Lillian

First things first.

Does anyone know for sure which of the four Alawine brothers this is?

Beth Mullins found and sent it to me, wondering about it.
I say Uncle Roosevelt. But I'm not 100% sure. Put your answer in the Comments.

The rest of this entry is going to be about my grandmother on Mother's side of the family. If you're not particularly interested in this post, I'll forgive your skipping it. But before leaving, you might take a look at the family tree here and see whether you fit into it. 

I never knew grandparents. They were all gone by the time I was born--my father's parents as well as my mother's. It's likely I've more or less idolized my lovely maternal grandmother just by gazing at the portrait of her that hangs on my wall.

Lillian Luke Tolbert

When my daughters were growing up (they are now all older than she was at the time the picture was made), I would wonder what parts of her were passed on to them. 

My mother, Cecile Mae Tolbert, was the daughter of William Henry Tolbert and Lillian Luke. Here's a photo of both of them. They were very young here.

Henry and Lillian Tolbert

I posted Lillian's picture a while back. 

Be warned: This story is a sad one. There's no way to make it happy. 

My mother and father told me that Lillian physically resembled her father, Alanzo Luke, far more than she did her mother Rosa Claughton. She was brown-eyed and had either black or very dark brown hair. In the few pictures I've found of her, her eyes always seem huge and haunting to me.

Henry was the son of Charles Wesley Tolbert and Mary Elizabeth Culbertson. Henry wasn't tall, and he had thick brownish hair and blue eyes. 

Lillian and Henry married at what for us would be a really young age. He was 16 or so; she, only 15. I guess it's possible they knew she'd already contracted tuberculosis, but I suspect they were just doing what young people in the rural South did at that time: they all seemed to get married pretty early. Maybe there wasn't much else to do with life.

Lillian gave birth to Herman, their son, in March of 1914, when she was about 18. Mother was born in November 1916. Lillian, I believe, probably knew she was dying by the time Mother was a year and a half old. 
She and Henry lived near Henry's parents in Neshoba County. 

Mother (center child) with others in front of the Tolbert home

Towards the end of her last summer, Lillian wrote a postcard to Alanzo and Rosa, who lived in Preston, a community you can still find on a map. For us it would be about a 40-minute drive, maybe, but for her it was too far to go for a quick day trip.

Google maps

 


She would've had to ride a horse or go in a wagon, and neither of those items was used for luxuries like visits to your parents; they were needed for the farm. 

Lillian was homesick in 1918 and yearned for the cool well water at her parents' house. She had two young children, she was twenty-two, and she was dying. Henry had had someone helping him dig a well near where they lived, but the man had quit, and water had to be carried from a spring. In the summer, by the time they hauled it to the house, it had gotten hot. 

Maybe she wrote the postcard just to give her parents news...maybe to try to reassure them. Who knows. Someone in the family saved it for Mother.

Card from Lillian 1918

Down below, here's what it says, if you can't read the original (I'm using all the spelling and punctuation that Lillian used).

Postcard from Lillian 1918

When my mother was old enough to ask hard questions about Lillian, Henry's sister Lou Tolbert (Munn) told her how it went, at the end. Lou was about fourteen herself as the fall progressed that year. She remembered that, as the days passed, Lillian grew restless and couldn't sleep. She wanted to talk. She had her family and Henry's sit up with her and talk, talk--about anything, really, Lou said.  
 
She died on December 27, 1918, when my mother was just over two years old. Someone in the community wrote a little obituary about her. I'm going to show what was on the other side, too: advertisements for farm equipment.

Mother only preserved in her mind a vague memory--more of a feeling--of her mother; she was just too young to remember. People saved things for her, though, and she had the picture, too. 

I talked with Lou Tolbert Munn myself in 1979. Lou had a wonderful voice; I loved hearing her tell about Lillian. And I'm indebted to her and my mother for helping Lillian's brief life be remembered. 

All families have a few of these stories; they're not always from long ago, either. We grieve all the time for people. 

But I wish I'd known my grandmother.

Ælfwine