The Survivor: Aunt Gertrude
It seems that in many families there is one child who usually has at least one calamity or more bad luck than the others and this often continues throughout her entire life. In the George Cummings Van Slyke and Sarah Lucretia Rogers Van Slyke family the oldest daughter and third child seems to be that one. Lila Gertrude Van Slyke was born on May 17, 1877. Two older brothers Clifford H. born Nov. 6 1872 in E. Hartford and dying the next year July 14 1873 probably from the dreaded ‘second summer’ only this was his first. When babies were weaned there was a problem of making sure that the milk they were given was not spoiled. This baby made quite an impression on the family as evidenced by two of the daughters naming their sons after him. (Lucy and possibly Gertrude, although Clifton may be named after Gmother Lucy Clifton). The second son George Cummings Jr. survived and became the ‘Uncle George’ to many of us, father to Clarence, Gertrude and Grace and grandfather to seven children.
But it was Gertrude who we will now turn our attention. Since she was the oldest and as she grew up Aunt Sarah Sanger had her eye on this bright girl to come to live with her in New Haven. Mr. Sanger, Ezra, was a fireman for the city of New Haven and thus was away from home most nights. Gertrude would be the perfect companion for this lonely and rather frightened woman. Gertrude could have a chance to attend high school, something that was almost unheard of in those days and denied to our Grandmother, Lucy as she lived in Highwood out there on Cherry Ann Street. (# 53 for the adventurous readers who might like to look it up and see if it is still there). Father George built it himself. So it was arranged that Gertrude would go to stay with Aunt Sarah who lived in a two family house with a very nice lady upstairs living with her son, Charlie — — Charlie Stewart. Gertrude was a very attractive girl with a tall, long legged, slender figure, dark piercing eyes, pleasing facial features and the crowning glory — — an expanse of long, flowing dark hair!
She had the good fortune to perhaps inherit the genes that most likely could be traced back to her Grandmother, Ochtock, an Indian princess and wife of the first Van Slyke settler, Cornelius in the new world, that of Remsen, N.Y.
In the course of time, Charlie Stewart fell for Gertrude and they married. Now, Charlie could be described as a “Mama’s Boy”. (A very famous one was F.D. R.) and he listened to his mother. When Gertrude had four babies right in a row, one after another, Mrs. Stewart, said “Enough is enough, YOU have to DO something, Charles.”
There was Edwin, then Doris, then Clifton, and lastly Ralph. We have a picture of blond haired, four year old Doris, sitting on her Grandpa’s lap. I spent a sleepless night with Aunt Gertrude when I was studying in Philadelphia in 1956. We went to a hotel to sleep for a night and I drew her as my bed mate. I remember this story so well: Charlie decided that this is how he would solve his dilemma. He asked his wife to dress Edwin and Doris up in their best clothes because he was going to take them for an outing to Forest Park in Springfield.( I don’t remember where they were living at the time but thought it was in the New Haven area).
Aunt Gertrude did think that this was rather odd behavior as he had never taken the children out like this before. But she got the two oldest ready for a fun time at the Park with their father. I think that it was more like an amusement park, possibly with animals as we have pictures of a park showing unusual animals in it.
She stayed at home with the two youngest children. They were gone all day and she fed the boys their supper, put them to bed, and then she waited and waited. As she waited she decided that if they weren’t back by midnight — — — they were gone. Well, she heard the clock on the mantle strike 12 times and she knew it was over. She waited until morning and got in touch with her ‘Pa’ with the only money she had, a coin on the mantle. So that was the beginning of a new life for her — one of many struggles and challenges. She had to support these two children, but how? She lived with her family some, at first, I believe.
Here is where it gets rather hazy for awhile. She worked in shops, she represented a shampoo company at fairs, demonstrating what wonderful results one can achieve with this fancy shampoo. (She never really used it but it was a good show). Her long, long hair nearly down to the floor came in handy at a time like this. There are family legends of all the many things that she had to do in order to earn a living. I will use the word “wild” to describe them as that is how several who were living then describe them. All this time she never heard from Charlie Stewart and it got around that he took them somewhere ‘out west’.
There is a picture in the family of Aunt Gertrude all dressed up in a traveling suit ready to go out to the west to find her children. Unfortunately, there weren’t as many ways to seek out the lost in those days and she probably couldn’t afford to hire a professional to help her so she just did what she could. Her heart was broken, and she was often in a state of shock, she told me. I remember reading a blurb in a newspaper clipping about the situation but I only saw it once and don’t know where it went after that.
Aunt Gertrude wanted me to know, for sure, that night something very special that happened to her. Once when she was at one of the New England fall fairs, demonstrating her shampoo a striking looking, well dressed man came up to her. He watched her as she did her thing with the shampoo and brushing down her long tresses. Then he came up to her and said, “I AM GOING TO MARRY YOU!”. Imagine! And it did come true. Alfred Williams, owner of the William’s Fur Store in Hartford and a soloist at the Trinity Church of the same city and a prominent member of the Masons and Gertrude were married. Aunt Gertrude had ten of the happiest years of her life. They moved to his very nice Victorian home in a fashionable section of the city, fairly near to the center with the parks and the Capitol, with its grape vines in the back yard, many bedrooms and spacious living area. They spent summers at their better than average cottage at the shore, for some reason Madison, CT comes to my mind. I also have pictures of that, too.
Alfred Williams died in the mid 1930s and Gertrude had to again go into survival mode. She had to make a living for herself, although Alfred did leave her some money, I believe. Her boys had grown up and were fine citizens. Clifton lived in Middle Haddam, Connecticut, as chauffeur and general handyman for a woman named Mrs. Ayers becoming totally engrossed with that family and Ralph married, had three children and lived in E. Hartford where he owned a printing company.
So she turned her home into a rooming house. I remember going up there to visit and knowing that men lived in the different areas of the upstairs while Aunt Gertrude lived downstairs in the kitchen, living room area. She had a hobby of keeping many birds and I can remember them singing in the living room. She had one boarder who she called Mr. Bill and I can mostly remember him. She did have some lovely dishes and linens and she gave me a linen table cloth and napkin set with “W” embroidered on it. Her niece, Gertrude Woodings, another ‘W’ received some, too.
One day as she was working in the kitchen she endured a heavy blow when opening a cupboard door. It hit her breast and she had a sore there that wouldn’t heal She told no one except her niece Cora, nephew Clarence’s wife. When it was determined it was breast cancer she gave up her home and went to live into a nursing home where she died on December 29, 1960, eighty three years old.
She finally did meet her two oldest children when they were quite old, I believe. I met her grandson Edwin Stewart when he and Gertrude came to visit us in Portland as a teen ager. I think that there might have been an attempt for him to live with his Grandmother but it didn’t work out as they were not bonded at all from the years of estrangement. I thought he was a rather strange young man as all he wanted to do was to find a ‘bar’. I tried to play some familiar songs on the piano but he wasn’t interested.
I wish I knew more details of her life but this is about it and more will probably come to me as I think about it. I remember Aunt Gertrude as about as opposite to our Grandmother as two people could be. She was bold and outgoing, talkative, rather brash, at times. She was a smoker and would go out with the men “to have a smoke”. Life had taken its toll on her. She was loyal to her family and liked to come down to the country to see Lucy probably because life was pretty stable and ordinary after all she had been through. I liked Aunt Gertrude. She had many fine qualities: of kindness, empathy, generosity, she had a positive outlook on life. She did not hold a grudge, or dwell on what life had dealt her. She had a great sense of humor and could tell fortunes in tea cups! I nearly forgot her preoccupation with seances and the fact that I saw her bring a trance on herself while we were visiting her youngest brother Albert’s family in Worcester. She was seeing a “little white dog” running about in the room, among many other things. She was sorry that she let herself “go off” like that and apologized all the way home to Hartford.
There seem to be two distinct body builds in this generation. Those who have the narrow sloping shoulders seen in pictures of Grandfather, George, (as seen in the picture of Aunt Clara Van Slyke, the first, Levi’s sister and the very straight postured type of Sarah Lucretia, as seen in Aunt Clara and my mother, Dorothy. Aunt Gertrude and Lucy were more like the first as they both shrunk a great deal and become round shouldered with a kyphosis. I can almost see Levi in Clara picture although almost nothing survives of him, writings or pictures.
Grandma told of combing Aunt Gertrude’s hair as she lay dying, her hair, that glorious trademark, the main feature that identified her and made her who she was, braided and wound around her head. Her most proud possession. And in the end that is all we could do for her, brush her hair to comfort her.
But this is the story of a survivor. And Aunt Gertrude was right up there with the best of them, quite cheerful and relatively happy even with her great sorrows and disappointments. Survivors do whatever it takes and with Aunt Gertrude it sure took a whole lot! When we were sightseeing in Philadelphia we happened upon Benjamin Franklin. When Aunt Gertrude saw the Colonial-dressed gentleman she went right up to him, took his arm and said, “Well, I am Betsy Ross and I’ll take you to my house!” Just like that. That one memory embodied Aunt Gertrude to me forever.
Aunt Gertrude was like that.
