Bertha C. Sears and Harry A. Mayhew

      ©  Kathy Duncan, 2022

Bertha C. Sears was the daughter of William Lincoln Sears and Harriet "Hattie" Reed. They evidently divorced, and Hattie became a housekeeper. 

In 1903, a birthday party was held for Bertha in Springfield, Illinois, at the home of her aunt, Ida Jane (Reed) Maurer, wife of Augustus F. Maurer. Bertha also frequently traveled with her aunt to Indiana. Note that Harry Mayhew was also in attendance at this party. This was Bertha's fourteenth birthday. Harry would have been fifteen years old. This indicates that they knew each other at least ten years before they married.

This article from 1904 places them together at another party. This time the party was at the Mayhew home and apparently, Bertha Sears provided the entertainment. It's possible that she was hired.  

In 1905 Bertha Sears married Thomas Meagher. Their marriage lasted only a few years. She divorced him in 1911, accusing him of domestic abuse. This article appeared in the Daily Illinois State Register on 1 September 1911.

Bertha's second marriage was to Harry Mayhew. They married on 4 December 1913 -  less than eight months after the death of Harry's first wife, Opal Miller, and before he went to trial for her murder. They married in LaPorte County, Indiana, which suggests that they chose to marry away from family, friends, and neighbors in Springfield, Illinois. The newspaper articles about Opal's death and all the trial delays had dominated the local newspapers for months. More than likely, they did not want their marriage to be hashed out in the papers.

Over the next few years, Bertha's name occasionally appeared in the newspapers as she held offices in various local women's organizations or entertained in her home. For all outward appearances, they seemed to be living an idyllic life. 

However, in 1920, Bertha filed for divorce from Harry. It's important to remember that in this time period there were limited grounds for divorce - usually abandonment, adultery, and domestic abuse. Bertha cited abuse as grounds for her divorce. 

However, Bertha went to a lot of trouble to document the instances of abuse. And the records certainly show escalating violence. It's not that hard to imagine that the man who almost strangled her to death was also a man who might force chloroform on his first wife to force her into undergoing an abortion that she did not want. It's worth noting that Bertha and Harry never had any children. One wonders if she also was pressured to undergo illegal operations to keep her mother-in-law and husband happy. 

Opal's mother Mary Ellen (Brown) Miller Brown was still living in 1920, and I can't help but wonder what went through her mind as she read this account in her newspaper. 

Opal (Miller) Mayhew's Illegal Operation

     ©  Kathy Duncan, 2022

Opal (Miller) Mayhew was the daughter of Alfred E. Miller and Mary Ellen Brown. She was also the granddaughter of John DeLoss Brown. Opal died on 20 April 1913 in Springfield, Illinois. The direct cause of death was septicemia, following an abortion. However, there were several contributing factors in her death: an inability to access birth control because it was illegal, a controlling mother-in-law who threatened to kick Opal and her husband out if she continued with her pregnancy, and a husband so tied to his mother's apron strings that he was willing to force Opal to have an abortion - to the extent that he was willing to chloroform her himself during the operation.

Prior to the illegal operation, Opal had gone to visit her mother Mary Ellen (Brown) Miller Walker. During that visit, Opal confided that she was pregnant and that her mother-in-law was pressuring her to abort, but Opal did not want to. The mother-in-law was holding their residence in the household over their heads, threatening to throw out Opal and Harry and their little son William A. Mayhew. Opal related that they had saved up money to move out and had even acquired a few pieces of furniture. Her mother urged her not to have the operation. However, the mother-in-law was also insisting that they could not move out. 

On the evening of Friday, 11 April 1913, Opal Mayhew underwent an abortion. Whether she was pressured into it or forced into it is unknown. Her husband anesthetized her, probably with chloroform, while the operation was performed by Dr. J. O. Salyers. It would come out at trial that Slayers had performed two previous abortions on her and had told her after the second one that she should not have any more because she would not survive. Opal became ill soon after the "operation." By Tuesday, 15 April, she was unconscious. No one in the household - her husband, her mother-in-law, her father-in-law, or Dr. Salyers sought additional medical care for her - because then they would have to reveal what had happened. By Thursday, 18 April 1913, she was even more ill - she had not regained consciousness and would not. Still, no additional medical care was summoned for her. However, her mother was finally notified that she was ill. A doctor was finally summoned on Friday. One imagines that Opal's mother may have insisted on a doctor being called. However, Opal died on Saturday, 20 April 1913. 

Harry and his parents planned to hold a funeral for Opal from their residence on Tuesday, 22 April 1913. No doubt they were hoping that once she was buried, her cause of death would be hidden.

Note that Opal's funeral notice appeared in the newspaper on Monday, 21 April 1913. In the meantime, Opal's brothers and mother, suspecting that she had been the victim of an illegal operation, had gone to the coroner's to demand an inquest. By the evening of 21 April, Harry Mayhew and Dr. J.O. Salyers were in the coroner's office providing their statements as to the events that caused Opal's death. Their initial statements were actually confessions with each man dramatically threatening to kill himself. They were questioned through the night, and the story was published in the newspapers on Tuesday, 22 April 1913, the day that was to be Opal's funeral. The coroner ordered that the funeral be postponed so that an autopsy could be performed.

The autopsy was performed, and by Wednesday, 23 April 1913, the coroner determined that Opal died as the result of an illegal operation.

Opal's funeral was finally held on Thursday, 24 April 1913, from a funeral home in Springfield. It was reported in the newspaper after the fact to prevent curiosity seekers from attending. 

Opal was buried in the Mayhew family plot in Oak Ridge Cemetery. Her name may have been added to the marker for her father-in-law and his first two wives. It's interesting to note that her mother-in-law Emma Mayhew seems to be buried in an unmarked grave.

The day after the funeral, Opal's mother, Mary Ellen (Brown) Miller Walker, testified before the coroner's inquisition.

The case went to the grand jury, resulting in indictments for murder against Dr. J.O. Salyers and Harry Mayhew. After a series of delays, the case finally went to trial almost a year later in late March 1914. In the midst of those delays, Harry Mayhew married Bertha C. Sears on 4 December 1913 in La Porte, Indiana. Harry's residence is reported as St. Louis, Missouri. Evidently, he had fled the scrutiny and gossip of Springfield residents. In less than eight months, Harry Mayhew had literally moved on. 

Bertha had divorced her first husband Thomas Meagher in 1911 on the grounds of cruelty. She asked for alimony and the custody of their child. 

In court, both men's defense involved putting the blame on their victim. They claimed that Opal had tried to perform the abortion herself and that Dr. Salyers was called in to perform an operation to save her life. There was no accounting for why that operation was performed in the home or why no additional medical attention was provided for her until she was on her deathbed. Both men threw themselves on the mercy of the court because they were fathers and family men, and their incarceration would be to the detriment of their children. Dr. John O. Salyers in particular put on a show of being attentive to his young daughter, who was in the courtroom. Opal's son William A. Mayhew was also in attendance with his father and his Mayhew grandparents. After voting three times, the jury finally acquitted both of them. 

Frank N W Burton Obituaries

    ©  Kathy Duncan, 2022

At long last, two obituary/death notices for Frances Nash Williams Burton have turned up. Although he died in Rutherford County, Tennessee, both notices appear in his previous state of North Carolina, where the Burton family had been long established.

One notice, published in The North Carolina Star, provides his death date of 17 June 1843:

The other notice, published in the Raleigh Register and North Carolina Gazette, provides additional information about his educational background. I knew that he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1799, but did not know that he was the valedictorian. 

Old House Location, Fred and Myrtle (Dendy) Duncan

  ©  Kathy Duncan, 2022

Many people don't use Facebook because of the negativity and drama, which, granted, is the downside of the social media site. The upside is that a lot of family and genealogy information travels through it on a regular basis that would be missed otherwise.

Someone from the area where my parents were raised posted this picture recently. It happens to be the footprint of the first house where my paternal grandparents, Fred and Myrtle (Dendy) Duncan, lived when they first married. My father was born there.

The jonquils mark the exterior of the old house. This spot is currently located in the Burkett's pasture off of County Rd 3325 N west of Avery, Texas and north of Hwy 82. The house was some distance off the east side of the road. My great-grandparents, Richard and Susie (Nevill) Duncan lived on the west side of the same road, and a bit south, closer to what is now Hwy 82. 

Lavinia B. (Murfree) Burton's Death Notice, 1881

   ©  Kathy Duncan, 2022

This is yet another elusive woman's death notice from the late nineteenth century. Finding this one has been an ongoing challenge. The kicker is that I stumbled over it accidentally while running a search for Col. Robert Burton. 

This is an obituary for Col. Robert Burton's daughter-in-law, Lavinia B. (Murfree) Burton, who died on 22 January 1881 in Smithville, Bullit County, Kentucky at the age of 85. Other keywords that ought to work in a search for this obituary are "L. B. Burton," "Jno. W. Burton," "J. E. Carter," and "Hutchings G. Burton." 

Notice that Lavinia (Murfree) Burton's own identity is subsumed by the men in her life: her son, John W. Burton; her son-in-law, J. E. Carter; her father-in-law, Col. Robert Burton; and her husband's first cousin, Governor Hutchins Gordon Burton. Noticeably missing are people more closely connected to her: her husband, F. N. W. Burton aka Francis Nash Williams Burton; and her own father, Col. Hardy Burton, also of the Revolution. At least, her own initials are used - L. B. Burton. Relentless searches for Lavinia Burton's death notice or obituary have resulted in nothing over the years. Notice in this death notice that The Wilmington Morning Star added the notation that Lavenia was the daughter-in-law of Col. Robert Burton. I am curious as to how they connected the dots between the two. This death notice also contains the hint that the original was published in the Tarboro Southerner. 

A search through a North Carolina newspaper database turned up the original version in the Tarborough Southerner, which is minus the notation that she was Col. Robert Burton's daughter-in-law. 

Sally (Brickell) Murfree's Obit, 1802

  ©  Kathy Duncan, 2022

Women's obituaries in the early period of our country are very uncommon. Sally (Brickell) Murfree, however, was from a social class of women who occasionally were honored with an obituary. Sally (Brickell) Murfree was about 45 years old at the time of her death in 1802. She left behind a husband, Col. Hardy Murfree, and eight surviving children. Her children's ages ranged from twenty-one to one. 

Her obituary provides the new information that she had suffered a long and lingering illness.

This illness may explain Sally's appearance in her surviving portrait. She appears in the portrait to be much older than 45 even taking into consideration that people aged more in appearance then. Sally (Brickell) Murfree was from a southern class of women who did not perform their own housework or work outdoors. In fact, she would have shielded her complexion with various hats and bonnets throughout her lifetime. We might expect her to have aged less rapidly than her working-class peers. 

Her portrait is estimated to have been painted in the late 1700s when she would have been 35 to 45 years old. Her gaunt appearance might be the product of a long, lingering illness. As ill as she appears in her portrait, the painter may have taken great pains to make her appearance more flattering by darkening her hair and decreasing any wrinkles that she had. It would seem, though, that her last pregnancy might have further contributed to her decline in health. 

Because of her early death, Sally's youngest daughters, including Lavinia B. (Burton) Murfree, were left to board at the Moravian school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, when their father, Hardy Murfree, pulled up stakes and removed to Tennessee. 

Earnest Sisters - Pioneer Women of Sangamon County, Illinois

 ©  Kathy Duncan, 2022

Many of the questions that a lot of new researchers ask in online discussion groups focus on whether and to what extent they should include information about siblings and siblings' families in their data. Many express the desire to trim their family trees to eliminate the "clutter" of siblings and siblings' families. Remarkably, "experienced" researchers brag about reducing their trees to just their direct line and urge rookie researchers to follow suit.

This minimalist approach both bemuses and baffles me. In genealogy research, more is more. And more is always better. 

Knowing your ancestor's siblings almost always leads to valuable information that would otherwise be overlooked because it may be unrecognizable. The best information, of course, takes us beyond names, dates, and places, and into actual family lore, which happens to be the most difficult information to find. 

This is the case with two sisters named Sarah King and Mrs. James Parkinson of Sangamon, Illinois. Because I've spent a lot of time analyzing the branches of my husband's family, I recognize them as Sarah (Earnest) King and Mahala (Earnest) Parkinson, who were also the sisters of my husband's ancestor, Rachel (Earnest) Brown. 

In 1879, Rev. R. W. Diller asked for surviving pioneer women of Sangamon County to send him their memories of early life in the county. Sisters Sarah King and Mahala Parkinson answered the call, penning a joint letter to him. Their recollection never names their parents, Jacob Earnest and Elizabeth Sims, nor does it name their other seven siblings. I have to know who those people are through my research and to realize that my husband's 3x great-grandmother is also a daughter in that household. One portion of the sisters' letter recalls how they braved the danger of wolves and panthers in their trek to school by walking with the oldest children in the front and back with the youngest in-between. Rachael might have been one of the younger girls, trudging through the snow, sandwiched between older siblings, prodding her to hurry along while they kept a terrified lookout for hungry wolves and panthers. If I had taken the minimalist approach by pruning my family tree down to the trunk, this rich account of the family's life in early Sangamon County would be lost to me. 

I was alerted to the existence of the sisters' letter when I searched the Sangamon County History blog. That blog entry also informed me that Rev. R. W. Diller had the letters included in the History of Sangamon County, which was published in 1881. The link to the original publication was important to me because the Sangamon County History blog omitted part of the letter, and I was interested in the whole letter because more is more.

Transcript:

Pioneer Women

At the annual meeting of the Pioneers' Society, held in 1879, R. W. Diller read a number of letters received from pioneer women of the county. The following were among the number:

Mrs. James Parkinson and Mrs. Sarah King, of Curran

"Friend Diller - In response to your request that you would like to hear from the women portion of the old settlers of Sangamon county, we will give you some of our experience. Our father moved from Kentucky to St. Clair county, Illinois, in the year 1816 or 1817 - lived there till the fall of 1819; then moved to what was then called the Sangamo country, and settled on Spring creek, ten miles west of where Springfield was afterwards located. Our father built a camp, which we lived in until winter, - considerable snow and very cold, - then built a cabin; had to thaw the snow and ice off the boards to lay the roof; then put poles on to hold the boards down. That done, they make puncheons and laid part of the floor, and put up bedsteads of some kind; then had to make beds under the bedsteads for us children to sleep on, there being nine children and three grown persons. The cabin where there was no floor, we used for hearth and fire-place, leaving a hole in the roof for the smoke to go out at. This way we lived the first winter. After that we done a little better; built a pen at one end of the house for the sheep, to keep the wolves from killing them, and the wolves serenaded us nearly every night. The principal part of the provender for our stock was elm and lin brush. Our men would cut down trees for the stock to eat the branches and bark off. Our breadstuffs had to be brought from near St. Louis, about one hundred miles. It was principally corn bread made up with cold water and baked in a skillet or oven - was commonly called corn-dodger. Our meat was in abundance, we had venison, turkey and prairie chicken and wild honey for all that was out. Had coffee about once a week, generally of a Sunday morning, the balance of the time, milk and water mixed. This was for the first season, after that we had enough milk without mixing it with water. As for our clothes, we had to raise, pick, spin and weave cotton to make clothes for winter and summer; we also made linsey. The fist indigo we had, we raised; used that shumach berries, white walnut bark and other barks for coloring.

"Now for the cotton picking. Mother would every night fill a pint cup full of cotton in the seed for each one of us, and lay it down before the fire and tell us when we picked it we could go to bed, and we had it to do. Then we pitched in and warmed our cotton, and the warmer we made it, the better it picked, so we would take a good sweat. The next day that had to be carded and spun, so we would soap the cotton some card and some spin, and when we would get enough spun and colored to make a dress apiece, we would put it in the loom and weave it. It did not take fifteen or twenty yards to make a dress, nor thirty or forty days to make one, althought [sic] they were made by hand. Now, to give you a more perfect idea of the cloth and fashion of our dresses at that time, we will here show you a sample of one of our mother's dresses, which she wore about fifty-five years ago - not only mother, but some of the rest of us young ladies. This is the only one we have saved, it being our mother's. We have often thought and talked of exhibiting this dress before to old settlers' meetings, but have failed to do it, but when our friend Diller gave us such a pressing invitation to take a part in contributing to the entertainment, we could resist no longer, so we thought we would give a little sketch of our doings for the first two or three years in this county. Now for our calico dresses. We cannot show you a sample, as we have not saved one for prosperity, but it would be something similar to the cotton, one in number of years and make. Before we could get one we had to make jeans and swap for calico, or else dig ginseng and smat. We had a neighbor woman who had a small baby, and had no cradle, and she conceived the idea of substituting her apron for a cradle; tie the baby in it, then the apron around her neck, and spun on the big wheel in order to make clothing for her family. As for schooling, that was not very much. Our first school we went to after we came here was four miles, taught by a man named Andrew. Four or five of us went by turns. The youngest was nine years old. Went on foot, and the road was a path through the high grass and woods, and the stars were often shining when we got home, and there were wolves and panthers plenty. They were frequently seen, and you can well imagine how we felt when the stars began to shine. The oldest ones would form a front and read guard, and put the smallest in the middle, and hurry them along, all scared nearly to death. Our school house was a log cabin; the windows were big cracks, with paper pasted over and greased to give light. Our seats were split logs, with legs, and about four miles from us. It was a Methodist church, and when we had company we went on foot, one behind the other in the path.

Mrs. James Parkinson

Mrs. Sarah King"