My great-grandmother Bertha Lee Simons was born in the Wild West. Her parents William and Alice Morris Simons had migrated from Kentucky to Texas, most likely to the Fort Worth area, somewhere around 1881. In those days western legends like Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp could occasionally be found gambling in Hell's Half-Acre, the fun part of town.
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| Bertha Simons Jackson and her second husband Charles Henry Jackson |
There And Back Again
The Simons hadn't come alone, though -- the whole extended family, on both the Morris and Simons sides, had made the same trip. They all settled in Texas, and then later a few of them branched into Oklahoma and Arkansas. Their descendants live there today.
But not William and Alice. Life in Texas didn't suit them. A few years after moving there, they said goodbye to their parents, their brothers and their sisters, packed their young girls in a covered wagon, and returned to Kentucky.
So it was that Bertha grew up on a farm in Ballard County, Kentucky, the eldest of nine daughters, and 11 children total. Eleven children, in a small farmhouse. Eight little sisters. I suppose you can see why Bertha and her sisters were eager to get out on their own.
Bertha was about 17 when she married Charles Ashcraft on December 7th, 1899. They had crossed the river to be married in Pulaski County, Illinois, for some reason. Charles was 21.
I don't know why they went to Illinois to be married. Could it have been more agreeable laws? In Illinois at that time, males age 17 and females age 14 could be married, with parental consent (like most places, it was 21 and 18 without consent). But Kentucky allowed marriages between "men" of 14 and "women" of 12, so that wasn't it.
Bertha married young, but her two younger sisters married even younger. In fact, all three got married around the same time. Dora Belle Simons, about 16, married Charles' older brother William Samuel "Bully" Ashcraft, also in 1899. Then the next year, Mary Ethel Simons, probably just 14, married 21-year-old William Wesley Freeman.
What's Happening?
- The Chicago Columbian Exposition had wrapped up a few years earlier, leaving behind the Museum of Science and Industry and the Midway of "Monsters of the Midway".
- William McKinley was president, but soon would make way for Theodore Roosevelt.
- John Spicka had returned from the Spanish-American War and married Anna Cihlar.
- Thomas and Minnie Quaid were living in Chicago, managing a dry goods store and raising a family.
- Newlyweds John and Flora Rebman Greenock were living in Chicago, starting their family and their plumbing business.
The Ashcrafts
The Ashcraft brothers who married the Simons sisters were the two eldest children of William and Celia Gay Ashcraft. Celia was the grand-daughter of Revolutionary War veteran Zerobabel Gay, and the Ashcrafts were actually her second family. Celia had married Steven Bloodworth when she was 17, and had five children with him before they divorced. Both re-married. Celia had six more kids with William Ashcraft, and died around 1890, in her mid-forties, shortly after the birth of her last child.
The 1900 Census found Bertha and Charles living with Charles' widowed father William and four of his other children. So not quite on their own, but maybe the house was a little quieter than the one Bertha had left. According to my mother, this place was a log cabin. Dora Belle and Sam Ashcraft were living on another farm, also in Ballard County. As it happens, both sisters were pregnant when the census was taken. Dora Belle had Cecil Ashcraft in September of that year, and Bertha birthed my grandfather Marshall Benton Ashcraft on October 30.
These two boys, Cecil and Marshall, were double-cousins, cousins on both sides. They would be very close growing up, more like brothers than cousins.
Just as Marshall was entering the world, both his father and his grandfather left it. So far no one has found either of their death records, so the dates are uncertain. And so are the causes, since without contemporary sources, all we have are family stories. One story has it that Charles was killed in a farm accident, hit on the head by a rail. Marshall later thought that his father in fact died of pneumonia, and that it was actually Charles' father William who was killed in the farm accident. My mother was told by another relative (Marshall's cousin Virginia Iglehart Burrows, who like my mother ended up in the Phoenix area) that Charles died of typhoid, and unrelatedly but curiously that Charles craved fried squirrel. That's gotta be a symptom of something.
In any case, near the end of 1900 Bertha suddenly found herself an 18-year-old widow with a one-year-old child. I don't know where she turned at this stage, but she probably moved back in with her folks. If so, she would have been nursing her infant son alongside her mother, who had a one-year-old herself.
Charles the Second
The next we hear from Bertha was in 1904, when she married one Charles Henry Jackson in Alexander County, Illinois. The couple settled across the Mississippi River in the brand-new town of Illmo, Missouri. Illmo is a portmanteau of Illinois and Missouri, which I suppose was chosen because at the time the Thebes Bridge was under construction to join the two states. Charlie was a carpenter, and there was lots of work to be done building the bridge and the town supporting it. Charlie built a home for the family in Illmo. Marshall started school there, and the couple welcomed a daughter named Aline in 1906.
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| Marshall and Aline Jackson, 1907 |
Once the bridge was complete work must have dried up in Illmo, and the family returned to Kentucky. Unfortunately young Aline died in 1909 of a locked bowel, but the couple would soon welcome their second daughter, Mildred. In fact she was born October 30, 1910, ten years to the day after Marshall.
Charlie Jackson had adopted Marshall, gave him his invented name, and was the only father Marshall ever knew. Apparently it's not clear whether Marshall knew about Charles Ashcraft at all while growing up. My mother remembered that when she as a young girl was visiting Cecil's family in Kentucky in the 1940s, she was told by her young cousin Cecile that she was really an Ashcraft, and she cried. Cecile said much later that she got a whipping for saying that, because Marshall either didn't know or wouldn't admit it.
Mildred Jackson later wrote that she was "quite a big kid before I found out accidentally" that she and Marshall had different fathers. She added that it wasn't until after Charlie Jackson died in 1951 that the two discussed it, and Marshall said "he hadn't really been told either". I gather from that use of "really" that Marshall had known (Cecil obviously knew about it, after all), but hadn't talked about it with Bertha.
In the 1910 Census they are all living on Chestnut Street in La Center, Kentucky. They owned the home outright, but Charlie had been out of work for 20 weeks in the previous year. In 1911 they moved to Chicago so that Charlie could work as a tank foreman on the Illinois Central Railroad.
The 1920 Census found the family living at 1419 W 72nd Place, Chicago, IL. The house still stands. Real estate sites say that this house was built in 1915 and has three bedrooms, with a total of 924 square feet. Charlie was a carpenter at a packing plant. Marshall had joined the Merchant Marines around 1918, but by this time he was back home, working as a machinist in a packing plant. Mildred was in elementary school, probably the same Altgeld Elementary School that Marshall had attended.
The Single Life
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| Left to right: Alice Morris Simons, her daughter Bertha Simons Jackson, and Bertha's aunt Tommie Morris Knight. 1933. |
Some time around 1927, Bertha and Charlie divorced. I don't know what caused the marriage to break down, but Charlie's double-life must have caused him to be shifty and distant. They sold the house, and Bertha invested her portion in a bakery. The 1930 Census finds Bertha renting a house for $55 per month, and operating a delicatessen. She was living with her sister Kathryn, Kathryn's daughter Wilma, and Wilma's husband John. Wilma was a nurse, and John and Kathryn worked in Bertha's deli.
Every Census has odd questions. In 1930 they asked for your age at your first marriage; these three women had all been just 16 or 17. This Census also noted that Bertha had one of those newfangled radios, in common with just 40% of households at that point.
By this time Marshall had married my grandmother Helen Greenock, and was living on his own. Mildred was living with her father, and in fact went several years without seeing her mother.
In the 1940 Census, Bertha was still working at a bakery, on her own account. She reported working for 52 weeks in the previous year, and 56 hours in the previous week (i.e. 8 hours per day for 7 days). Her rent was $30 per month. This Census notes that Bertha completed two years of high school, presumably before dropping out to marry Charles Ashcraft.
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| Bertha Lee Jackson's War Ration Book, 1943 She is 5'3''; now look again at the photo above! |
Bertha was at this point 57, and living with William Jackson, her 39-year-old son. Wait, what? Bertha did have a 39-year-old son, but his name was Marshall and he was my grandfather and he was living with his wife and kids elsewhere, thank you very much. This so-called William person was single, completed 8th grade, and was born in Kentucky. He helped out at the bakery for 52 weeks of the previous year, but only put in 50 hours the previous week. But since he was listed as unpaid family help, maybe we can cut him a little slack. Like Bertha, he said he was living in the "same place" in 1935, which means the same town, but not the same house.
I can't figure out who this William Jackson was. Maybe a nephew? Bertha only had two nephews in the right age range, and they were both married and raising families in Kentucky at the time. Curiously they both had the first name William, but they went by their middle names. And of course the last name can't really be Jackson, since Charlie had picked that name out of a hat. Bertha herself provided the information for the census, which was then transcribed by the enumerator (Violet Kopp, for the record). There are at least two errors here, or simply misinformation. Mysterious.
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| Bertha Simons Jackson tolerating some great-grandchildren, Christmas 1963 |
At some point Bertha sold her bakery and began working in a Jewish deli. My mother says she worked there well into her 70s, and also that she dedicated her later life to the Salvation Army.
I think of all the family I've come to superficially know through genealogy, Bertha might be the one I'd most like to have a conversation with. Born on the frontier, covered wagons and log cabins, hardscabble farms, two world wars, hard-working shopkeeper, and a closet bursting with skeletons. And I really want to know the story behind William Jackson, too.
Previously: William Hearn Simons and Alice Dora Morris
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