A Woman's Choices

 

 (Originally published January 15, 2013 on an old blog)

Her name was Ellen Hughes. She was born in Wales, and lived there through the age of 24. By 1894, somehow she was in the United States. She married my great grandfather, Lemuel Bartholomew, in New Hampshire that year. My grandmother, Margaret Ellen and her 4 brothers were born over the next several years. By 1903, at the age of 36, Ellen Hughes Bartholomew was dead.

My grandmother was born in 1902, and she had no memory of her real mother. She always kept this picture in her closet, but never on display. Not long after Ellen's death, Lemuel married Jenny Dwyer, a very Catholic woman who had been turned away from the convent because she did not have the physical ability to deal with the hardships of convent life. She became the only woman my grandmother ever called "Mother". I believe Jenny Dwyer is the reason those children and many of their offspring are Catholic to this day, since to my knowledge no one was before that. 

Whenever my father took out Ellen Hughes Bartholomew's picture my grandmother would get irritated and insist that Jenny Dwyer was her mother. It always bothered me, as a little girl, to hear this. All I could think was that it wasn't her fault that she died, why can't you even acknowledge her? This was just intrinsically wrong to me somehow, even as a little girl. I recall being angry at my grandmother about this. I do understand it now of course, she had no memory of her real mother.

After my grandmother passed away, her few family photographs came to my father, including the one shown here. It's about a foot tall and perhaps 8 inches wide, still in it's original frame. On the back, in my father's handwriting, is written "Ellen Hughes Bartholomew, my mother's real mother."

I can't be sure if it's because of the way her memory seemed to me, as a child, to be ignored by her only daughter but when the picture came to me, it was displayed in my home immediately. I like to tell people her story, the parts I know and those that I do not.

Ellen lived for 24 years in Wales, based on the last census record I can locate there. In those days, 24 was not young for a woman. I have so many questions! What made her come to America? Did her parents come, or did they stay behind? What about her siblings? Ellen had 4 brothers and one sister. How did she come to be in New Hampshire? Was there ever anyone before my grandfather? I know that choices for women in those days were very limited, and I can't help but wonder how her life unfolded.

How did Ellen and Lemuel meet? Were they in love? Why was she so sick? Did he love Jenny Dwyer or was she simply a needed convenience for a man left to raise 5 small children alone? My grandmother had little to say other than that her mother (Jenny) was a saint. I do have to give her props for raising 5 children that she did not give birth to.

Perhaps there are other Hughes or Bartholomew family members who would be interested in Ellen's picture now, or the one I have of my grandmother with her 4 brothers. There's a very sweet picture of my grandmother with her daddy. My grandmother did not have an easy life, but in that picture there is just the sweetness of childhood and all the possibility in the world. I will write about what I know of Margaret's life another day.

Ellen Hughes Bartholomew's picture hangs in a prominent place in my home. She lived a quarter of a century, a life that is a mystery to me, before she came to the United States. During the time she was here in the United States, she married a man and gave life to 5 children before she died. She never got to see any of her children reach adulthood, never held a grandchild, and as wonderful as Jenny may have been - another woman got all the credit for those 5 lives and who they became.

I guess I'll always feel like Ellen got shorted somehow. And so her picture will always be displayed in my home. And when people ask, I proudly say "That's my great grandmother, Ellen Hughes Bartholomew."