_John CONVERS _______+
| (1530 - 1574)
_Allen CONVERS ______|
| (1556 - 1639) m 1586|
| |_Joan FULLER ________+
| (1530 - 1574)
|
|--Allen CONVERS
| (1586 - 1639)
| _____________________
| |
|_Joanna _____________|
(.... - 1602) m 1586|
|_____________________
_Jacob DEMOUTH _____________+
| (1834 - 1905) m 1861
_Samuel L. DEMOUTH ___|
| (1874 - 1939) m 1902 |
| |_Cordelia Elirt MARTINDALE _+
| (1843 - 1923) m 1861
|
|--Thelma Ellen DEMOUTH
| (1911 - 1952)
| _Frank Orlando PIERCE ______+
| | (1854 - 1936) m 1877
|_Elzora Maude PIERCE _|
(1880 - 1934) m 1902 |
|_Sarah Jane TODHUNTER ______+
(1855 - 1884) m 1877
[120]
!"Letter to my Grandchildren" by Dianne Z. Stevens
!29 JUNE 2002
Dear Sarah, Hannah, Tim, and Becky,
It is fun to have a fourth name to add to this list.
Please share this letter with your Mommy and Daddy, too.
Tonight I'm going to tell you about my mother, Thelma Ellen DeMouth.
Thelma was the 2nd child of Samuel and Elzora Maud (Zoey) DeMouth. She was born on March 10, 1911 on the DeMouth homestead farm in Christy, Wisconsin which is near the small town of Loyal in Clark County. Her older sister, Musa, was 7 and a half when Thelma was born. Her mother liked to read books and she named Thelma after the character "Thelma" in the book by that name by author Marie Corelli. It's a wonderful tale about a young Norwegian woman. I have a copy of it. Perhaps you will read it someday.
Shortly thereafter the farm was completely bankrupt, so the family left Wisconsin to try homesteading in North Dakota. Their third child, Lester, was born there in 1913 at a place called Quinion that no longer exists.
Aunt Musa wrote her recollection of those days in North Dakota "Our childhood (days) after we left Wisconsin were not happy ones. They were filled with so many fears when we were living in North Dakota; the fear of prairie fires, of rattlesnakes, and the fear of lack of necessities for living. I doubt if your mother ever told you of the winter we almost starved to death. I know she didn't like to talk about it. She was very young but she remembered it all too vividly. " I have a picture of the tar paper shack that was their home in North Dakota.
One story I remember my mother telling of those years went like this The family owned one cow that every day would be staked out in a pasture far from the house. Every evening the kids would have to fetch the cow. She would amble along with the kids holding her rope. But when she came to a certain creek the cow would tear (!) through the creek dragging the children behind. Every night the kids complained, but the old man just said, "Nothin' wrong with the old cow!" One day the kids said HE should go to get the cow. To their surprise, he did. He came home wringing wet. The next day he sold the cow.
From the time she was a tiny child Thelma loved to draw. Paper was hard to come by in North Dakota, but whenever there was a scrap Thelma would draw. When they were able to get a newspaper Thelma would decorate every border.
It was during those years that Thelma became very ill. Her mother worried but there was no doctor for miles around. After several months she seemed to recover. At the time no one realized she had had rheumatic fever and it had damaged her heart. She was never again so strong and healthy.
After several years in North Dakota the family moved on to Montana where they ran a small hotel in a town called Ballantine east of Billings. Zoey earned the family's living as the hotel cook and manager. Their stay in Ballantine came to an abrupt end one day when the hotel burned down. At first they couldn't find Musa. Then they realized she was on the roof yelling "Fire!" for all she was worth.
The DeMouths had relatives in Oregon, cousin Bessie and Uncle Jim Martindale, but no money to get there. So they worked their way across the rest of the west by picking fruit. They would pick long enough to earn the train fare to the next town and then stop and pick some more. When they finally got to Portland they called Cousin Bessie from the train station and she came to get them. She was used to living a pleasant comfortable life and was shocked to see her tattered cousins. The lines on their arms where the sweat had run down through the grime etched themselves in her memory.
While the children were growing up they had been able to attend school only through the eighth grade. After they came to Portland, although Musa was close to twenty years old, she started and completed high school and encouraged her younger brother and sister to do the same. Thelma graduated from Lincoln High School in Portland in 1930. She still loved to draw and because she showed great talent, she was awarded a scholarship to the Museum Art School.
Musa continued to look out for her timid little sister and even encouraged her to do some rather daring things. Musa and Thelma were on the very first commercial air flight between Portland and Seattle. The plane had an open cockpit. They didn't dare tell their mother until they were back in Portland.
Musa managed to continue her education by working her way through Reed College. She helped her sister get a job working in the home of the Physics Professor, Marcus O'Day. It was there Thelma met a handsome young physics student, Forrest Zimmerman. Forrest invited her to attend the Senior Ball with him, but she had nothing suitable to wear. Musa spent her very last cent to buy Thelma a beautiful evening gown.
Meanwhile Thelma went to the Art School. For her masterpiece she painted an illustration for a poem by Milton called "L'Allegro" on a triptych panel. That and many other works she did are still prized by our family including seven illustrations for "The Snow Queen" and an illustration of "Winken, Blinken, and Nod." (my brother Jon Zimmerman has that one.)
After her mother died in 1934 Thelma went to live with the Zimmerman family. It was under the critical eye of her future mother-in-law that she sewed her wedding dress which we still have. Forrest and Thelma were married in the Reed College Chapel on November 16, 1935.
After their marriage Forrest and Thelma lived in a one room shack way up in the mountains of the Columbia River Gorge. This was the landscape that inspired some the Snow Queen pictures. They were very much in love. She was his "Dido" and he was her "Forrie." In 1939 Thelma became pregnant with their first child, Jon Christian, and they moved down to the housing at the Bonneville dam where Forrest was employed.
In 1943 Forrest was needed for the war effort and received a commission in the Navy. Thelma was pregnant with baby number two. But the pregnancy was hard on her weak heart. With Forrest working 12 hour days at the Norfolk Naval Station Thelma had to spend the last three months of her pregnancy in bed in the Portsmouth Naval Hospital. She was weak and sick and depressed and lonely. The staff of the hospital didn't know if she or the baby would live. Two young navy nurses went out of their way to befriend her. They were Wilma Benson and a beautiful Lebanese woman named Diane Joseph. When both mother and baby did survive, these two became the baby's godmothers and she was named after the beauty.
In 1944 Forrest was sent to Pearl Harbor for the remainder of the war, so Thelma and baby Dianne went back to Portland to wait out the war at the Zimmerman's home. Jon had gone on ahead when Thelma was so sick. After the war they moved to Boston, living first in Jamaica Plains, then Ayre, and finally Lexington, MA.
Things I remember about my mother during this time - besides the fact that she was without any doubt the most wonderful mother in the world - she did beautiful sewing and made all my school dresses, she liked to listen to opera on the radio and sing along, and she liked to whistle to the birds, and she make up wonderful fanciful stories to encourage us to eat our beans or to explain how the body works or just to amuse. I remember many hours when she had to be on bed rest and she would read to me "The Secret Garden', "The Happy Prince", the Bible. She was a happy person with a whimsical sense of humor. She loved art and music and was very kind. Mostly I remember that my father absolutely adored her.
In the spring of 1952 there was hope that she might be able to have surgery to repair her heart. She went to stay at a hospital in Boston and I went to stay with my Aunt Musa in Highland Park, IL. But instead of the surgery she had a stroke and she couldn't walk or talk very well and she couldn't sing. Several months after she came home from the hospital, on my brother Jon's 13th birthday, October 29, 1952, she died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage - that is a blood clot in the brain. She was only 41 years old.
Even after almost 50 years I still miss her. That's how it is when you love someone. That's why I'm telling you about her, so you can feel like you know her and love her, too. She would have wanted to live to see her grandchildren. I know that somewhere up in heaven she is looking down with delight to see you guys, her beautiful great grandchildren.
Lots of Love,
Granny
Line 11 Dwelling #4 Household #4
Dimouth, Samuel L. Head Owns Mort. 46 m WI NJ Ver Occ: Hotel Proprietor
Elzora M. wife 34 m WI WI WI None
Musa I. dau 16 s WI WI WI None
Thelma E. dau 8 WI WI WI None
Lester J. son 6 ND WI WI None
Baker, Fred S. Boarder M W 27 s IL MN IN Auto Mechanic
Shreevam, Peter J. Boarder M W 50 wd MA VT NY Surgeon
Line 42 West Ave. dwelling # 77 Household # 77
Demouth, Samuel L. head rents $20/mo age 56 M age 28 WI NJ VT occ: Painter of bldgs Vet Phil
Elzora M wife 49 22 WI WI WI none
Musa I dau 26 s WI WI WI maid - in school
Thelma E dau 19 s WI WI WI none - in school
Lester J son 16 s WI WI WI none - not in school
Simons, John H boarder 49 s WI Eng Eng lumber grader
__
|
_Thomas MARTINDALE __|
| (1759 - 1843) m 1792|
| |__
|
|
|--Electa Joan MARTINDALE
| (1806 - 1864)
| __
| |
|_Lucy BENNETT _______|
(1772 - ....) m 1792|
|__
[3501]
"Towerville" is per marriage record. May have been Powerville.
[11280] I have a marriage record for a Frederick Demouth of Taylortown and Jane Vanderhoof of Towerville (sp?) both of Morris Co., NJ married by Rev. Ed P. Cook 24 Nov 1851.
__
|
_William WHITMORE ___|
| (1544 - ....) |
| |__
|
|
|--Margaret WHITMORE
| (1570 - ....)
| __
| |
|_Eleanor TROBLE _____|
(1546 - ....) |
|__