The Susie Situation - Episode 6 - Hot For You
This can be viewed as a YouTube video (below) or read as a blog post (below that.) Accompanying documentation is at the end.
How far would you go for your Significant Other? Would you eat the food she likes? Move to the city he loves? Would you change religions? If your man were big into blackmail, would you participate?
If you are joining us for the first time, this is Episode 6 in a series. Kate, Melody, and Nancy have been exploring a family mystery involving Aunt Susie, whose family house and barn burned down in 1912, soon after she was shipped off to a school for girls. We found out that Frank Hamilton was arrested for harming Susie, but was there a trial? We think all of these things are related, and we think this fire marked the beginning of this family’s downward spiral into intermittent homelessness. We’ve hired a genealogist to help us find out more, and we’re anxiously awaiting her findings.
We've also taken a look at my grandfather, Orland Carver. Grandpa Orlie. We don’t like what we see. But what about his wife, Annis Hubbard Sholes Carver? How does Grandma Annie fit into this equation?
It's 2018. The MeToo movement goes global. Sears and Roebuck goes bankrupt. And I receive a 54-page packet of court papers in the mail. The genealogist tells me they are preliminary court papers. Most are handwritten, in a really fast scribble, chicken scratch legalese, and they are incomplete.
What does she mean by incomplete? Well, they do suggest that a trial occurred, but they do not say what happened at the trial. There are papers about the original arrest, about the trial being rescheduled to a later date, subpoenas for witnesses to appear, and some curious pre-trial testimony from Ruth Hamilton.
I have to switch glasses, magnify the writing on a big screen, and reread this really bad handwriting several times, but fortunately, I have some experience reading chicken scratch.
It's 1978. The TV Show Dallas debuts on CBS. Everyone at school is singing "You're the one that I want" after watching Grease for the 3rd time. And The Reverend Jim Jones shocks the world, leaving us all with a new saying, "Don't drink the Kool-Aid." I'm 19 years old, working my first college job, grading freshmen comp papers. These are handwritten. Scribbled. Chicken scratch. I get a lot of practice reading really bad handwriting.
Throughout the semester a parade of young men come through the English Department doors in search of homework help. One of these boys asks me out. I change college majors because of him, follow him to another town, even get a job where he works. One Saturday night he takes me out to dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant. He says he has something important to discuss. He reaches into his pocket. Is he about to propose? I hold my breath as he extends his hand and opens it to reveal ... his key to my apartment. He says he needs to give it back because he has just proposed, to his other girlfriend, and she said yes. That's when I realize, my man-picker is malfunctioning. Broken down. In need of an upgrade!
Like grandmother, like granddaughter. And now I wonder, if I had married that man, after changing my major and following him to another town, how much would I have been willing to do to keep him happy? Watch his TV shows? Raise kids his way? Blackmail the neighbor of his choice?
It's 1888. Imagine Annie Hubbard, 19 years old, at a neighborhood barn dance in Mars, Nebraska. Chet Fields plays the fiddle. His brother Ed is there too. When the Fields brothers play, all the young people come. The air crackles with a mix of nerves and excitement. Annie tugs at the faded ribbon in her hair as she watches him across the rough-hewn dance floor. The new boy, with his sun-streaked hair and the beginnings of a shy smile. He glances her way, then quickly down at his boots. The music breaks off, replaced with the dance caller's booming voice. Annie turns to her friend, swallowing a surge of disappointment. But then she sees him, shouldering his way through the crowd. "Hello, I'm Charley. Would you like to dance?"
I don't know if that's what happened, but dances were popular in the area, and so was Chet Fields. By March of 1889, Annie Hubbard and Charley Sholes must have found a meeting spot much more private than a public dance hall. According to her divorce papers, Annis and Charles got married on October 9, 1889, and he then deserted her, on October 9, 1889. Daughter Florence was born on December 31, 1889. It looks like Annie and Charles never planned to live together. I don't know if Florence ever met him or his 2nd family.
And you know that little voice I mentioned last episode, the one that says, "You're no good; you should be ashamed; you need to know your place?" How loud do you think that voice gets in the head of an unwed pregnant girl in 1889? Or a divorced lady with a small child? So when Orlie Carver came along, willing to marry her, did Annie feel like she had many choices? Don't you just want to travel back in time, take her by the shoulders, and shout, GRANDMA, THINK THIS THROUGH?!!
What do we really know about Annie? Not a lot. Childhood stories suggest that the Hubbard children were playful, with a tendency towards mischief, and that they all had a solid education in Vermont before arriving in Nebraska. Not a college education, but good for the times.
Dad said Annie was not particularly demonstrative. Orlie was more affectionate, when he wasn't being violent. He also said that Annie had a lot of anxiety in later years, and that once she almost gave up on life. It was some time after the fire, in a little spider-infested stone house in Kansas, the house that leaked like a sieve, where she tried to hang herself from the rafters, but Uncle Bob cut her down. Bob would have been quite young still, perhaps 9 or 10?
Bob also tells of her calmly removing my dad, little Willie, from the middle of the bed when he was a toddler, so that she could shoot a rattlesnake that she saw hanging from the rafters directly above where he slept.
And Dad wrote about Annie's actions during the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, when she spent countless hours caring for sick neighbors.
We’ve heard that in the years after the fire, Annie’s children were often dirty and unkempt, that she was often sick, and that she had a tendency to forget what years her children were born when reporting their ages to school authorities, or to coroners.
And what was her relationship with Orlie? From Dad's description, Orlie was in charge, and Annie's job was to follow along.
At the end of her life Annie lost a fight with colorectal cancer. She was 56 years old, and when the kids visited the hospital, they report that she was incoherent, probably from pain medication. I don't think that's how she would like to be remembered. I'd rather remember her as the lady who shot down the rattlesnake. Annie, get your gun!
But now we have a new story from Ruth Hamilton. Ruth paints Annie in a very different light. Of course, just like that dance story that I made up a few paragraphs back, we have no idea how much of Ruth's story is true.
It's 1911. September 12. Annie is a mother of eight. She’s been living with Orlie for 14 years. The Hamiltons are neighbors. And here is what Ruth Hamilton says in her pre-trial testimony. She says that Mrs. Carver came to the Hamilton home after dinner and asked to speak with her husband, Frank, who was upstairs resting. He came down. Then Mrs. Carver said, "I am going to send you over the road for having Susie out all night, but I am willing to settle if you will give me your grey team."
Ruth asked Mrs. Carver if Frank had done anything wrong or harmed Susie in any way, and Mrs. Carver said that he had not, but that he had Susie out all night, and that was against the law, and that she would send him over the road for it unless Frank gave her that grey team.
According to Ruth, when the Hamiltons turned Mrs. Carver down, she then said that she would be willing to settle for the bay colts, which were inferior to the grey team, not worth as much money. And when they refused to part with either the greys or the bays, Mrs. Carver proclaimed in a loud and angry voice, "I will make it hot for you and send you over the road."
Ruth goes on to testify that Carver and his wife live on a Kincaid homestead not far from the Hamilton's, and that on several occasions they've offered to trade the entire homestead for that grey team.
And finally, Ruth says that she ran into Mrs. Carver in front of the drug store in O'Neill on the same day after the preliminary hearing in this case, and she said to her then, “I hope you feel better since you swore to all those lies!"
Whereupon Mrs. Carver started to cry and answered, "I had to do it, and if you were in my place, you would do it."
Where do I start?
Everybody seems to agree that Frank had Susie out all night. Had her out where? What would a middle aged neighbor-man be doing all night with a 13-year-old girl that falls into the category of “not harmful”? Astronomy lessons? Feeding homeless cattle? I've wracked my brain.
And what about the language here? Would somebody with Grandma's education level use phrases like "I will make it hot for you" or "I will send you over the road"? Maybe.
Then there's this whole thing about the horses. The Carvers would do anything to get those greys. Would a set of horses really be worth an entire 600-acre homestead? And I'm remembering comments Kate used to hear from the family years ago, "The Carvers were nothing but a bunch of horse thieves." I didn't think they meant literal horse thieves, but ... maybe they did?
And finally, back to the language.
I will make it hot for you.
I will send you over the road.
Doesn't this sound like something we should put on a set of travel mugs?
2018 was an eventful year, with all these court papers, and this new story about Grandma. Newspapers started to be digitized at a faster and faster pace. And I talked to Cousin Melody for the first time. You know that surgery I mentioned back in Episode One? It's Melody's fault I got that surgery to start with. If you want to hear more, check back next time!
Thanks to Amy Johnson Crow for providing a framework for people who don't know what to say next when writing about genealogy. We're loosely following her 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks framework.
The Pre-Trial Testimony of Ruth Hamilton
Florence's Birth Year
