In Search of Charlotte

I usually try to do a little genealogy every day. I also prefer to find everything I can in one source before moving on. This makes it easier to write those source citations.

The other day I thought I would go through the St. Louis, Missouri guardianship records on FamilySearch. I tend to go page by page, just in case the indexing isn't correct. In the first book, I found something unexpected. It appears that my 3rd great grandfather, Christian F. Kienlen, was made the guardian for a three year old girl named Charlotte, a "free mulatto girl." 

Christian was a young man of 27. 

He was married only the year before to Marie-Louise Moreau.

He was a confectioner, the first in St. Louis, and he bought and sold quite a bit of real estate at that time. 

But who is Charlotte?

Clearly, I'm going to have to find some additional court records, since all I found was the bond. I'll have to wait until all of the government buildings are opened back up again, but I really hope I can find out more about Charlotte. 

Who was she? 

Who were her parents?

What happened during her lifetime?

Did she grow up and have family of her own?

I don't want that little girl to be forgotten.

What Happened That Year?

For the past few weeks, I've been thinking a bit about how our current attempts to slow down a 

pandemic will influence us in the future. 

I am a nurse. I still go to work every day, not knowing when or by whom I may contract an illness.

This is not new for me, but this virus is different.

No one is immune to it.

No one, except for the people who already have it.

Everyone my age knew people who lived through The Great Depression, but unless you realize that, you don't quite understand why your grandma washed and reused aluminum foil or why your dad kept such detailed lists of his bills year after year. The Great Depression made people very careful with their money in ways we can't fully understand. We didn't live through it.

How will the 2020 global pandemic affect our lives?

Our "pop" or popular culture? 

Will there be more movies about pandemics?

Will people write books about social distancing?

Will video games have characters competing 

for toilet paper? 

Time will tell.

Honestly, some of the things I have seen are a bit concerning, but it's not the virus that worries me the most. 

I am worried about our children.

They are watching our reactions.

They watch people hoarding to the point that others can't get the things they need.

They are watching over-anxious adults unable to cope, or angry adults who are defying the recommendations.

We need to teach them to stay calm.

We need to teach them to be helpers.

We need to teach them to care about the more vulnerable in our society, even if it involves personal sacrifice.

I learned in a literature course that fantasy becomes more popular during times of economic recession or depression. It's a great distraction. Think about the things we've seen since 2008's Great Recession:

The Walking Dead, the Twilight series, True Blood, tons of superhero stuff - just to name a few.

My grandpa, Chester Paul Aden, was born in 1919.

This was the year after the pandemic flu that killed millions of people, many of them young, healthy adults.

Did that pandemic affect what people were doing when he was born?

Chester Paul Aden  1920

Here's a bit about my grandpa, who was born the year we were fighting the 3rd wave of the 1918 flu pandemic.

The Herbert Clark Family's Run of Bad Luck

Charles Herbert Clark and Ivah Frances Blair Clark were my husband's great grandparents. Like many families during the depression, they moved from a rural community to a more urban one. In their case, this was St. Louis, Missouri. 

You can read more about their daughter and some other siblings: HERE

They lost two sons in World War II, which led to the U.S. Marines sending their youngest son, Frank, to a safer place to spend the remainder of his military service. Frank was a radio operator at Iwo Jima, and you can hear him tell part of his story if you ever visit the
Missouri Soldier's Memorial in St. Louis.
There is an interactive video display.

Fox 2 News in St. Louis interviewed Frank a couple of years ago. The video is HERE.  There is more to his story from KSDK News HERE. Last year, Frank got to throw the first pitch at a St. Louis Cardinals Game. You can see that fun time HERE.

Frank is the youngest child of Herbert and Ivah. He was born in 1926.
Today I want to tell a bit about those early years, before Frank.
Since this week's theme is "Luck," I decided to highlight some of the bad luck they
had during that time.

Lucille Holland Aden - My Granny

When my Grandpa Aden died in 1993, Granny (Norma Lucille Holland Aden) was 71 years old. One of my favorite memories of her came a few years later, after she had moved back to St. Louis from Poplar Bluff, Missouri.  She was living in a condominium that she bought, and one of her neighbors was a nice old man named Tom Waggoner. They became quite close.

My mom said it felt "weird," but we all embraced Tom as part of our family.
Once we asked Granny if she and Tom were ever going to get married.
Her response:  "No! I never want to wash another old man's underwear again!"

I've often thought of her answer. It makes me smile.
She was, obviously, happy living on her own.
In fact, she told us that sometimes she'd act really tired just to get
Tom to go home so she could be alone.

I heard something else in her reply, though:
Women are just fine on their own.

Granny was born in Mill Spring, Missouri on July 8, 1922.
She was the oldest child in a large family.
They were poor. 

In 1940, she and my grandpa, Chester "Check" Aden ran off to Arkansas to get married. Her parents were pretty angry. She was just 18.

Check and Lucille soon had three children, and he spent some time serving in the
U.S. Army during World War II.

They both worked hard to support their young family in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.
I don't know everything they did, but I know they were in the real estate business.
My grandpa drove a dump truck, I think, for a short time, and they owned a laundry.
They went to Oregon for a bit and there were some job prospects there, but according to my uncle, they didn't stay because Grandpa missed his mom.

When they moved to St. Louis, in the early 1960s, they both worked for the Missouri School for the blind. Later, Grandpa got a job at the St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District, and I don't believe Granny had to work anymore after that.
It really wasn't until their children were married that I think they were comfortable financially.

Chester Paul Aden, Norma "Lucille" Holland Aden, and their granddaughters Valerie Ann Kienlen (on Lucille's lap), Elaine Margaret Kienlen (on the left) and Leslie Diane Kienlen (me - on the right)   1970

Granny lived from 1922 to 2007.

She started off her adult life as a married 18 year old, worked hard, and ended it content to be living on her own.

Just before Granny was born, women in the United States gained the right to vote.

The year after she was born, the first Equal Rights Amendment was proposed. It said, "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction." It never passed.

In 1928, when she was 5 years old, Amelia Earhart flew solo across the Atlantic.

In 1960, women gained (illegal) access to birth control, which allowed them to plan their families. (It was approved for married couples in 1965. Single women had to fight for this a bit longer.)

Women could get credit cards without their husband's approval in 1974.

In 1975, women were no longer banned from serving on juries.

President Reagan appointed the first woman, Sandra Day O'Connor, to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981.

By 1983, we had our first female astronaut, Sally Ride, in space.

So much changed for women during Granny's lifetime.

It must have been frustrating to have been denied so many things that we take for granted now. 

How many men (and probably women) fought against the rights we enjoy today?

Strong women spoke up.

I like to think that she would have supported the changes that her female descendants enjoy today.

I sure wish I could ask her! 

I hope she would want us to keep up the fight.