I recounted the early death of Betty Braddock Brown at the age of 30 in Chapter 1. Now I recount the tragedy of another woman, who survived the Depression to die only shortly thereafter.
About five years ago my grandmother, Eula (Bertling) Brown, gave me a diary along with numerous other family mementos. My grandmother did not write the diary and she did not tell me who did. By the time I had pulled out the diary to read it, my grandmother had died. And the diarist failed to identify herself. She only left clues as to her identity.
Written from 1935 to 1942, the diary reveals a woman's daily life in Oklahoma and Texas during the Depression. She recorded her birthday every year; she was born in 1894. She was 41 years old when she started the diary. Each year on her birthday she would receive gifts like a pair of hose or a dollar bill from her husband.
What is interesting to those of us who can only imagine the hardships of living through the Depression is that our writer's daily activities were as normal, and as fun, and as mundane, as our own daily lives. Now our author did not include many details. The diary is a factual depiction of who, what, when, and where. Only in the most desperate situations do we find out how our writer feels about the facts at hand. But enough can be read in between the lines to flesh out a story that one day will be told about a woman who loved to visit her family and friends, went to the movies often, enjoyed picnicking on the Nueces and Frio Rivers in Texas and fishing in Galveston. She cooked, and ironed, and cleaned laundry, and picked pecans. And she got so tired, or bored, she would do absolutely nothing some days! (Sound familiar?)
Our writer's heart was revealed when her family got sick or when she got sick. She nursed her husband back to health, and she went in and out of the hospital because of some unidentified ailment. And she would feel so guilty for being sick and would fear that her husband was angry with her for being sick. But the most tragic story began when her son's temperature hit 104. His 104-105 fever broke for only two out of at least eight days. The doctor said the son had typhus fever and his mother was worried sick. When his fever broke, her son spoke nonsense and his left arm was useless. The doctor gave him stronger medicine.
And then nothing. The diary ends.
Earlier this year I sent a list of clues I had gleaned from the diary to my Bertling cousins to get their help in identifying the author of the diary. Because my grandmother, a Bertling, gave me the diary, and the writer mentioned visiting the Bertlings, uncles and aunts of her husband, I hoped my Bertling cousins would recognize enough to identify our writer. Although we all recognized some names, none of us could identify our writer's husband whose first name was Roland, or their two sons R.A. and Gurnee.
Then, last month, out of the blue a person who was researching a cousin who had married an Olivia Bertling sent me an email. As these emails often do, this one included what information she had on this particular Bertling and she asked for any additional information I could provide. Not having any information on Olivia, a great aunt of mine, I was thrilled to have the information. But not as thrilled as I was to discover that Olivia had a son named Roland. And Roland's wife was born in 1894. These two facts were enough to identify a woman who had eluded me for five years.
Mary Frances Granger, born 1894, was the author of the diary.
Mary, who had been quite ill herself when she wrote in the diary, died only two years after her last entry in the diary. She was 50 years old. Her husband, Roland A. Granger, would survive her for another 13 years.
And her son? R.A. likely died from the typhus fever. He is buried with his parents at Oddfellows Cemetery in Gonzales County, Texas. Hence the end of the diary.