Week 15: Solitude

 

Minnie Lee Casto

My great-grandma Minnie Lee Casto Williams was a woman who never had many chances to experience solitude.  Her birth date sometimes appears as 1879 and other times as 1881 so I've been thinking about which year is most likely.  I know that Minnie's brother William Harvey Casto was born in 1879 and her sister Martha Matilda Casto was born in 1884, leaving a five-year gap in her mother's childbearing years.  So unless Minnie and William were twins--and there are no family stories about that--I suspect Minnie was born in 1881.  In every census her given age coincides with a birth year of 1881, yet her obituary and gravestone both say she was born in 1879.  Since Minnie wouldn't have had a say in the obituary or the engraving on her gravestone, my guess is that her family members got it wrong.  Not many women would add two extra years to their age.

Minnie and her five siblings were born over a fourteen year period so the Casto household must have been a noisy and lively place as she grew up.  First born was brother Dennis Reason (1876), then brother William Harvey (1879), Minnie (1881??), her only sister Martha Matilda (1884), brother Charles Albert (1886), and brother Benjamin Harrison (1890).  For Minnie, opportunities for solitude must have been limited between her farm chores, household chores, siblings, and school work.  School ended for her after 8th grade, which leaves me to wonder what Minnie's life was like for the next few years.  If school ended when she was around fourteen years old, did she still live at home and just take on more responsibilities or did she find a job suitable for a girl her age?

On Christmas Eve of 1899 Minnie married Owen Quillon Williams in Jasper County, Indiana. For the first two years of their marriage Minnie may have had a quiet life while Owen worked as a farm laborer and she kept house.  But having children changed Minnie's life dramatically and her chances for solitude slipped away as she gave birth over and over.

In order, Minnie's babies were:

• Russell Monroe in Nov 1901
• Louis Linden in Feb 1903
• Martha Viola in Mar 1904  (died at 3 months old)
• Renolt Loyd in Jun 1905
• Lester Eldon in Sep 1906  
• Elsie May in Mar 1908
• Leola Rae in Dec 1910
• Alfreda Eliza in Aug 1912
• Florence Kathryn in Sep 1914
• Della Matilda in Apr 1917  and finally a little gap.....
• Robert Quillon in Mar 1926

Were families this large commonplace in the first two decades of the twentieth century? Actually, according to most census estimates, by 1900 American women had on average 3.5 children, which was a radical change from the 19th century.  In 1800 American women had on average 7-8 children.  A  family of 10 would probably have been considered unusual at the time.

Minnie gave birth to ten babies in the space of sixteen years before "oops" baby Robert appeared nine years later when she was 45 years old.  In order to have ten babies in such a short span of time Minnie would have been constantly pregnant or nursing, with little chance to fully physically recuperate from the previous pregnancy before the next began.  Besides the physical strains that would have caused, Minnie would have had little--if any--time for quiet or solitude in the home. Her days would have been filled with taking care of children, waking up early to light the stove for the day's cooking, cleaning the house, washing mountains of clothes, mending clothes, tending to a garden, and making ends meet.  In the 1930s my mom remembers being at Grandma Minnie's house and watching her wash dishes in two large dish pans that sat on a table, singing hymns as she worked.  Despite the untold hours of work it would have taken to manage such a large family, Minnie kept her sanity and did it with grace.  

Minnie shortly before her death in 1959 from heart disease and diabetes