Grandma Eckman's Bible

I am in possession of my Great-Grandmother Leta’s Bible—the King James translation. She received it in what appears to be the late 1940s-early 1950s. My estimate is based entirely on a page in the book – the marriage page, in which she has acknowledged her marriage to Claud Bassett in 1948. However, his name is partially whited-out, since the marriage ended so badly, and on a blank page, she signed her name: “Leta M. Eckman,” which was her final married name.

Leta (left) to church in FL.

She also has a bookmark with a verse from Deuteronomy (28:12): “The Lord shall open unto thee His good treasure.” On the back, she wrote: “From sister Mabel Feb. 54 in St. Petersburg Fla.” Mabel lived in British Columbia, Canada, so the two did not see each other very often.

I am particularly pleased to possess this family heirloom, not just because of my study of my Great-Grandmother, but also because of the way it connects me to her. It is old more than worn. She has recorded several interesting notes and family listings in it, although a couple are inaccurate (including my own birth year, believe it or not). Yet it was hers.

Most significantly, this Bible reminds me that she was a person of faith. Even today that a person whose life-style was as loose as hers could be a devout Christian is remarkable. Yet there she was—a church-going, Bible-reading, faithful woman.

While today we consider the King James to be a conservative, arguably questionable translation (albeit with beautiful language), back when she received it and through most of her life, this translation was the only one available. I wonder if she were alive today, would she have a more scholarly and accurate translation, such as the New Revised Standard Version or, as she converted to Catholicism later in life, the New American Bible. Perhaps, she would have preferred the simple, somewhat paraphrasey Good News Bible, or maybe even the gender neutral New International Version. Most current translations were released initially beginning in the 1970s when new and additional authenticated historic texts were verified, whereas the King James has basically remained the same, using less authentic texts and its stilted language.

In any case, I sometimes picture her reading the Bible, using it for Bible study, writing in it the details of her parents’ marriage and the births of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and carrying it to church and Bible study.

I see her during one of these meetings (or going out for a drink afterward) and while talking to her friends about this and that, learning a home remedy for wart removal or some other tidbit. Having no paper at hand, but a pen with her checkbook, she would quite write down the info in the Bible.

Perhaps in her mind this would be the “family Bible.” And maybe, since I have it, three generations later, it is, at minimum an heirloom that I treasure and intend to treasure for the rest of my life.

Betty's marriage, part two

Grandma Eckman and I were sitting in the dining room of the senior residence where she lived in her later years. It was a hot, sunny summer afternoon. While she started her story with the protestation that she believed in marriage, she was telling me about her friend Betty who believed that the opportunity for her to sin was ever present. She prayed with great conviction not to be tempted.

“Not to be tempted?” I repeated quizzically.

Grandma sighed a big sigh. The telling would be exhausting, but she continued anyway:

“You see, Betty’s husband had this idea that she would leave him at the slightest provocation. They had neighbor, another farmer. He wasn’t married and lived about a half mile down the road in a farmhouse surrounded by trees. But Betty’s husband insisted that when she walked from the house to the barn, on that side of the house, she would turn her head in the other direction, like this, so she wouldn’t see her neighbor.”

Grandma Eckman demonstrated by twisting her body a little to the left in her chair, away from me, and holding up her hand on she side of her face, as if to shield her gaze from me. I stared incredulously, and when she dropped the pose, she scowled at me.

“This man was serious. He thought one look at the neighbor was all it would take for Betty to run a half mile across the field to him.”

“Unbelievable!” I gasped.

“Well, my darling, Betty believed it.”

My grandmother’s story finally sunk in.

“And,” Grandma Eckman continued, “she prayed every day that she wouldn’t be tempted away from her husband and children. He put the fear of God in her, that one.”

“Was he really that horrible?” I inquired.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, a little cagey. “He was nice enough to me and all their friends. None of us ever would have known if Betty didn’t tell us. “

Then she went silent. I was waiting for more, so after a few moments, I asked, “What happened?”

“That’s it. That’s the story,” she replied. In those days, that’s what a lot of women did. Men, too. They just lived married like they were supposed to. “

“Gosh.” She lost me a little bit.

Then Grandma Eckman looked me right in the eye. For a moment, I thought I caught a twinkle.

“Except for me. That was not the kind of marriage I would have stayed in. And so I didn’t.”

“Wait!” I urged. “Betty. Was she you?”

For a moment I thought that she was going to slap me. It was as if I insulted her. But then she relaxed.

“No, my darling,” she said finally. “Like I said, I would never have stayed in a bad marriage. I believed that marriage was supposed to be a good thing, not a trap.”

And that was all she told me that day. She was tired, and I thought it was time for me to go. I walked her back to her room. Her roommate was gone. She offered her cheek, and I kissed it.

“I’ll see you later,” I said.

“You better,” she answered, as she sat down in her chair.

And I quietly left her to her own thoughts and memories.

Betty's marriage, part one

"It might not look like it," Grandma Eckman told me one sunny afternoon while we were sitting in the dining room of the senior facility where she lived, “but I do believe in marriage.”

We weren’t eating in there. She simply wanted a quiet place for us to talk. The residence was bustling that sunny summer day, and her roommate was entertaining her own family in their room.  I had arrived after their Sunday dinner, so the dining room was basically deserted. It would be at least another hour or two before the kitchen assistants had to set up for the evening meal.

She was chilled, and I could understand that. It seemed to me that the warmer it became outside, the cooler the air conditioned inside was, not just here, but in about every institutional building everywhere. She was wearing a sweater. I recognized it as the one my mother gave her the previous Christmas.

She asked me if I wanted coffee to warm me up a bit, but I didn’t drink it so I declined. However, I should have dressed for the air conditioning instead of the outdoors, because in my tank top, I was shivering off and on.

“Just because I was married more than once…or twice…doesn’t mean I didn’t believe in the institution,” she continued. “But I would never stay in a bad marriage. My girlfriend Betty did that.”

“Betty?” I inquired, trying to place the name.

“You might not know about her. We were friends for several years. Met at church. Something clicked between us. She made the most heavenly apple pie. Now that’s not saying your mother doesn’t make the best pies overall, but no one could out apple Betty. Ha! Apple betty.”

She chortled at her own unplanned joke, and I smiled. My mother did make incredible pies. Her crusts were always perfect.

“Betty was a couple of years younger than I. She lived on a farm with her husband and five kids. She had given birth to twelve, but only five survived. This frustrated her husband, who blamed her for it.  In those days, farms needed lots of kids. Free labor. So it was frustrating, and he blamed her. While he never came to church—well, hardly at all—she came religiously, mostly to beg forgiveness. She prayed for forgiveness like a banshee.”

“For what?” I asked.

Grandma Eckman sighed.

“Let’s see: for not having enough children for a farm, for how angry she made her husband, for not keeping her house clean enough, for her children misbehaving or not doing well in school, for a bad crop, for the cows not giving milk or the chickens not laying enough, for not having supper ready on time. You name it.”

I looked at her with an incredulous grimace.

“Honey, I kid you not,” she responded. “Betty carried her world on her shoulders and felt responsible for everything. But the worst thing was she often prayed not to be tempted.”

To be continued.

Wood County research

While visiting my family for a holiday week and having rented a car, I took the opportunity to travel to Bowling Green, Ohio, the county seat of Wood County, to conduct more research on my great-grandmother Leta, her marriages and her family.

I hoped to acquire more information on the birth dates of a couple of her siblings, particularly David (or Fred) who disappeared when he was about 13, and Mabel whose birthdate comes too quickly after brother Aaron’s for her to have the same mother.

I also hoped to find more details on a couple of marriages and divorces, specifically the divorce of Leech Hoose (husband four), and the marriage and divorce of the mysterious Curtis (either husband five or six…unless there are other husband that I don’t know about yet).

As for the birth records, my time spent was a fruitless endeavor. Leta and her siblings were all born in the late 19^th century, and although the record books went back to the mid-1800s, there were very few listings for births in Lake Township. None of the eight Scott children were listed. According to one of the records clerks, the process of obtaining birth information at that time had persons representing the county go from house to house (since most children were born at home) and asking for the names, birthdates, genders, location and lineage of the children. However, it was not required for folks to comply.  So either David and Julia Scott refused to divulge the information or no one ever asked them.

Consequently, the mysteries of Mabel’s birth and whether David and Fred were the same person (and what happened to him if he was) continue.

As for marriages, I reviewed listings from 1928-1960 for marriage and divorce information, searched several different surnames for Leta—Scott, Mohr, Hoose, Freeman, Fields and Curtis—as well as husbands Fields and Curtis. There were no divorce records.

There was one marriage record – to Robert Fields of Montana, dated September 17, 1937. This is at least the answer to one of my questions. Up until this time, my information on this marriage was sketchy. I knew that Leta and Bob were married when he registered for the draft in 1942, and my father remembered that he and his mother-my grandmother and Leta’s daughter Vivian lived with them while his father-Vivian’s husband-Leta’s son-in-law Ed served during World War II. I also knew Leta’s marriage to Bob fields abruptly ended when he died of a heartache in June 1946. But I didn’t know—until finding this record—the date of their marriage. Interestingly, they married nearly one year to the day after her daughter Vivian and Ed married. This is also her second-longest marriage (after her first marriage to my great-grandfather Ralph Chetister). One more note: in the application for a marriage license, Leta declared that she was an office worker who had been married twice previously, but she had actually been married at least four times.