Mystery Monday is a
daily prompt at Geneabloggers that asks us to share mystery ancestors or
mystery records – anything in our family history research which is currently
unsolved. With any luck fellow genealogy
bloggers will lend their eyes to what has been found so far and possibly help
solve the mystery.
If you work on your family genealogy long enough, you
will surely find heroes and scoundrels, tragic stories and joyful ones. The
story I found just recently when I did a broad search for “Jollett” at
GenealogyBank is one of those Happy-Sad stories.
FATHER, 33, FINDS HIS DAUGHTER, 15
Girl Missing Since Mother’s Death
Believed in Baltimore Training School
Some time today Charles Jollett of 913 H street, who is
scarcely 33 years old, will be told that the daughter he has been seeking for
15 years is being cared for in an institution within 50 miles of where he lives
and works.
A search that has been carried on intermittently since
1915 apparently has been concluded with the information that a 15-year-old girl
bearing the name of Mary Alice Jollett is being cared for in the Rosewood
Training School at Baltimore. John Jollett, father of the girl’s father, and
his wife are in communication with the institution and they hoped to tell their
son today that his wish to see his child might be fulfilled.
In response to appeals to the Baltimore police and
notices published in Baltimore newspapers, Dr. G. W. Keating, head of the
Rosewood Training School, advised Mr. Jollett that a child bearing his name had
been placed in the home by the mother October 31, 1921. Dr. Keating’s records
tally with the facts known to the Jolletts.
Mary Alice Jollett was born to Charles Jollett and his
wife in Baltimore February 17, 1914 when the father was about 18 and the mother
about 15. At 9 months, the child suffered infantile paralysis which affected
body and mind. Husband and wife separated and for seven years the child was
cared for by the mother and at times by the mother’s parents. Charles Jollett
joined his parents in Virginia and for several years was not in communication
with his
 |
from the Evening Star, Washington DC
7 Jan 1930
GenealogyBank.com |
wife. When she died suddenly in 1922 he had no knowledge of his
daughter’s whereabouts.
Illness in the family prevented John Jollett from making
an active effort to locate the child. Some time ago his wife died. He married
again recently and he and his wife and son, who lives with them, determined to
locate the daughter. Appeals to the Baltimore police and newspapers led to the
information obtained.
The condition of Mary Alice Jollett, who soon will be 16
years old, probably will determine whether she will be left in the Rosewood
Training School or brought to her grandfather’s home. Members of the family
expressed gratification today that they might assist her and at least know that
everything possible would be done for her.
(The Rosewood Training School was established in 1888 as
The Asylum and Training School for the Feeble-Minded. In 1912 it was renamed
The Rosewood State Training School.)
How sad indeed for little Mary Alice, a child born
healthy but left mentally and physically disabled due to infantile paralysis.
How sad for a young married couple, still children themselves, to lose their
way, unable to find the strength to function as a family. I have seen in my own
family how a marriage can fall apart under the weight of emotional and physical
exhaustion that often accompanies caring for a child with physical and mental
disabilities.
While it saddened me to know that Charles lost contact
with his wife and therefore did not provide for her or their daughter, he
redeemed himself somewhat by intensifying his efforts to find Mary Alice upon
hearing his wife had died. I was proud that the search was a family affair too,
not Charles alone but with the aid of his father John.
The Charles Jollett of this story was son of John B. and Fannie
Bell Griffith Jollett. Born about 1896, Charles was the youngest of five
surviving children. His father John was a farmer like most of their neighbors
along Naked Creek in Page County, Virginia. The community was known as Jollett
Hollow, named for Charles’s grandfather John Wesley Jollett, a Methodist
preacher and sometimes post master.
By 1910, John B. had moved his family a few miles away to
the town of Shenandoah. The railroad had made Shenandoah a boom town, and there
were plentiful jobs in the various repair shops. John himself worked as a
machinist. Charles’s brother Hunter worked as a carpenter.
Perhaps it was the lure of jobs with the government
during World War I that drove the Jolletts to Baltimore, Maryland. In the 1920
census, John B. was a carpenter with the shipyard and Charles was a riveter.
But wait – what about Mary Alice? In 1920, Charles was
living with his parents in Baltimore. He was enumerated as married, but there
was no wife listed. Apparently they were already separated at that point. A
search for “Mary Alice Jollett” and “Mary Jollett” in the 1920 census produced
no match.
Then I recalled the mysterious
Mrs. Eliza Jollett from
Baltimore. Could she be the unnamed wife in the article and mother of Mary
Alice?
I examined the details:
- She was 24 when she died in 1922, giving her a date of
birth around 1898, certainly in the right time period to have married Charles
Jollett.
- They were both in Baltimore, Maryland.
- She was buried in Shenandoah, again the right
neighborhood to have known Charles’s family.
- There was no mention of a husband in Eliza’s death
notice, a strong suggestion that there had to be a good reason, such as
separation or divorce.
A search for Eliza Jollett in 1920 produced no match. So
I turned to her parents, Samuel and Eliza Watson, whom I had already found in
1900 and 1910. This time I looked for them in 1920.
No Eliza Jollett. But lookee there: a 6-year old
granddaughter “Mary Joliet”!
 |
from 1920 census
Baltimore Ward 27, Baltimore, Maryland |
No wonder I could not find her. Not only was her
name spelled incorrectly but also she is indexed as “Mary Jolest.” Just to rule
out “coincidence,” I did the math: a child 6 years old in 1920 would have been
born about 1914, depending on date of birth and date the family was enumerated.
The child would be about 16 in 1930, the same age as the Mary Alice of the news
article.
Apparently a child with physical and mental disabilities
was too much for aging grandparents to handle. Maybe putting Mary Alice in the
Rosewood Training School in 1921 was Eliza’s decision; maybe it was her parents’
decision. Maybe it was a combination. At any rate, Mary Alice was there in 1930
when Charles and his father finally found her. The news article concludes by
saying her condition would determine whether she would remain there or go home
with her father and grandfather. One of the questions in the census was whether
a person could speak English. The answer for Mary Alice was “No.”
I imagine the sense of obligation mixed with pity mixed
with relief at finally being reunited was strong, but it is not likely that
Mary Alice went home with her father. In 1940 she was still at Rosewood. At age
26, her highest level of education achieved was 0.
It is much too difficult for me to think about what the rest
of Mary Alice’s life might have been. The Rosewood Training School certainly
started out with noble intentions, but like so many asylums of its day, too
many patients and too few employees compounded by too many needs and too little
funding resulted in deterioration of buildings and services. Charges of abuse
and dehumanizing conditions spelled the end of Rosewood in 2008. I suspect Mary
Alice was there all that time. If so, she spent 80 years in Rosewood. She died 15
December 2001.
Even without a marriage record for Charles Jollett and
Eliza Watson, and even without a birth record or death record for Mary Alice, I
am convinced I have solved this mini-mystery. It is not the exhaustive search
that genealogists say I should do, but I am confident doing so will bear me
out. Sadly enough.
Wendy
© 2017, Wendy Mathias.
All rights reserved.
