Week 6 - Valentine

 Week 6 - Valentine

With Valentine's day a week away, here are some bittersweet love stories. I have two “love stories” shared by people who are no longer with us.  One is from my maternal grandmother Mildred (Carlock) Canaday.  The other is from my cousin Tad’s 3rd great grandmother, one of my favorite people I never met.  She was not only a wife and mother living out on the prairie, but also a writer, artist, and keeper of family lore. 

I’m pretty sure this first story was handed down to Grandma Mid from her mother, Grandma Carlock. My 2nd great grandparents were Elias Whetherhult and Wealthy Cherry. Wealthy Jane Cherry was the daughter of Mary Amanda Shumway and Ebenezer Griffin Cherry.  According to the records I could find,  Mary Amanda died in January of 1883; Wealthy married Elias Whetherhult in June of 1883; and my great grandmother Mary Valerie Whetherhult was born on September 12th 1883.  (Perhaps it was a “shotgun wedding?”) Wealthy and Elias then had twin boys, Henry C and Gilbert S, born August 27th, 1884.  Henry died in 1885 from a stomach illness that left him dehydrated.  Elias abandoned Wealthy at some point. Family lore has it that Elias abandoned Wealthy, and Wealthy, struggling to feed her children, took to stealing produce from the neighbor’s garden.  The neighbor’s name was Jerry Dill. One day Jerry caught her stealing from his garden. One thing led to another, and Wealthy married Jerry Dill in July 1888. They produced a lot of children, and Grandma Carlock said he was the best step-father a girl could have. 

(Photo: Wealthy, Jerry, and unknown baby)

This next story is told by Charlotte Patterson (Taylor) Gibson.  It was posted on Ancestry by Francis F Tuning and is about Tad’s 5th great grandmother Frances “Fannie” Holliday.

The Holladays were a wealthy and proud family living in old Ireland in “County Cavan”.  They were fond of sports of all kinds.  Their estate was an “entailed estate”, that is, it could not be sold, mortgaged, nor taken for debt, for its “title deed” was “for all time to come while grass grew, or water run”, but must descend to the heirs of the Holladay family forever.”

When she was about 16 years old, [Frances] and some other girls stood in the upper story of a house watching a regiment of soldiers passing by.  One of the soldiers looked up and said to one of his companions, “There is my wife!”

   The girls heard the remark, and one of them said to Frances, “it is you he means, Fan”. But Fan did not think it was her.  The soldier evidently camped nearby, for only a short time after that Frances was walking along the street when a soldier sprang out from the alley or street corner and caught her in his arms and carried her off (grandma had forgotten where).  He had a Bible in his hand and swore by it that he was going to have her for his wife.

   It seemed to be love at first sight with both of them, for she consented to marry him and be a soldier bride.  So she became Mrs. Herdman, but he was killed in battle about six months later, leaving her a widow for about two years.  (Charlotte Patterson Taylor-Gibson)