When I was 16 or 17, I bought a little 1883 diary … somewhere. I think it was in Michigan, where I was in the habit of buying antique items on family vacations; but it may have been on a trip to New England. I wish I could remember, because this 1883 diary came from New York, and if it ended up in Michigan, how it got there would be an interesting puzzle to solve.
(Click on images to enlarge)
The diary itself presents a mystery. Its writer is the teenaged Lillian Todd, who lives in Penn Yan, New York.
Her entries run from January 1 to October 4, 1883. As the months go by, her handwriting gradually deteriorates from a delicate, controlled script to a blotted scrawl. Compare her first entries …
… to her last:
The diary is clear on one point: Lillian is not well. She is tired all the time; she can't do the things she used to; she is headachy, irritable and nervous. She takes some unnamed medicine on a daily basis, while friends and relatives send her recipes for home remedies. She alludes to some serious illness that happened before the diary opened, perhaps the previous autumn. "I have felt real well today. How good it would be to be entirely well again. I little thought I would be sick so long …" (Jan. 15); "I made a pie crust today. That is worthy of note for it is the first baking I have done since I was sick" (Jan. 20); "I took a good long walk today[,] … the longest I have taken since the middle of October. I think that is quite encouraging but my hand trembles worse than ever. This is the pay for my walk, but I don't care if it doesn't make me worse" (Jan. 26). On her 17th birthday — March 7, 1883 — she spends much of the day lying down, and then some well-meaning person arrives with a recipe for homemade cough medicine.
"Howard Woodrough called and left a receipt for cough medicine. I wonder what would become of me if I should take everything prescribed."
In this April 4 entry, she wishes she could return to school:
That entry mentions painting, one of the few things Lillian could still do. On a blank page (rare before October; she generally made an entry every day, even when there was nothing much to note), she gives us an example of her artwork:
Lillian painted pictures and cards, and on ribbons and in autograph albums, for family and friends. In early February, she made her first attempt at a landscape, which she gave to (I believe) her eight-year-old half-brother. She records the event with her typical self-deprecating humor:
Her family tree, by the way, is complicated. Lillian was one of four children born to Eli Gilbert and Sarah (Miller) Todd, who were married circa 1858. Sometime around 1869, her parents divorced. Her father remarried, took himself off westward, and started a new family. Lillian never mentions him in the diary, although he was still living. Around 1870, her mother married John Crakes, a man with children from past relationships — he had been widowed once, and possibly divorced once — and had two more children with him. So Lillian had stepsiblings and half-siblings in her life. Her stepfather died in 1881, and her mother did not remarry.
As I've looked through the diary now and then over the years, it has occurred to me to wonder if the deterioration in Lillian's handwriting was due less to her illness than to the medicines she was taking. In 1883, as we all know, there would have been patent medicines available that contained intoxicating and addictive ingredients. In this June 12 entry, she goes to the doctor's office and gets some kind of medicine.
Even medicine given by a doctor might contain such things as opium derivatives and alcohol. After that visit to the doctor, Lillian spends the next day resting — "that is all I do about two thirds of the time now." In her July 10 entry, she says: "This morning I have felt as if I was about used up; perhaps it is because I haven't taken any medicine today."
Surprisingly, the latter part of the diary records a lengthy trip, with Lillian setting out on July 18 and returning home October 2. She takes a boat down Keuka Lake to Hammondsport, and after staying a few days with friends there, takes a train to Campbell. There she stays with relatives, I believe, in the house where she was born. She visits family, old friends, and scenes of her childhood. She makes side trips to nearby towns. (On July 10, in the town of Corning, she and her companions have their pictures taken; how I wish I had that picture!) It's a remarkable exertion for one in her condition.
The vacation doesn't do anything for her health, however. As the weeks pass, she is still tired; she is coughing; her uncle brings her a bottle of medicine. Near the end of September, Lillian sees two different doctors. Neither gives her good news.
"Dr. Everitt … examined my lungs[;] he thought they were very bad but did not say much about it."
"Rob Cristler took Sarah and I to Corning to day to see Dr. Bryan[;] he examined my lungs and said they were very bad and he did not know wether they could be helped or not."
The vacation ends October 2, with a strenuous trip back to Penn Yan involving a 4:00 a.m. wake-up call, a train that was two hours late, and torrential rain. Lillian arrives home safely, but comments the following day that she is "about played out."
The diary ends on October 4 with this very ordinary entry:
After that, silence.
What happened to Lillian? Did the diary end because she suddenly became too ill to write? Did her disease claim her at 17? Or, perhaps, did she recover and go on to lead a full life? I have been wondering for 50 years.
When I first got an Ancestry.com subscription, of course I looked for her, and found her, easily enough, in the 1880 census, living in Milo, Yates County, New York, with her widowed mother, three siblings and two half-siblings.
(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from Ancestry.com
Go back ten years, and we find the family in Campbell, Steuben County.
(Click on image to enlarge)
Image from Ancestry.com
Beyond that, I could find nothing. No record of her death. No record of the events that might have marked her recovery, like marriage and children.
But when I first researched her, Ancestry.com and Findagrave.com had not yet become the resources they are now. I just recently thought to take another look on both websites for more information about her. This time I found it. There are now some family trees on Ancestry.com to explain the complicated history of the Todd/Crakes family, which gives me a better idea of who some of the people mentioned in the diary were.
And further, some helpful history detectives have done the reading of old newspapers and posted their discoveries to Findagrave.com. So, at last, I finally know what happened to Lillian.
Sometime after her diary ended, she, along with her Uncle Newman Miller (and possibly his wife, Carrie) left Penn Yan for Bernalillo, New Mexico, in the hope that the New Mexico climate would cure Lillian's tuberculosis. It was a vain hope. Lillian died there on March 17, 1884, ten days after her 18th birthday. She is buried in an unmarked grave.
I am grateful to those people who have solved this mystery for me, 50 years after I first encountered it. I have made my own contribution to Lillian's Findagrave entry by adding some images from her diary.
Ten years after Lillian's death, Uncle Newman died in the same place of the same cause. His grave is at least somewhat marked.
There's just one more thing I want to add. Let's look again at Lillian's last entry:
"Fannie and Herman came up a little while …" Fannie was Lillian's sister, Frances, who was about three years older. Fannie is a recurring figure in the diary, visiting Lillian's home often although she no longer lived there, helping around the house, keeping Lillian company.
Herman was Fannie's husband. They had married in 1879. Can you guess what Herman's surname was?
It was … Ainsworth. Yes. This is one of those weird little coincidences that make me think the universe is winking at me.
Sadly, Fannie did not long survive her sister. She died exactly one year after Lillian: March 17, 1885. Fannie was laid to rest back home in Penn Yan, some two thousand miles from Lillian's unmarked grave.
Herman Ainsworth remarried before the year was out and fathered two children with his second wife, but when he died in 1923, he was buried beside Fannie.
No comments:
Post a Comment