Red Hair, Handmade Knickers and North Dakota Snow

Mom

Ethel Katherine Williams was born in Newburg, North Dakota to Edward and Agnes Tomitum Williams on January 28, 1911. She was the firstborn of three children. She was petite, had bright red hair, very fair skin and brown eyes. (See age note at end.) Her mother was a tall full-blooded Norwegian immigrant, who was born Agnes Tomitum. She came to America, married Edward and became a U.S. citizen through the government sponsored Immigrant Work Program. She left at least three sisters behind in Norway. We know nothing, at this time, of her parents or if she had any brothers. Ethel said she spoke with an accent but had learned English and spoke it flawlessly. (Ethel did not know her mother’s national decent until later in life.) She had black hair, wore beautifully tailored clothes and loved to embroider and cook. She was an excellent seamstress and tailor who made her own patterns for the entire family’s clothing including her husband’s suits. She once delighted Ethel by making her a pair of knickers based on a picture Ethel had seen in a new Sears Roebuck catalog. Ethel was thrilled to amaze her friends by being the first girl in school to have them. Newburg, North Dakota is at the foot of the Turtle Mountains, near the banks of the Mouse River on the Sioux Line Railroad. Harsh winters were a constant in this bleak land. For years, Ethel told her children stories about dealing with the unbelievable amounts of snow and the trials of bitter-cold weather. Tunneling out of the house to get to the barn in snow banks so high they reached second story windows and skiing over fences to get to school were commonplace in North Dakota winters. Ethel said she had learned to walk on tiny snowshoes even as a child. Ed and Agnes had three children all told: Ethel Katherine in 1911, Lloyd in 1912 and Ralph in 1914. When Ethel was born, the Church Recorder guessed at Ed’s full name and formalized it to Edwin instead of Edward in Ethel’s birth record. Ed earned a good salary as an accountant. They had a beautiful home, beautiful furnishings and clothing and wanted for nothing. Their life, though they worked very hard and lived in a harsh environment, was very, very good. In 1916, at the age of 2, little Ralph developed double pneumonia and was rushed to the distant hospital on a horse-drawn sleigh lying upon a featherbed and covered up with straw through a snowstorm. He was given a blood transfusion. But he died anyway. This tragedy broke Agnes’ heart. At a point in time in about 1921, while Agnes was laid up in a sanitarium suffering with tuberculosis, Ethel, who was 10, and her brother, Lloyd, who was 9, were sent to live for four or five months with their grandparents, Michael “Mike” and Millisa “Lizzie” Lehman, in Astoria, Illinois. They made the trip to Astoria by train and according to Ethel, were terrified the whole trip. She said, “I think we just sat there on the hard train seat hugging each other and shivering all the way from North Dakota to Astoria.” Lizzie was characterized as a fat little grandma with a very pug nose. (Aha! The Guild Nose!) Lizzie was well known for her beautiful quilts. Neighbors could keep track of her latest creations because she kept her quilting frame set up in her living room where it could be seen from the street through a doorway. Michael Lehman was known for his strict discipline, which Ethel learned of during her stay. She recalled, “He was a tough one.” Ethel never questioned why her father’s brothers and sisters and his mother and father had a different name from him. She was told the “bigamy” story after Iris’ birth in 1930, by Ed’s sister in law, Mary, and Ethel didn’t tell her own children until they were adults. Agnes Tomitum Williams died of consumption and complications from swine flu in 1922. Note that in those days any serious disease of the lungs was referred to as consumption, but Agnes actually had tuberculosis. Ed, unable to keep up a big house, moved them all into a boarding house, where, with a little help from Mrs. Howe, the kindly woman who ran it, he managed to raise Ethel and his son, Lloyd, by himself. Then, grieving the deaths of his wife and young son or bemoaning his past, he began to drink heavily, leaving Ethel to more or less care for herself and Lloyd, and then, even for her father. Ethel was only eleven. It was 1922. Ed continued to manage the diner and a dance hall attached to the lumberyard for a while after Agnes’ death. Ethel tells of the night she got caught by her father smooching in the back seat of a car with a really terrific dance partner.