Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family
history through old photographs.
This week’s Sepia Saturday photo is of a young girl in a
white dress writing at a desk. My great grandmother Mary Theresa Sheehan Killeen Walsh dressed her own little girls in dresses like that. It was the style in the early
1900s.
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| Helen Killeen Parker captioned this photo "The Royal Four." The photo dates about 1914. Killeen and Walsh sisters but am not sure who is who - - Three standing left to right LOOK like Catherine Walsh, Helen Killeen, and Julia Walsh. The one seated would have to be Lillie, Mae, or Margaret. ?? |
But white dresses were not just for little girls. When white gauze, eyelet,
voile, tulle, and lace came together, a delicate tea dress was born.
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| Lillie 1919 |
I can almost feel the dress my grandaunt Lillie Killeen
wore in 1919, likely on Easter Sunday and throughout the summer.
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| Aunt Lil late 1960s-early 1970s |
Aunt Lil always looked rather frail, almost demanding to
be pitied. She rented an apartment and lived what seemed to be a meager life.
We used to chuckle over stories of Lillie and her sisters shopping together at
the grocery store. My cousin Jennifer as a child sometimes went with them. Her
role was to run up and down the aisles fetching whatever the aunts needed to
save them time and steps. Aunt Helen and Aunt Mae would reward her with coins
and candy. Not Lillie. She never gave Jennifer a thing.
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| The Grocery Store Crew Lillie Killeen, Helen Killeen Parker, Mae Killeen Holland, and Julia Walsh Slade (my granny) |
My impression of Aunt Lil as a penny-pinching spinster dissipated
though following a recent visit with one of Aunt Mae’s granddaughters. She
recounted stories told to her by her father that revealed a different side to
my prim and proper Aunt Lil.
Aunt Lil used to say that SHE was the lucky one, that her
sisters were actually jealous of her. Why? Because she was SINGLE. These are
not her exact words, but in essence Lillie boasted, “When I come home from
work, I do not have to cook for anyone. I do not have to change diapers. I can
do whatever I want, when I want.”
What Lillie enjoyed most was her free weekends of dining
and dancing. (Who knew?) I was surprised to learn that there used to be a ferry or some
kind of ship that sailed from Norfolk to Baltimore and back on weekends,
leaving Friday night and returning Sunday. Live music and dancing and food all
night and all day! Passengers could rent a room on the boat. It was small and
not a bit luxurious, but Lillie did not care. After all, she was there for the
dancing.
Another reason Aunt Lil’s sisters were supposedly jealous
was that her money was her own to do with as she wanted. By all accounts, she
dressed very well.
Lillie must have made good money working for a doctor. I used
to think she was a nurse. After all, she dressed like a nurse.
However, she was
actually the bookkeeper. She was asked to wear a nurse uniform so that she
could join the doctor in the examining room when he had a female patient.
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| Lillie at work - judging by the shoes and hose, a uniform is under that coat |
Lillie became a valuable and trusted employee as she colluded with the doctor in other ways, too. She kept two sets of books (read into that what you will) and two calendars. Why two calendars? The good doctor had several women on the side, it seems, and the calendars helped cover his tracks. I have to wonder how Lillie felt about that because the doctor’s wife gave Lillie lovely gifts at Christmas and on her birthday. Oh, the guilt Aunt Lil must have felt, being the good Catholic that she was.
Lillie did find love. She dated one fellow a long time
but saw no future with him. “He drank too much,” she said. She had seen too
much alcoholism in the Killeen and Walsh families to put up with one more
alcoholic.
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| Lillie and boyfriend 1944 Virginia Beach Boardwalk |
Lillie was not the sad little creature that I saw from
the viewpoint of a child. In a time when women were expected to marry and raise
families, she chose to go it alone. She chose to be free and to dance.
Note to self: Dance on over to Sepia Saturday for more
stories of girls in white dresses.
Wendy
© 2017, Wendy Mathias.
All rights reserved.
Good on Lil for being proudly independent back in the days when it wasn't expected of women. Her boyfriend in 1944 looks little older rhan she does.
ReplyDeleteHere, here for Aunt Lil! I had an Aunt Rosie who was also a bookkeeper and never married, but she lived with family rather than on her own. So Lil was bold in that sense, too. Who knows, maybe the married doctor's double books and cheating ways underscored her decision not to marry.
ReplyDeleteGood for Lil. She seems to have cultivated a chameleon-like persona to accommodate her life as a single woman. This makes me wonder about my own spinster aunts and what they did with their spare time.
ReplyDeleteWhat a life she lived! The secrets she kept for the doctor, wow! I'm sure he paid her well to do so. Its neat that she chose to go solo, so to speak, rather than take a conventional way and then perhaps be miserable by doing so.
ReplyDeletebetty
It is interesting to read about the two different sides of Aunt Lillie.
ReplyDeleteI love learning surprising facts about my relatives. We all have more than one side.
ReplyDeleteA fine tribute. I like Aunt Lil's boardwalk bicycle snap as it seems to conveys more personality.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great lady!
ReplyDeleteThere's something to be said about not having to cook for others, or plan what you want to do around what others want to do. And it she apparently had some nieces and nephews - but perhaps not to spoil? There are some real perks to living alone if you know how to do it so your life is still full, and it sounds like Aunt Lil knew how to do that quite well!
ReplyDeleteIsn't it interesting when we learn about another side to the "old" folks? That's exactly how I feel as I've learned about my grandmother as a young woman.
ReplyDeleteAnd how future thinking it was for the doctor to have Lil available to come into the room when he was with a woman patient. Something I'm not sure many thought about at that time.
Lately I've been thinking of how different life as an old person looks to an old person living it as opposed to youngsters who often have a very superficial view of same.
ReplyDeleteWhat a gal! You’ve made me think twice about my maiden great aunts now; they always seemed happy, but who knows? I do like the photo of frilly Lillie.
ReplyDeleteA lovely profile of your Aunt Lil - she sounds quite a character. She reminds me very much of my aunt and godmother - my feisty Aunt Edith, an infant teacher with lots of entertaining anecdotes on her teaching days. She travelled to the USSR at the time of the communist era, and married for the first time st the age of 73.
ReplyDeleteAs a single woman who's raised her family, divorced, and lived most of my life on my own, I can sure empathize with Lil. I also had a maiden great Aunt Margaret, who taught High School math in San Antonio TX, and I loved her to bits.
ReplyDeleteI've been studying the photo of Aunt Lil on the boardwalk. It's quite intriguing and surprisingly intimate. I wonder who took the photo.
ReplyDeleteIt really makes me wonder about all of the perceptions we have of others, especially the ancestors we've never met, but just tried to piece together from documents we've found. I suspect we get it wrong more often than not. I'm glad you've taken the time to record what you've learned about her here, especially since she didn't have any descendants to do that for her.
ReplyDelete