Today is my 1-year blogiversary. Unlike most other one-year bloggers, I have not
developed a philosophy of blogging, and I have no interest in revisiting
popular posts. So I’ll stick to my
recent Sunday routine highlighting my discoveries in the freshly indexed 1940
US Census.
Rather than continue with my closest relatives, though, I
decided to pick an ancestor for whom August 26 would have been special. As luck would have it, one of them lived long
enough to be enumerated in 1940.
Margaret Elizabeth “Maggie” Meadows, my second cousin
twice removed, married Casper Monroe Bailey on August 26, 1889, in Page County,
Virginia. Anniversaries are usually happy
times, but Casper and Maggie enjoyed only seventeen such occasions together
because poor Maggie died in March 1906 at age 36. Their sweet baby Gracey had died just months
before in October 1905. Perhaps they were victims of some epidemic like Scarlet
Fever, which was the latest scourge in a neighboring county.
Casper’s sad life started much earlier than 1905 and
lasted much longer. He first appeared in
the 1880 census for Shenandoah County, Virginia, as an eleven-year old boy “taken
in to raise” by Philip Frederick (age 75) and his three adult children. What happened to his parents is not known,
but Casper’s mother “Sis Bailey” is named on Casper and Maggie’s marriage
record, August 26, 1889, Page County, Virginia.
In 1900, Casper and Maggie along with three children seemed
to be a typical farm family. But by
1910, four years after the deaths of Gracey and Maggie, Casper was doing odd
jobs and living as a widowed uncle with Charles and Dorthy Lam while his
children were scattered among family and friends.
Poor ol’ Casper never remarried and seemed never to
recover financially. In census records
for 1930 and 1940, Casper (age 71) was living with his daughter Bertha and her family. The
1940 census reveals that Casper never completed any schooling .
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Casper died in 1943 and is buried in the Jollett United Methodist Church Cemetery where Maggie and Gracey are buried. He has no tombstone, just a mortuary
marker.
 |
| from Findagrave |
Margret E. Bailey
Died Mar. 31, 1906
age 36 yrs
Well, that was a cheerful look at August 26.
©2014, Wendy
Mathias. All rights reserved.
