The Second Mrs. Scroggins

Edward D. Scroggins had married Daisy Chester sometime between 1900 and 1907 (probably closer to the latter), and throughout their short marriage, they wandered. They lived in Minnesota for nearly a year, and then — interspersed with visits to her sister Carrie Raschka in Ainsworth — briefly in La Moille and then Steward, Illinois (where their first daughter was born); and when Daisy returned to say farewell to her dying father, she came from Flint, Michigan.

But after Daisy's untimely death in 1910, E.D. (as he preferred to be called) ceased his wandering. He and his two little daughters moved in with his mother-in-law, the newly widowed Mary Chester, and there they stayed. No doubt the extended Chester family gave E.D. much-needed help in caring for his little girls, the younger being only a few months old.

I don't know what E.D.'s usual line of work was. While at Steward, Illinois, he had worked as an operator with the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy line, and he may have continued railroad work in Flint, Michigan, possibly even with the Grand Trunk Railroad. By 1920, he would be an electrician at a steel mill. When he first came to live in Ainsworth, I expect he worked on the Chester farm. But within a year of his coming here, he had found a novel way to earn money — as an auto liveryman.

In March of 1911, he purchased a Badger touring car through the Dorman Brothers agency. He and Carlisle Dorman traveled to the Badger factory at Columbus, Wisconsin, to fetch the car, and drove it back.

In May, E.D. placed an ad in the Hobart Gazette:

Car For Hire

I am prepared to accommodate those wishing to hire automobile livery service. Car carries five. Terms reasonable. E.D. Scroggins. Phone 371.

That ad would continue running weekly.

His brothers-in-law must have been impressed with E.D.'s Badger: in June 1911 John bought one for himself; the following month Charles bought one too, and E.D. helped him drive it home. E.D. maintained friendly relations with all of his in-laws. The Ainsworth news columns often reported his outings with one Chester or another — a trip to Chicago with Mary; a drive with John to Elgin, Illinois, to watch the auto races; a visit to Knox, Indiana, for the wedding of Carrie and William Raschka's daughter, Minnie.

In August 1911, he rented his 80 acres of the Henry Chester farmland (which may have come to him through Daisy) to another Ainsworth farmer, thus gaining a second source of income.

At some point amid all these activities, he met Bertha Witt. She was a daughter of the John Witt whose cow had needed avenging in one of the shotgun stories. A few years earlier, her older brother, John Jr., married Louise Sievert, who had lived along the county line mid-way between Hobart and Ainsworth, and in 1908, the young couple moved onto a rented farm south of Ainsworth. By 1910, Bertha was living there in her brother's household, describing herself to the census enumerator as a servant.

Not a word ever made it into the social columns of Bertha and E.D. even being in each other's company. In fact, they were well apart during January 1912, as E.D. went on a long trip to Kansas to visit his brother there, and Bertha moved back in with her parents to recuperate from a bad burn she had suffered while working in the kitchen in her brother's house.

But she did recover; E.D. did come back; and at the end of May 1912 came the sudden announcement that the two of them had married. The wedding took place in her parents' home west of Hobart.

And that's all I know thus far. The 1920 census finds E.D. and Bertha living in Hobart, with their six-year-old son, Edward, and four-month-old daughter, Mabel. And E.D.'s daughters by Daisy were living in a Chicago rooming-house with their grandmother, Mary Chester McDaniel, and their step-grandfather John. But that's seven years' worth of microfilm away.


Sources:
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Ainsworth." Hobart News 24 Aug. 1911; 31 Aug. 1911; 14 Dec. 1911; 4 Jan. 1912.
♦ "Car For Hire." Hobart Gazette 19 May 1911 and passim.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 3 Jan. 1908; 7 Feb. 1908; 6 Mar. 1908; 10 Apr. 1908.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 18 Sept. 1908; 2 July 1908; 31 Mar. 1911; 23 June 1911; 28 July 1911; 26 Jan. 1912.
♦ "Personal Mention." Hobart News 30 May 1912.
♦ "Ross Township Notes." Hobart Gazette 25 Aug. 1911.