A no-good, horrible, terrible day

© 2022 Christy K Robinson

I was looking at the events in the life of my great-great grandmother, Mabel Alice Rowley Hall, when I noticed that she had a baby on the 26th of July, 1904 -- and that her eldest child died on the same day. 

Eighteen-year-old Archie propped his gun against a fence and crawled through it. His dog knocked the gun over, which went off and killed Archie.  

On the same day, Mabel gave birth to her son Earl Martin Hall. 

I don't know the order of the events of that day, but I wonder if the pregnant Mabel heard about the death of her eldest child, and she went into labor with Earl. 

I don't have photos of Mabel before 1937. She lived a very difficult life, eloping with Martin F Hall when she was 15. He was often away from his wife and children for up to two years at a time, which meant that Mabel had to support the children. Mabel and Martin divorced quietly in 1915, and in later years Martin seems to have been an alcoholic. People of their time often hid the fact they were divorced: Mabel listed herself in the 1920 census as widowed, though Martin would live for another 24 years. She and her adult children attended Martin's funeral, but by then she had been married for 16 years to an older man. 

Mabel's timeline shows that her parents moved from settled Connecticut, where Rowley generations had lived for 200 years, to homestead on the Minnesota prairie at Pleasant Valley. She eloped at 15 and bore her son Archie at age 17. Her next child, Wilber, died at age 3. Her daughter Edna married young and moved to another county and seems to have had few ties to the family, and another daughter married young and moved to the west coast. They lived through two world wars, the Spanish influenza pandemic, huge complex fires that wiped out their property, the Great Depression, and the deaths of family members. They had very little money. Her sons and grandsons served in wars while the women remained to tend farms and live off the land. She had diabetes and was overweight in the 1937 photo, but by 1941, she was slim. She died in 1946, a few months before her daughter and grandson perished in a vehicle accident while living in another state. 

But imagine the tragedy of losing one son as you bring another into the world. 

Mabel A Rowley Hall Lattimer, age 72, 
in 1941. Colorized. 

I still can't find where Mabel was buried: in a city cemetery where her children and grandchildren were buried, a churchyard, or a family plot of her second husband. After extensively searching in Find-a-Grave, I've asked relatives in Minnesota, and have contacted descendants of Mr. Lattimer, but no luck so far. Sometimes you hit a research wall, and sometimes you break through, thanks to distant cousins. The search continues.

Christy K Robinson is author of these books (click the colored title): 

We Shall Be Changed (2010)

Mary Dyer Illuminated Vol. 1 (2013)  

Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This Vol. 2 (2014)

The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport Vol. 3 (2014)  

Effigy Hunter (2015)  

Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)

And of these sites:  

Discovering Love  (inspiration and service)

Rooting for Ancestors  (history and genealogy)

William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)