dead.). He walked back to his very lonely house knowing Minnie would no longer share it and empty handed with no son.

Hanna raised Edward.

Hanna became Ed’s housekeeper until Helen reached 18 years.  A neighbor, Margaret Grånt, told me that when Ed walked through the front door from work, Hanna and young Edward were going out the back.  This route was for neighbors to have no gossip about Hanna and Ed.

As for Edward.  He had trouble with his eyes his whole life.  He was rejected from Notre Dame because of them.  When war WW11 came around, Hanna and her sister Agnes was able to prevent him from being drafted by a “slight clause” in the drafting system.  They bought him a grain elevator across Ed Whalen’s Grain Elevator.  If one owned a grain elevator, one was excused from the war, with the understanding grain elevators would eventually be suppling food for the solders.

Ed closed his doors the very day the purchase was made saying, ” I will not be in competion with my own son.”

Ed never re-married.  Neither did his daughters Helen, Edna and twins Catherine and Margaret.  Mary married a farmer and had no children. Edward married a highly intelligent woman and they produced 2 doctors.  Little Agnes married and had 9 living children.  I was #7.  Agnes was the last to die from her family at  96 years.

When my gråndfather was last ill, just a few days before dying, his daughter Catherine heard him talking in his room.  When she went to check on him, he told her he had just seen Minnie.  He stated he asked Minnie why she was standing at the foot of his bed and she responded, ” I am waiting for you, Ed.”

Ed never stopped loving Minnie.

As for Bridget Fitzgerald Kintz.  She continued to live in Las Vegas, New Mexico until she died of the Spanish Flever.  Her death is recorded as tuberculosis in 1918 by Dr. McClanahan (Minnie’s doctor).  She is buried in Terre Haute, Indiana.  Her husband is beside her.

Both Minnie and Bridget Death Certificates were signed by  tuberculosis Dr. McClanahan.

I have my mother’s first love letters from a Charles Schmidt of Charleston.  I have never read them.   I may never read them.  To me, Minnie’s letters are all I need to know about a true love story.  A love story torn by distance and health.  Then death.  A love story that re-lives itself everytime I read, “My dear Ed,”.

Granddaughter Denise Conaghan Snakard / Winnetka, Illinois

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