On the wall in my foyer is a small oval photograph of my grandmother as a baby with her mother, my great-grandmother, Cora Annis “Anna” (Byers) Glander. Grandma wasn’t her first baby, as the prior year she had given birth to a boy who lived only thirteen hours. When my grandma was born, Anna was twenty-seven years old, the same age I was when I had my first child. Anna’s birthday was the same as my mom’s birthday; she died at the age of only sixty years just two months before my mom was born. Her death certificate is not part of the otherwise exhaustive Indiana Death Certificate database on Ancestry.com, and her obituary states only that she “died…at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Nedra R. McEowen, 2909 Warsaw Street, after a four-month illness.”
Anna was born to farmers William and Sarah Byers in rural Allen County, Indiana in 1891, the second youngest of seven children. She was sixteen when she was married in 1908 to Bert Glander, an Ohio native. In 1910, she and her husband were living in Carryall Township, Paulding County, Ohio, where Bert was farming. The 1920 census located Bert, Anna and their daughter (my grandma) Nedra residing in Emerald Township, Paulding County, Ohio – they were still farming. In 1930, Bert, Anna and their daughters Nedra and Mary were living at 2540 Euclid Avenue in Adams Township, Allen County, Indiana. Bert was a laborer working for the steam railroad. When the census was taken in 1940, Bert, Anna and Mary (my grandmother was married and living with her husband at this time) were living at 4114 Hanna Street in Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana. Bert was working for the railroad – again, not still. According to my grandma, “Bert was a carpenter at the Pennsylvania Railroad car shops. He was also part of the wrecking crew that fixed tracks and trains after wrecks. In Ohio he was a farmer, then moved to 2223 Oliver Street in Fort Wayne, and started working for the railroad. He was laid off during the depression, and moved to Westfield, Indiana to work for 10 cents a week for Mr. Fesmeyer, a farmer. He and his family lived in a farmhouse that belonged to Mr. Fesmeyer for a year, then moved back to Fort Wayne in 1932. Bert then sold hominy for 5 cents a pint, and horseradish for a while before going back to the railroad.”
In 1950, Bert, Anna and Anna’s mother, 90-year-old Sarah Jane (Smith) Byers, were living together at 2325 Lillie Street in Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana. Bert was still working as a carpenter for the railroad. In all these records, Anna is simply enumerated. She was literate – she is always listed as able to read and write, and in 1940 she stated that she had completed the eighth grade. In 1940 and in 1950 she gave her occupation as “housework” and “housekeeping”. The records do not say much about women in general, and even in Anna’s obituary, the only clue we are given about her life beyond the basic facts is “She was a member of the East Side Nazarene Church.” I know so shockingly little about her life. But as Terry Pratchett wrote in Going Postal, “Man’s not dead while his name is still spoken.” And that is one of the reasons I do genealogy research – I hope that by learning about the people that came before us, I am keeping their memory alive. “I’m made up of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my ancestors. They’re in the way I look, in the color of my hair. And I’m made up of everyone I’ve ever met who’s changed the way I think. So who is ‘me’?” (Also by Terry Pratchett, in A Hat Full of Sky.)
Though I didn’t know my great-grandmother Anna – even my mom didn’t know her Grandma Anna – I know some things about her. I don’t really know about her daily life, though as she was a wife and mother in the first half of the twentieth century it is not a stretch to imagine it was probably painted mainly in the colors of hard work, monotony and loss. I do know that when she passed away her husband was devastated – heartbroken, lonely, and depressed. He was so terribly lonely and sad that after two years of looking after him as he hoped for death for himself as well, his daughters appealed to his sister Dora, hoping she could help him. He came to Michigan to live near Dora and her husband on Francis Street in Grand Rapids; Dora took him to church with her and her family, to Bible studies and at least one church revival. At a church revival, he met Myrtle Irene (Bassett) Travis, who was also widowed. Somehow Irene was able to snap him out of his depression, and they were married in 1954. But because I know about how his life was upended, changed forever, by his first wife Anna’s death, I know something more about her.
Anna died at such a young age, considering the rest of her family. Her mother Sarah Jane lived to be ninety-two years old and in fact appears in a four-generation photograph that includes Sarah Jane herself, Anna, Nedra and Nedra’s daughter Wanda. Anna’s sister Rose lived to be one hundred and one years old. Her sister Chloe, though I have never been able to find any record of her death, lived to be at least seventy-seven (the last newspaper record of her I have found is in 1964), and when I talked to her about it, my grandma thought she had lived to be over 90. Anna’s father and all her four brothers were at least seventy when they died. It seems unfair that she should have succumbed at only sixty.
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