Birdie Leaves the Nest

The Hobart News of August 6, 1914, reported: "Mr. and Mrs. Claude Campbell have moved into the Baer flat on South Main Street." If Bertha Nolte Campbell had indeed been keeping house for her father and brothers since Mary Nolte's death in 1908, that was now over. And as kind as it would have been on her part to do that for them, it would be equally kind of her brothers to make other arrangements so their sister and her husband could go make their own home.

Now, I'd like to think it was all kindness and consideration, but realistically the scenario may have gone off more along these lines: perhaps one morning at breakfast Louis makes some tactless remark about the eggs being too runny, and the next thing you know Birdie's whipping off her apron and throwing it on the floor, saying, "I'm sick of slaving for the three of you, and you never even thank me!" And while Claude gets up to comfort his wife, her three brothers sit there like slack-jawed monoliths, until finally Henry speaks up: "Well … why didn't you say something?"

… Whatever happened, perhaps it was around this time that the Nolte boys hired the housekeeper we find them with in the 1920 Census. Her name was Sarah Read, she was an immigrant from England, and in 1920 she was a widow of 74; and beyond that I've haven't been able to find out anything about her, such as where she'd been until that time, and whether she was any relation to the Noltes. Continued reading of the microfilm might tell me — that is, if the matter concerned anyone other than these close-mouthed Noltes.

And so Bertha and Claude became Hobart residents. If I'm right about where they'd been living until then, this was the first opportunity the young couple had to be alone together since their marriage in 1912, and I hope they enjoyed it.