Ida in Colorado: Tale of the
photos
The
cast of characters: Three generations of Wolfs.
·
Frank Joseph Wolf (1852-1927) m. Eva Marie Hertling (1853-1937)
o
Mayme (1876-1911) m. 1896 William Walter
(1870-1901) and m. ~1910 Carl Miller
§
Oscar (1897-?)
§
Amelia (1899-1920)
o
Ottilia (1878-1968) m. 1903 Stuart Reinhard
(1879-1959)
§
Franklin (1906-1993)
§
Francis (1911-?)
o
Ida
(1880-1915) m. 1908 Herbert A. Bushu
(1879-1957)
§
Pauline (1909-1988)
§
Herbert C (1910-1968)
o
Elizabeth (1883-1982) m. ~1926 Dennis
Fitzpatrick
o
Henry (1885-1907)
o
Francis George (1887-1968) m. Nov. 1912 Mary
Frances Grubb (1892-1979)
§
William R. (1925- living)
o
Rose Katherine (1890-1913) m. 1909 Clyde J.
Phillips (1885-1945)
§
Clyde J (1910-1920)
§
Pauline (1912-2001)
o
Pauline (1893-1978) m. 1914 Melvin Bushu
(1882-1928)
§
Elizabeth (1915-1987)
§
Marietta (1916-2000)
o
Ray (1897-1959) m. 1919 Marjorie Mullen
(1900-1990)
§
Raymond T. (1920-2000)
§
Frank (Bud) (1922- living)
§
Thomas (1925-1997)
PREAMBLE
A friend has been helping me clean
up a few very old pictures so that the faces are clear enough to identify. This
isn't as easy a task as you'd think, and it's complicated by the fact that we
have so few photos of the Wolf family, and none of the faces in them are
identified. My initial interest was in three family pictures, two taken in
front of Mame (Mary) Wolf Walters Miller's home, and one, taken in an unknown
spot, of most of the adult family (Rose is missing). Each of the photos raises
interesting questions, but that is another essay.
In an effort to identify the faces
in THESE photos, I consulted other old photos in my possession, and as is so
often the case, in looking at something with a different goal in mind, I saw
new stuff. So this essay is about a small set of personal photos that were
taken when Ida Wolf Bushu, my grandmother, was out west trying to be cured of
"consumption."
The photos from her time in the
west are immensely sad. There are three that appear to have been taken the same
day, and feature great-grandmother Eva and her 3-year-old granddaughter
Pauline, another of three adult women with child Pauline, and a final one of
two women, one in a coat, greeting one another on a porch. The back of this one
says “Aunt Betty Denver Col.” All three pictures are taken in the same place,
what appears to be the front of a rustic cabin. There is a fourth photo, but
its association, if any, with the rest is unknown. This one is of two women on
a porch or balcony, though probably not the same porch as the other three (but
possibly at the same building).
I should mention that these photos,
all but the one of four women, have identifying names on the back, written in mother’s
distinctive handwriting. The problem is that it isn’t clear when Pauline made
the notes: before or after the onset of Alzheimers. I’m pretty sure there is at
least one error; I doubt the photos were taken in Denver, as mom claimed. But
is this mistake made because that’s what she was told, or was she disabled
enough that she no longer remembered? Regardless, this one error leaves open
the possibility that she misidentified the few people she named. Despite
evidence that I shouldn’t, I’ve decided to believe mother’s identifications.
BACKGROUND
Ida Wolf Bushu's story is tragic.
Born in 1880, she married a bit late for her era, in 1908 when she was 28. She
had two children quickly, Pauline in September of 1909 and Herbert C. in 1910,
but then fell ill with what we know was tuberculosis. I was told family stories
about how Ida went to Colorado to be cured, about how she slept on a cold porch
because it was believed the cold air and high altitude would be good for her.
But Ida didn't stay in Colorado, and she wasn't cured. She went home and died
in Mt. Carmel (her obituary says at her parents' home) in March of 1915.
That is an awfully skeletal story
for the woman who gave her daughter and me her rotten eyesight, so I have been
trying to learn more. But mother didn't talk much, Grandfather not at all, and
the civil records are pretty slim. I have her baptismal record and her
appearance in the 1900 census. She was too young for the 1880 census, and the
1890 census is gone. The 1910 census showed her married and still living in Mt.
Carmel, and then she's gone.
[A quick diversion. Ida is the
third child of Frank and Eva to become ill, and the first to be sent elsewhere
for treatment. Cousin Bill Wolf said he thought (and I stress the thought part,
because as we all know, what we remember may have a very loose relationship
with the facts) that one reason Ida's children didn't inherit anything when
Eva, Ida's mother, died was because her father paid for her treatment out west.
I've seen great grandfather's will and this is patently false; Pauline and Herb
were in the will. What happened to mother’s inheritance after her grandfather
died is anyone’s guess. But my bet is great grandfather paid for Ida’s treatment
out west because he'd already lost two children to TB (Mayme and Henry), and he
and Eva were frantic to break the family curse. They failed. They would lose
another daughter, Rose, to the disease and a granddaughter, Amelia Walters, Mayme's
child.]
THE SEARCH
Back to our story. I have really
wanted to make this lovely woman real to me. I probably should have tried
tracking down her school records (I’ve done some of that) and such, but
instead, I went looking for her in Colorado. And, well, that's impossible; how
does one find one sick woman temporarily living in a big state? So, as almost
everyone knows, instead I've been chasing down Wolf ancestors (and had more
success than I thought possible).
But then, Erich the photographer
brought me cleaned up versions of those two old photos of the family, and I sat
down with magnifying lens to see if I could figure out what these ancestors
looked like. I wish I could say this process was easy, but it wasn't.
Eva and Frank Wolf produced children who look like, well, each
other. I'm not great with faces, and so I've spent a lot of time poring
over these photos, trying to tell everyone apart.
To help with my task, I dug out
other photos -- including those Colorado pictures -- read what was on the back,
and tried to use that knowledge to put names to faces. The Colorado photos are
both easy and hard. Easy because by the time Ida is there, Mame is dead of TB, and
Ottilia and Rose are married with children, narrowing down who the women in the
pictures might be. Ida helped me; she posed with a distinctive cocked hip in
the family pictures, and the woman in a black skirt is posed a bit like that. And
the more I stare at her face in other pictures, the more the face in this one
looks the same. So I think Black Skirt is Ida. Child Pauline is easy, as is
grandmother Eva. So what about the other women? Not a clue. Both Elizabeth and
Pauline were possible visitors, but the posing in the three-women-and-a-child
photo is very odd. One woman is very much in the background. And the
picture of the woman in the coat and hat? It says “Aunt Betty,” so I have to
assume Aunt Betts was in Colorado at this time.
Back to the photo of three women with
child Pauline. I was pretty sure about Ida. But the other two? I turned
to another photo in the collection, one that is identified in mother's
handwriting as Mary Wolf and Pauline Wolf "at Stratton Park." There’s
no date with the photo, and so there’s no way to know if it’s taken at the same
time as the other photos, but I sensed that it was. Setting, clothes and people
suggest that.
The date of that photo is
important: Was it taken around the time that Ida was taking the cure, or at
some other time? In the photo, Pauline Wolf appears to be a young adult woman.
Since she was born in 1893, I think it’s safe to assume this picture wasn’t
taken before 1910 when she was 17, and probably later.
The other woman is identified as
Mary Wolf, and if this is true, we have two candidates for her. Mary (Mayme, Ida’s sister) was born in 1876,
married in 1896, had two children and was widowed by 1901. She died of TB in
1911. Anything is possible, of course, but it’s hard to imagine that she went
to Colorado as a widow with two kids. Given the age that Pauline appears, I
think it’s likely that Mayme was dying or gone when this picture was taken.
The only other Mary Wolf is Frank
Wolf's wife, Mary Grubb. They were married in November of 1912. To me it seems
likely that the picture of Mary Wolf and Pauline Wolf was taken after 1910,
perhaps after Nov. 1912. (Mother was inconsistent in her naming habits.
Sometimes women who were single when a picture was taken were provided with
their married names on the photos. But sometimes not. So the picture could have
been taken before Frank and Mary were married or after.)
And it suddenly hit me that the
Stratton Park thing might be a CLUE, so I headed back online, learned that
Stratton Park is part of Colorado Springs, and that Colorado Springs was
extremely popular for those trying to recover from "consumption."
More traipsing around, this time
googling the name Stratton. I found a story about William Stratton, gold miner,
major philanthropist and founder of sanitoria in and around Colorado Springs.
Okay, I say to myself. So Ida could well have been in Colorado Springs. How do
I find out where?
I read about the sanitoria of her
day, and that didn't help. A couple were run by nuns, but I was reasonably sure
Ida was in a cabin of some sort, and many of these places sounded more like
hospitals. So I asked Jay how he felt about going to Colorado Springs, and
he liked the idea until he asked why, and I told him, "um, maybe see if I
can find records of my grandmother when she might have been living there
temporarily sometime in 1913 . . . ."
So instead of going to Colorado
Springs, I logged onto Ancestry.com and managed to work my way to the Colorado
Springs City Directory lists. Finding that the directories stopped with 1912 was
sobering. (As usual, that has changed; there’s now a directory for 1914 and
some later ones, but they aren’t relevant here.) In the photos that include
Pauline (born Sept, 1909), she looks about 3-4; I know Ida died in 1915. I
feared 1912 was too early.
In order to put a city directory
(or any book) on line, someone makes digital images (pictures) of each page,
just as they are. Some books are searchable, meaning you can type in the name
Bushu, and the program will look for that name.
But city directories aren't searchable, so it takes a while to find what
you're looking for, if it's there. (At least they weren’t when I first located
them; they are now, a scant two months later.)
But I didn't let this scare me off.
I accessed the 1912 directory, located the index, figured out about where the
residents' pages would begin, and started looking at the pages at
144. Ooh, way too early. Try 160.
Nope, still the As. But finally, page 194, I find her.
"Bushu, Herbert A. (Mrs. Ida
K.) r. Camp Stratton."
I am unable to believe that this is
anyone other than grandmother; the name, the place, the year? For there to be
two Ida Bushus, married to Herbert A. Bushu, boggles the mind. (I will seek
corroborating evidence.) So in 1912 she's living at Camp Stratton, which sounds
a lot like a rustic place where one might be trying to get well. Her baby boy
(born in December of 1910) is at home, I think, with his Bushu relatives. Mom
is with Ida, though I don't know if it's temporary or permanent. Ida is sick
enough to need, and be willing take, the cure, and it's a pretty rough one.
And, of course, it doesn't work.
So there we have it. Here are the
pictures. In the photo of the three woman, I think we have Ida on the left,
Pauline Wolf on the right, and either Elizabeth Wolf or Mary Grubb Wolf
(Frank's wife), in the rear. They're at Camp Stratton, Colorado Springs,
Colorado. Comparing the photo I have of Mary Grubb Wolf to this one tells me
that she is the woman in the background.
And why might Mary be there? Well,
this is wild speculation but: Frank G. and Mary Grubb were married in November
of 1912. I have a wonderful picture of them on horseback in what looks like the
Rockies, exchanging a precarious kiss. I think they were there in Colorado, and
Mary may have chosen to visit her new sister-in-law.
SUMMING UP
I'm not sure why working all this
out is so satisfying. We have a lot of public records, enough to piece together
our family story in a fair amount of factual detail. We all knew that Ida spent time in Colorado, so
determining where shouldn't be that momentous.
And yet for me it is, I think
because the census and other records show the public face of our lives, and
Ida's time in Colorado, trying to get well so she can raise her children and
love her husband, is personal. The farther back in time we go, the fuzzier our
picture will become. And the farther we advance into the future, the harder it
will become to make these ancestors flesh and blood. Giving substance and life to the people of
our past is my gift to the future.
CODA
I’ve been trying to find out more
about Camp Stratton, and I’ve hit a brick wall. It’s a real place; at least 25
people were living there in 1912. But it isn’t listed in the 1912 city
directory as a street, a hotel, rooming house, boarding house, furnished rooms,
hotel, hospital, or sanitarium. There’s
a Myron Stratton Home but it’s for the poor and destitute. There’s a Stratton
Park, and in the 1914 directory, Camp Stratton (a street) ends near there.
Recall that the picture of Pauline and Mary was taken at Stratton Park, so
perhaps there was something residential there.
CODA #2
In the fall of 2014 Susan and I
visited Colorado Springs in the hope of finding Camp Stratton. Despite serious
research in libraries and historical societies and conversations with
archivists, we found nothing that told us anything. We know the place existed –
it’s named in a city directory – but it has vanished from time, place, and
memory. However, we did determine that it's possible Ida's parents were renting a house in the area. And it appears that Elizabeth was staying with Ida, at least part of the time. I am soothed by the notion she wasn't alone.
Meanwhile, here are the pictures.
Back says, "Aunt Mary Wolf and Aunt Pauline, Stratton Park, CO."
This one says “Aunt Betty Denver
Col.” Pauline’s handwriting.
Below clockwise: Mary (in back) Pauline Wolf,
Pauline Bushu, and Ida Wolf Bushu.
