The family of Henry W. and Elizabeth (Fuchs) Brack, Otis Kansas, 1947. On the front porch of Henry and Elizabeth’s “town” house. digital image, original in the possession of the author.
There are a lot of people in this photograph. This is my mother’s family. She’s the dark haired girl in the back row on the left hand side of the photo. These are her maternal uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents – and of course her parents and siblings. The year is 1947 and the families pictured here had just begun to grow. My mother had 19 first cousins on her mother’s side of the family and only 6 of them are in this picture. And Mom had dozens of second cousins – yet to be born. This large, close-knit family was a total mystery to me when I started doing family history in the 1990s.
I sort of knew my great-grandmother, the older woman in the dark dress near the center of the first row. She lived until 1974 and visited us once or twice in Florida. And I knew my aunts and uncles, two of whom are pictured with my grandparents next to and in front of my mother. Occasionally I heard mention of cousins of my mother and the pranks they played on each other. Very, very occasionally she mentioned an aunt or uncle. But these people weren’t present in her life anymore and they were never present in my life. And I vaguely assumed that the family was small (like my father’s) and had drifted apart.
It wasn’t until I discovered this picture (and the actual size of Mom’s family) that I began to think about the lack of connection. And I started to ask questions of my mother and discovered a sad tale.
Apparently my grandmother’s family were very close for many years. My grandparents lived with Henry and Elizabeth when my Mom was born, and so did their oldest son Aaron, whose daughter was the same age as my mother. There were lots of family get-togethers – holidays, reunions, Sunday dinners, weddings, christenings and so on. The majority of the aunts and uncles lived within less than an hours drive. Henry and Elizabeth had both a large house in town and a large house on the farm. They were prosperous and very hard working farm people who had been successful and who counted on their sons to continue the farm while they lived more and more in town as they aged. And that material prosperity appears to have been the wedge that broke the family apart. At least it was the beginning. Henry died in 1957 (the year before I was born) and there was some quarreling regarding inheritance. My grandmother apparently said a few thing about favorites and injustice. Hard words and hurt feelings. But Elizabeth was still very much alive and things were mostly patched up. Except that as she aged she couldn’t keep up the two houses and the farm. Oldest son Aaron predeceased her which raised inheritance questions again. Then Elizabeth went into a nursing home and the hard feelings resurfaced. My grandmother, again, claimed injustice. And the quarrels became open rifts. Grandmother spoke to her sisters and brother less and less. During our infrequent trips to Kansas she never mentioned them. Mom felt uncomfortable seeking out her aunts and cousins on those trips. And so things widened. And then Elizabeth died. And the quarrels became very open. The town house was sold and there was the question of furnishings and what should happen to them. And family heirlooms. There were a very large number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren and shouldn’t they be considered in dividing up furniture and heirlooms. I guess the fights got pretty awful. I know that my grandmother stopped speaking to her younger brother and her oldest two sisters. Of course, no one actually “won.” Much of the furniture ended up going out for the junk man and the grandchildren got “assigned” an heirloom. And that was that. Except for the hard feelings on my Grandmother’s side and the ruptured relationships.
In the early 1990’s when I started asking questions, I took a couple of trips to Otis Kansas. To visit the house in the picture, wander around town and get a feel for a place that had been very important in my mother’s life. And to my surprise, when I stopped at Town Hall to ask about the location of a former telephone exchange where my grandmother had worked, the clerk immediately recognized my mother’s name and insisted that I had to talk to Mrs. Lola Brack. Lola was the widow of my grand uncle Aaron, mother of my mom’s cousin and childhood best friend Marla and still lived in Otis. They called her and then I drove across town (it probably would have been quicker to walk – its a tiny town) and visited with her and with my great aunt Viola who just happened to be there with her. They are both in this photo. They were warm and welcoming and so glad to “meet” me, although they said they’d known me as a small baby. They never mentioned my grandmother, although they asked after my mother and aunts and uncles.
Almost a decade later, I met my grand aunt Angeline who was living in Florida. She told me stories about when my mother had come to live with her in Chicago for a year and asked about my uncles and aunts and cousins. She lived with her daughter, Barbara, who is a potter and who gifted my children with small sculptures of hatching sea turtles. Angie is in the photo, although Barbara isn’t as she hadn’t been born. Near the end of our visit Angie told me, with great sadness, that my grandmother was easily insulted and prickly and just didn’t seem to be able to let things go.
My grandmother has been gone for decades, nearly 30 years. I miss her sometimes. She wasn’t the easiest person to get along with for me or for my Mom. And now I know she wasn’t the easiest person for her large, close knit family to deal with either.