I have been trying to find some evidence of when Nelson and Jean moved to Santa Monica, California. They, along with Great Aunt Ivy and my grandmother, Jeanne, appear in the 1920 census, showing them as residents of Bisbee, Arizona. Then, they appear in the 1930 census as residents of Santa Monica. That’s it. I am not sure how to fill any details from the decade in between.
The last image I have from the Isle of Man is a postcard that Nelson’s younger sister, Mary, sent to them. The picture is of another younger sister, Emma Ivy, with her two children, Euphemia and Bertie. Mary calls Emma Ivy “Ivy” and Euphemia “Femy,” which is why I was struggling to find a birth record for her. Emma Ivy was living in Manchester with her second husband, Issac Timperley, I think, because the 1930 census records show them living in Manchester. The picture is marked with an Isle of Man address, though – does that mean Ivy sent Mary the picture? It’s not as though Mary could go the Kinko’s around the corner and make a copy, right? I know, it is a silly detail to focus on. I was just thinking it would help put the pieces together about how much the siblings were in contact with each other.
Emma Ivy married Issac in April 1920 and Bertie was born in September. Femy was born in 1917, in the Isle of Man, father unknown. Emma Ivy lived in Manchester when she was 18, maybe working as a servant, like her older sister Emily did, for many years. I feel a little disloyal suggesting this: maybe Emma Ivy got pregnant in Manchester and went home to the Isle of Man to have the baby? And then she met Issac, got pregnant, and they got married.
When I first started digging into Ancestry, it looked to me as though Nelson was the only child of Jane and John Thomas’s 11 children to have traveled outside the Isle of Man. Now I can see that several of them traveled and settled outside the Isle of Man. I know from a newspaper clipping my grandmother saved, Nelson did not return to the Isle of Man until he was in his 70s, after Jean had died. I think that means he never saw his parents and many of his brothers and sisters again.
Nineteen years divided the oldest sibling, Emily, and the youngest, Hannah. Emily lived and worked in England as a servant (live-in maid, maybe?) for much of her adult life, from the time she was a teenager. She was young enough that she could have left home before her youngest siblings were born. The 11 siblings were related to each other, hopefully loved each other, and supported each other, but they could not have been close in the way I hope my children are. Could they? I realize this story makes Nelson’s family altogether typical of so many families. There’s no really a mystery to uncover here; it’s a story emblematic of millions of immigrants’ families. Still, it is my family.
I was thinking about how much I feel as though I know these people now, based on census data, a few pictures, a little history reading, and my own imagination. I know I have to be careful to not project onto them what I feel now; it was a different time and there were different expectations of what life should, or could, be. Still, could they have felt less pain at learning their mother died without seeing her one last time? Were they not homesick and sad at the holidays, remembering what everyone at home would be doing all together to celebrate? I wish I knew. I guess I would rather imagine they were sad and homesick, than imagine that they felt nothing, simply because they moved far away and never returned home.
I have no letters and no more pictures than the ones Grandma put in the album to peer into their interior lives. How much did Nelson miss his family? I don’t know. I only know that a postcard survives about Emma Ivy and her kids, and that Mary Louise sent it to Nelson and Jean. They must have known who “Femy” and “Bertie” were, otherwise Mary would have explained more, right?
I remember the first time I went more than a year without seeing my mother. Before it happened, I thought I could not do it. And then I did. It did not mean I did not want to see her, but for a lot of reasons, I couldn’t. Life went on. We talked sometimes on the phone. We wrote letters. I survived. I carried around a little sadness though; it was always in my back pocket, ready to access on a crappy day, wondering when I would see her again. Maybe Nelson and Jean felt the same way.
I need to scan more pictures because I would like to turn my attention to other family members. I have a few details about some of Nelson’s siblings, though no pictures. I think two brothers fought in World War I, and died shortly after coming home. John Thomas (Jr) was in Arizona with Nelson and Jean, but I cannot find a death record for him. It seems as though Mary stayed in the Isle of Man and remained single. I think I will move on, for now, and maybe circle back to fill in gaps, when I can. Here’s the list of Nelson’s immediate family. Ancestry does not make it easy to spit out the complete tree, therefore, I will note that Nelson comes after William and before Mary.
