The Letters: These Beautiful Easter Greetings, 1891

Tucked in with the letters from Sam, Sadie, and Carrie was also this Easter card, with Martha’s name written in cursive on the back. In fact, it was an 1890s advertising trade card, found only in “the one pound packages of Lion Coffee.” There were many different cards available, decorated with pictures of little girls, fairy tale scenes, and other Victoriana. 

This one has a copyright date of 1891 in the bottom-right corner; Martha would have been four years old that Easter. Maybe Sam sent it to her from college, or her mother gave it to her on Easter morning. Was it special to her? It doesn’t show the wear that I’d expect to see if she had carried it around — maybe she had it displayed in her room, to keep it safe. What made Sadie save it?

Martha and Sam died of diphtheria in the winter of 1893. At that time, diphtheria was a leading cause of death in children and spread easily through close contact with an infected person. The early symptoms included a low-grade fever, sore throat, and headache. Within a few days, the diphtheria bacteria produced a toxin that caused a thick film to develop in the back of the throat, making it increasingly difficult to breathe, and often strangling the patient to death.¹ A physician in 1927 described a patient he was treating, and I can imagine this was an all-too-familiar scene for many families in the late nineteenth century as well:

“I recall the case of a beautiful girl of five or six years, the fourth child in a farmer’s family to become the victim of diphtheria. She literally choked to death, remaining conscious till the last moment of life. Knowing the utter futility of the various methods which had been tried to get rid of the membrane in diphtheria or to combat the morbid condition, due, as we know now, to the toxin, I felt as did every physician of that day, as if my hands were literally tied and I watched the death of that beautiful child feeling absolutely helpless to be of any assistance.” (“Diphtheria: A Popular Health Article,” The Public Health Journal 18, Dec. 1927, 574)²

When my daughter was little and would show the first signs of a cold or flu, I remember thinking how lucky we were to be alive now, when immunizations and modern medicine meant I didn’t have to worry that her symptoms might lead to something untreatable. I can only imagine the fear that must have gone through every nineteenth-century mother’s heart any time one of her children felt warm or started coughing.

A 6-year-old girl hasn’t had much time to leave a mark on the world, but we actually know quite a bit about Martha. Martha Jane Blair may have been named after her paternal aunt, also Martha Jane Blair, who died in 1862 at the age of 16. Because the 1890 census was destroyed, “our” Martha can’t be found in any census records, but the Fayette County Death Register lists this information:

BLAIR, Martha Jane, white, female, 6 years, father OS, mother Josephine, single, born Perry Twp, dod 1-24-1893 at Perry Twp, diphtheria, ill 7 days, buried Mt. Washington on 1-26-1893, dor 1-8-1894.

More importantly, we have her photo (which someone wrote her name on — thank you!), her headstone, and references to her in the letters from Sam and her older sister, Carrie (see next posts), that give color to her short life. Her photo is displayed in my home, and part of the reason I decided to start this blog was so I could more carefully preserve these mementos and memories.

Headstone reads: MARTHA J. AUG 24. 1886 JAN 24. 1893

The only identified photo of Samuel Gallatin Blair that I have is this one, when he was a little boy. (I have a number of unidentified photos of young men who might be Sam, but I can’t be sure.)

Someone wrote the names of the children on the back of this tintype; the girl on the left is Sam’s older sister Carrie. But the real mystery of this photo is WHO is the girl in between them?

The handwriting is hard to read, but I think the name of the other girl is “Leora.” I’m almost positive she wasn’t a sister of Carrie and Sam’s, because she’s not listed in the 1880 census with the rest of the family, and if she had died young, she’d be next to Martha, Sam, and the rest of the Blair family in Mount Washington Cemetery, in Perryopolis. Was she maybe a cousin?

1880 census showing the O.S. Blair family – mother Josephine B., daughter Carie H., son Samuel G., and baby Sarah B. Notice there is NO sign of Leora.

This mystery has kept me up at nights and just now, writing this, I stopped and went over to Ancestry to do another search. Several hours later, it’s possible that the Blairs had a cousin named Leora Gallatin (their mother Josephine Gallatin’s niece), but I had to make a few undocumented leaps to make that relationship possible.

Besides his appearance in the 1880 census, we also have a record of Sam’s life (more specifically, his death) in the Fayette County Death Register:

BLAIR, Samuel, white, male, 18, father OS, mother Josephine, single, born Perry Twp, carpenter, dod 2-2-1893 at Perry Twp, diphtheria, ill 7 days, buried Mt. Washington on 2-4-1893, dor 1-8-1894.

Headstone reads: SAMUEL G. FEB 22. 1875 FEB 2. 1893

Sam was named after his maternal grandfather, Samuel Gallatin. In the death register, he’s listed as a carpenter, so he seems to have followed his father’s line of work, rather than teaching. But he was a few weeks’ shy of his eighteenth birthday when he died, and probably thought he had plenty of time to pursue his chosen field.

I wish I had a photo of Sam as a young man, the age he was when he wrote his letters home, but his words reveal a confident, engaging personality. Because Sadie saved these letters, photos, and cards, I have some sense of what Martha and Sam were like. But heirlooms can make a person greedy, and I’m sure that Sadie saved more items that never made it to me. The fact that she saved what she did speaks to the poignancy of these girlhood years, and her attachment to these siblings. Even across three generations, I ache for her loss.

The next letters, from Sadie’s older sister Carrie, were written several months after the deaths of Martha and Sam, when Carrie was away from home studying music.

Sources:

Diphtheria:

^1,2 http://www.museumofhealthcare.ca/explore/exhibits/vaccinations/diphtheria.html

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/mdd/v05/i08/pdf/802timeline.pdf

Fayette County Genealogy Project:

http://www.pagenweb.org/~fayette/deaths/deathindex.html

© Kristin Luce, 2017