This could equally be dedicated to a “tough man”, her husband and my second-great-grandfather Charles Eddy Wells, but the category this week was “tough woman”. I’m not sure there is any tougher thing to have to deal with than the death of one child — and Lena Minerva Gaskill Wells, my maternal second-great-grandmother, had to deal with losing far more than that.
Lena (whose given name was Laney) was born on 2 May 1860 on what was once called Wells Island*, now Wellseley Island, to William Henry Gaskill, a blacksmith and justice of the peace, and Elizabeth Staring.
She was one of three children, with a brother named George, and a sister Delia who died at age eight. There’s a fairly creepy picture of the three children together taken about 1870; because of the slow shutter speeds and the near impossibility of getting a toddler to stand still for that long, the image of Delia comes out as a total blur.
It’s hard not to imagine foreshadowing in this picture.
Lena married Charles Eddy Wells on 2 January 1883. Six months later, she gave birth to their first child, Arlouine Mary. This happened a lot more in the past than people care to admit; one study showed that by mid-1700s, more than 40% of women bore their first child less than eight months after marriage. Although it’s tempting to see a baby bump in her wedding picture, she was, in fact, only about three months’ pregnant at the time.
Charles and Lena’s wedding picture, January 1883.
In all, Lena and Charles had eleven children: my great-grandfather William Harrison Sr. (1886), Edward (1887), Elizabeth (1890), Frank (1891), Mary Ruth (1892), Edna Laura (1894), Charles Jr. (1896), Marjorie (1899), Dorothy (1902) and Carl (1904).
Only three of her children had children of their own – William, Mary Ruth, and Carl. And only three – William, Dorothy, and Carl – lived past their twenty-fourth birthday.
Elizabeth died at just over a year old in September 1891, just a couple months after the birth of her brother Frank; he died the next year at nine months, in March 1892. Edna died at nine months in 1895. Charles Jr. was born in 1896 and died at a year and a half in 1897. The community donated a four-sided small obelisk monument to four babies in the Clayton Cemetery. The familiy lore has it that all four died of diphtheria, although I have only confirmed this with Edna. It is likely that diphtheria or another epidemic disease such as scarlet fever was the culprit.
Arlie Wells, age 12 (about 1895). She died of a throat infection at age 16.
Arlouine, or “Arlie”, as her family called her, was sixteen in 1899 when she succumbed to a throat illness, perhaps a strep infection. A family letter from her aunt Leila Woodcock Wells described it to her own aunt (spelling intact):
“But I must tell you such sad news. Arlie Wells is dead; she was buried two weeks ago to day. Oh, Aunt Jane, does it seem possible that such a strong, healthy girl could die so sudden. She was sick only a few days; it was sore throat that killed her, but the Doctors said it was not diphera [diphtheria] and Charley + his wife was all tired out being up nights with Arlie and the children for they all were sick of the same thing and they wanted me to come over and help them, so of corse I went. We had not been in the house two hours before poor Arlie died.” – 12 October 1899
Eddie Wells, about 1905. He was killed three years later in a boating accident that made statewide headlines and nearly took his brother as well.
Edward Wells, Eddie to his family, was twenty in 1908 when his death made headlines across the state.
Eddie, his brother William, and their two girlfriends were returning to Round Island from the mainland at night after a date when the small boat they were using was struck by a speeding motorboat. None of them could swim; William and Nancy were saved but Eddie and Lulu, in the end of the boat with the heavy motor, sank and the bodies were not recovered til morning.
The sensational story made headlines, the motorboat drivers were charged in the first known case in New York State of vehicular manslaughter with a boat. Partly because the families did not wish the men punished for what they felt was a horrible accident, the men were acquitted.
Marjorie, who had been two months old when her sister Arlouine died, succumbed to consumption (probably tuberculosis) at age thirteen, in 1912. According to her obituary, she had been sick for about two years.
The next year, 1913, Mary Ruth married Jasper Perrigo, and in 1914 and 1915 bore her daughters Marjorie and Doris. Mary Ruth died of pneumonia in January 1916; her youngest daughter was only five months old.
Caretaker’s porch on Round Island. Top: William Patterson Wells (father of Charles), Charles and Lena Wells. Middle: Mary Ruth, Marjorie, Mary Isobel (William’s wife) and William. Bottom: Carl and Dorothy. This is the last known picture of Marjorie before her death at 13; Mary Ruth would follow in a few years. Out of the Wells children, only William, Carl, and Dorothy lived past age twenty-four.
Even for high infant mortality at the time, and an average life expectancy of 48 years in 1900, the Wells children did poorly. The average life expectancy works out to be about 24 years, half the national average. It’s one of the examples I use when anyone comes out as anti-vaccine; I am sure my great-great-grandmother Lena would have gladly given her own limbs to save even one of her children from the dread diseases of the time.
In 33 years of marriage, Lena had lost eight of her eleven children, seven to disease, one from a terrible accident. My grandfather used to write a column for a local paper, one of which contained some remembrances of his grandmother Lena. She had a collection of dolls that had belonged to “the aunts”, and he remembered how part of her was always sad about the babies she had lost.
“the aunts, the dolls, and the babies she had lost” (Marjorie and Mary Ruth Wells. Marjorie lived to be 13; Mary Ruth died at age 23, leaving behind two small girls of her own)
Lena died the day after her birthday, 3 May 1938, in Clayton, two years before her husband Charles. She was seventy-eight years old, and had suffered more loss in her lifetime than most of us can begin to imagine. Yet, my grandfather fondly recalled her sweetness and love of family.
Fifty-Two Leaves 