Illegitimacy and Abortion in 1920s-1930s Grinnell

In the United States today, about forty percent of all births belong to unmarried mothers. Whether you think this a good or bad thing, it's hard to deny that the number reflects a substantial change from the recent past. According to available data, in Iowa of the 1920s and 1930s, for example, single parents accounted for less than three percent of all births. Consequently, if today a single woman in the United States can give birth without incurring a lot of social criticism, single women in early twentieth-century Iowa likely faced a much more censorious world. "Illegitimacy" was a brand that made life onerous for both child and parent.

Sally C. Curtin et al., "Recent Declines in Non-Marital Child-bearing in the United States," National Center for Health Statistics, Data Brief No. 162, August, 2014 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db162.htm)

Determining exactly how common was illegitimacy and how it affected Grinnell in the past is not easy. Largely because of the negative valence illegitimacy carried, people kept quiet about their situations, and did what they could to hide pregnancies outside marriage. Nevertheless, given the public's concern about illegitimacy, the issue did occasionally surface in the press. In 1925, for example, the Des Moines Tribune published a report based on the findings of the Iowa State Health Commissioner, who announced that the previous year (1924) illegitimate births in Iowa were three times as common as they had been in 1915.

Des Moines Tribune, September 28, 1925

But what about Grinnell? Newspapers here featured no stories announcing a wave of illegitimacy. However, a new source on this question has recently emerged: a complete register of all admissions to Grinnell's St. Francis Hospital between the years 1919 (when the hospital opened its doors) and July, 1935. Identifying more than 4400 hospital admissions, the register provides singular evidence on morbidity and hospital mortality in Grinnell in the 1920s and 1930s. Moreover, the register identifies every baby born at St. Francis, and, where officials deemed it appropriate, the register signified who was "illegitimate."

Of course, St. Francis—a Catholic institution—was one of two hospitals in Grinnell, and births continued to occur at Grinnell Community Hospital as well as at home and at other hospitals. So, it is impossible to know how representative are the data from St. Francis. All the same, the St. Francis register provides vivid insight into "illegitimate births" in Grinnell, and also, surprisingly, a peek at the incidence of abortion, both issues that law and popular morality helped keep out of the published record.

Register of all admissions to St. Francis Hospital, Grinnell, 1919-1935 (Grinnell Historical Museum)

***

For obvious reasons, babies deemed illegitimate when born at St. Francis hospital usually—but not always, interestingly—had unmarried mothers. Most of these mothers came from elsewhere, presumably seeking in Grinnell some privacy from the criticism they might have encountered in their home towns.  So it was that Miss Eleanor Cassilly (the hospital register regularly identified female patients as "Miss" or "Mrs.") of Le Claire, Iowa checked into St. Francis hospital in October, 1923. Just nineteen years old at the time, Eleanor was the younger, unmarried sister of Merle Cassilly—ten years her senior—, who with his wife, lived with their parents in their Le Claire home. Within a day of arriving in Grinnell, Eleanor gave birth to a baby girl whom the register called "illegitimate." Likewise, Ivy Singleton, the oldest child of five in the household of H. A. and Nora Singleton in Chalmers, Illinois, arrived in Grinnell in the last days of December, 1922. Then either nineteen or twenty years of age and pregnant, Ivy soon gave birth to an illegitimate son. More than a decade later, Amelia Reha, a very pregnant and unmarried eighteen-year-old from Iowa City, came to Grinnell for similar reasons. The third child of six born to Frank (a farmer) and Amanda Reha, Amelia delivered a baby boy at St. Francis hospital September 5, 1934. Just two months earlier Margaret Madesen had found her way from McFarland, Wisconsin to Grinnell, where she also gave birth to an illegitimate son.

It is easy to imagine how the staff cosseted these innocent babes, but the hospital register rarely offers any indication of the fates of these children, instead merely attaching the damning adjective "illegitimate" to their arrival. However, the hospital register reports that at least one unwanted child did find adoptive parents. Amanda Reha's little boy, who was born in early September, 1934, became something of a Christmas present to Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Koett of Marshalltown. A cramped note in the margin of the hospital register reports that the Koetts adopted the boy—whom they named William—December 14, 1934, three months after his birth. How the Koetts came to know of the child, and exactly how the adoption was arranged are matters presently-available evidence does not address. One wonders, for example, who kept the baby those few months between his birth and his adoption? Hospital records show that Amanda was discharged shortly after the child's birth, but whether she took the baby home the register does not say. That the hospital reported on the adoption offers reason to think that Amanda left the child in the hospital's care, and that officials undertook to find adoptive parents. Marshalltown newspapers confirm that Veronica Koett was very active in local Catholic organizations, and the Koetts also made sure that William attended Catholic schools, so it seems likely that the adoption took place through Catholic contacts.

Gravestone of Eugene, Veronica, and William Koett, Riverside Cemetery, Marshalltown, Iowa
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=koett&GSiman=1&GScid=95960&GRid=100616203&

Perhaps other children born at St. Francis and judged "illegitimate" were also given up to be adopted, although the register mentions no others. Alternatively, unwanted little ones might have found their way to a nearby orphanage, such as the one in Toledo (which later became the State Juvenile Home/State Training School for Girls). Another alternative saw the mother keep her baby, and records make clear that at least occasionally this is exactly what happened, despite the opprobrium these births brought their mothers. Take, for instance, Miss Hazel Mintle, born in Malcom township in 1898, the fourth of five children welcomed by Laura Mintle and her farmer husband, Frank. The family soon moved to Grinnell, living at 702 Broad. Hazel told the 1915 Iowa census taker that she had completed two years of high school, but her absence from the high school yearbook suggests that she did not stay in school long enough to graduate. After Frank Mintle died in 1916, Laura remarried in 1919, taking as her husband John Creamer, a Grinnell auctioneer who lived at 423 West Street. Hazel moved with her mother, and by 1920 was employed as a clerk in a department store.

October 17, 1921, however, Hazel Mintle entered St. Francis hospital where she promptly gave birth to a little boy whom the hospital register judged "illegitimate." I found no evidence of how Hazel's delivery was received locally, but it is hard to imagine that she and her newborn were received enthusiastically, either within the Mintle clan—whose numerous branches were well-known and well-regarded in Grinnell—or more broadly. Nevertheless, as additional documentation proves, Hazel did indeed keep her baby, naming him Keith Lavelle Mintle. For reasons not spelled out in hospital records, Hazel and her newborn were not released until after Halloween. But soon she and her baby took up residence with Mr. and Mrs. William Sears at 1122 Ann Street.

1921 Death Certificate of Keith Lavelle Mintle (1921-1921)

Sadly, misfortune soon followed this brave course: little Keith grew very ill (perhaps he was already under treatment when born, helping explain the delayed release from hospital), and before he was two months old the child died. The death certificate identified the cause of death as syphilis, which indicates that the baby had contracted the disease from his mother while still in her womb. And this fact, in turn, indicates that Hazel had had at least one sex partner—either the child's father or someone else—who himself was infected; Hazel then transmitted the disease to her fetus.  Whatever people may have thought of this short-lived little boy, Hazel herself must have endured a double dose of criticism, having not only violated accepted morality in conceiving a child outside marriage but also having gained a sexually transmitted disease that she visited upon her unborn son. So far as the baby's grave can contribute to the story, Hazel's family (or some part of it) at some point absorbed the child into the family—at least that is what is implied by Keith's burial in Hazelwood, adjacent to his grandparents and other members of the Mintle family (although the misspelling of the boy's middle name indicates some distance from the child and his mother).

Gravestone for Keith Lavelle Mintle, Hazelwood Cemetery (West Hazelwood 976) (2017 photo)

Hazel herself, however, soon left Grinnell behind, never to return. Des Moines city directories from the early 1920s find her living in Des Moines and working at the new Hotel Savery, opened there in 1919. Also living in Des Moines at this time was Paul Seeburger, identified as a "battery expert" at Iowa Storage Battery Company. How and when the two met I could not learn, but I wondered whether Paul might not have been the baby's father. In any case, in 1926 or 1927 Hazel and Paul Seeburger married and moved to California. The 1930 census found them in Los Angeles; Paul was a clerk in a drug store whereas Hazel was employed in sales at a department store. Evidently the pair never generated any children, as the 1940 census found them still childless in Los Angeles where Paul worked as apartment manager in the building in which they lived. Hazel died in Los Angeles in July, 1963, and was buried half a continent away from her only child; Paul survived Hazel for some years, dying in March, 1971.

***

A happier, if more confusing, narrative came to the baby born to Mrs. William A. Flanagan at St. Francis Hospital June 14, 1935. Helena A. Jones had married William Flanagan September 15, 1930, and they soon set up house in Grinnell. April, 1932 saw the couple welcome their first child, Joanne, and in May 1933 a second child, William, joined the family. Then in June 1935, Helena was admitted to St. Francis where on the 14th she give birth to a little girl. For reasons that I can only guess about, the hospital register clearly labeled the baby "illegitimate." None of the persons whose admission notice is near Helena's gave birth to a child, so the entry cannot be an obvious, clerical mistake, transferring to Mrs. Flanagan the birth of a single woman admitted with her. But how can a married woman have given birth to an "illegitimate" child? Had Helena confessed a sin to one of the nuns who worked there, and she felt obliged to record this failing? Had Helena perhaps earlier decided to unburden herself of a secret to her husband, who then reported this news to his wife's doctor? Neither course seems especially likely, if not impossible. But answers to these questions cannot be expected ever to appear, since matters like this are communicated orally and in privacy—if indeed they were communicated at all.

Once Helena delivered the baby, the Flanagans faced some hard choices. If resentment and regret accompanied the new arrival, should the Flanagans perhaps give the child up for adoption, removing from their household the living evidence of Helena's extra-marital adventure? Or, whether Helena's misstep was forgiven or not, should Helena and William welcome the baby into their home like any other offspring, since there was no reason for anyone to suspect anything in the arrival of a third child to a married woman? The hospital register cannot answer these questions, but other documents about the family reveal that the Flanagans did take the baby home, and raised her as their own. The 1940 US Census identified four Flanagan children, including their third child, Marguerite, who was said to have been 4 in 1940, which would point to a birth in 1936. In fact, however, as Social Security records and other documents confirm, Marguerite Flanagan was born June 14, 1935, the exact date entered in the St. Francis Hospital register when Helena Flanagan gave birth to an illegitimate girl. Marguerite was that "illegitimate" child.

Marguerite Flanagan (1935-2006), 1952 Grinnell High School Yearbook

So far as I could learn, Marguerite enjoyed a normal childhood, passing through the Grinnell schools and graduating from Grinnell High School in 1952. She married Richard Owens, moved to Omaha, and there gave birth to two children of her own. When she died in 2006, she had already been widowed for several years, but there is no evidence that the one damning word attached to her 1935 birth ever brought her any unwanted consequences.

***

So far we have been discussing mothers who, however reluctantly, brought their children full-term, and delivered babies. At least some women, however, must have considered how they might avoid the scorn that an illegitimate birth would bring. Despite its Catholic commitment, St. Francis Hospital offers some evidence on these cases, too, periodically noting in the hospital register that a patient had had an abortion.

When I first encountered this term in the hospital records, I doubted that the word denoted the termination of pregnancy, as we understand that term now. But as I saw the term repeated, along with other expressions ("miscarriage," "uterine hemorrhage," etc.) which might have hidden abortions, had the physicians wished to do so, I became convinced that Grinnell doctors had indeed performed abortions in St. Francis hospital.

http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9376&context=annals-of-iowa

But wasn't abortion illegal? Indeed it was, as James C. Mohr convincingly argues ("Iowa's Abortion Battles of the late 1960s and Early 1970s: Long-term Perspective and Short-Term Analysis," The Annals of Iowa 50[1989]:63-89). In the last years of the nineteenth century, Mohr points out, the Iowa legislature and courts gradually tightened laws aimed at abortionists, so that by 1886 the death of a woman as a result of an abortion could be prosecuted as second-degree murder. Nevertheless, Mohr contends, "substantial evidence suggests that abortion remained a reasonably wide-spread practice in Iowa, just as it did in other states...." Mohr read decisions of Iowa's Supreme Court as admitting "that the death or even the presumed death of an unborn fetus was considered a threat to the life of the woman carrying it and therefore justified an abortion; that anyone could attempt an abortion as long as the life of the woman appeared to be at stake; and, most importantly, that the state had the burden of proof to demonstrate that the abortion was not necessary." The result, Mohr argues, was that performing an abortion, especially if done by a physician, rarely attracted prosecution. Survey data collected in 1931 from more than eighty rural Iowa physicians seems to support his contention: inquiry of more than eighty rural Iowa physicians revealed more than 6600 abortions alongside some 51,000 deliveries.

Accepting this argument does nothing to undermine the Catholic church's own opposition to abortion, a force of considerable power within a Catholic hospital like Grinnell's St. Francis. And yet the hospital register identifies at least seven abortions, all carried out in the 1920s (for unknown reasons, not a single abortion can be found in the register's records from the 1930s). Who were the women at St. Francis who underwent abortions?

St. Francis Hospital, Grinnell, Iowa (1920?) (Digital Grinnell)

Only once does the hospital register report that the abortion was self-induced, and that description was attached to Mrs. Philip Thomas, who was admitted to St. Francis February 3, 1924. Philip Thomas and Mildred Halstead had married in Newton in December, 1920. The Grinnell city directory of that year reported that the couple lived at 1507 Summer, and that Phillip was a "meat cutter." Later evidence indicates that Phillip took up farming, as his death certificate confirmed that he had died unexpectedly in 1928: he suffered a lightning strike as he planted corn on their farm. Available records indicate that Phillip and Mildred Thomas had no other children after the 1924 abortion. Although a self-induced abortion might have damaged Mildred's reproductive organs, she gave birth to a son in 1930 after Phillip's death and her remarriage, so the failure to add children was not a biological consequence of her abortion. But why did she try to abort her 1924 pregnancy? And did that abortion somehow interfere with her relation to her husband?

Other abortions identified in the hospital register seem to have originated with the women's doctors. For example, in April 1928, Miss Kathleen Clifford came to Grinnell from West Branch—at least that's what the hospital record says. However, I could find no Cliffords in West Branch, Iowa; the closest family of that name lived in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and their daughter Kathleen would have been about 25 years old in 1928. It could be, therefore, that, like other unmarried pregnant women who wanted to escape the censure of their hometowns, Kathleen made the trip to Grinnell, but, instead of giving birth to an illegitimate child, she underwent an abortion.

Another single woman said to have had an abortion at St. Francis was Wilma Wentzel, whose name readers of this blog might recognize: in a highly-publicized 1923 case, she had run away from home with a married Grinnell man whom newspapers dubbed "Iceman Romeo." Unlike other young women who had journeyed from distant points to Grinnell to resolve their pregnancies, Wilma was a local girl, her family residing at 1016 Center Street. She had been admitted to St. Francis once before—in June, 1921—to be treated for gonorrhea, a sexually-transmitted disease not often met in the St. Francis register. Just fifteen years old at the time, Wilma was evidently sexually active, which may explain how she returned to the hospital in mid-July, 1922 where, according to the register, Dr. Talbott performed an abortion. Medical authorities explain that a pregnant woman infected with gonorrhea is more likely to experience miscarriage or a pre-term birth, and it may be, therefore, that when Wilma Wentzel returned to St. Francis hospital in 1922, she exhibited some signs of these problems, encouraging her doctor to terminate the pregnancy. Evidently there were no complications, and Wilma was promptly released.

Luella Walker Holstrom (1901-1984)
1925 yearbook of Mankato State Teachers College

The case of Mrs. Harry Holstrom was quite different. Luella (Nellie) Rosalina Walker was born in 1901 in Princeton, Iowa. By 1920, her father was dead, and she and a younger brother were living with their widowed mother in Davenport. Nellie decided to pursue an education, focusing upon teacher training. In 1924 she accepted a position at Mankato State Teachers College (today's Minnesota State University, Mankato). At about the same time, she met Harry Kay Holstrom, and in November, 1926 they married and settled in Brooklyn, Iowa. Apparently Nellie promptly conceived, but she entered St. Francis March 13, 1927, her doctor reporting that he had performed an abortion.

What does this mean? Was the conception somehow defective, perhaps putting Nellie's own life at risk? Had there been some other trouble that necessitated terminating the pregnancy? The hospital register has nothing to say about these questions, remarking only that Nellie was dismissed four days later. Whether related to the abortion or not, something did go wrong with Nellie's marriage, even though the next year she gave birth to a daughter, because by the time federal census agents appeared at her door in 1940, she was no longer living in Brooklyn with Harry, but had returned to Davenport where she lived with her daughter, the census describing her as divorced.

Gravestone for Grastina Marchellino, Hazelwood Cemetery (2017 photo)

A similar scenario played out for Mrs. "Geo." Marchellino. Giuseppe ("Joe") Marchellino had immigrated to the United States in 1909, and established a shoemaker's business in Grinnell. By 1920 Joe was living and working in Ottumwa, where in 1922 he married eighteen-year-old Grace Weeks; they both reported that this was their second marriage. Soon thereafter the newlyweds settled in Grinnell. Grace entered St. Francis Hospital May 10, 1923 where Dr. Talbott again reported having performed an abortion. Apparently there were no complications, as Grace was dismissed two  days later. She conceived again very soon, because their son, James, is reported (on a delayed birth record), as having been born November 6, 1923. This date, recalled years later for the substitute birth certificate, seems very unlikely, and St. Francis records do not remember James's birth at all. Nevertheless, November 6, 1923 is what was recorded in numerous later documents, including the report of James's World War II death in New Guinea in 1942. A second child, Grastina, was born in September, 1925, but died the following spring. Francis came in 1927, and LaVena in 1928. For reasons unknown, by 1930 the couple divorced, and in 1931 Grace remarried and left Iowa. Joe remained in Grinnell until 1962 when he returned to Italy, where he died in 1966.

The other abortions listed in the St. Francis register occurred to married women who already had other children. Mrs. Dow Mehaffey, for instance, entered hospital October 16, 1921, and Dr. Talbott reported having performed an abortion. Dow Mehaffey (1879-1950) and Maude Carson (1890-1955) had married December 20, 1909 in Washington, Iowa. Their first child, Lyle, was born in 1910, but died the following year. Lauretta followed in 1914, and Frances in 1916. So, when Maude was admitted to St. Francis in 1921, she had already given birth three times, and two children awaited her at home. It seems likely, therefore, that her abortion had something to do with the child, and that her doctor determined that an abortion was necessary to preserve Maude's own life, especially inasmuch as Maude went on to have two more children: Metta and Martina.

Mrs. Eugene Dewey of Newburg also had an abortion, hers done by Dr. Parish in late April, 1924. In his later years Eugene Dewey (1895-1960) drove a truck for Richardson-Phelps Lumber Company in Grinnell, but he had begun his working life as a farmer in Hamilton, Missouri. In 1915 he married Cora Jane Innis (1899-1943) in Caldwell, Missouri, and they soon moved to Iowa, first living in Newburg, then later in Grinnell. Cora Dewey gave birth to son Walter in 1917, to daughter Francis in 1918, and to a second daughter, Thelma, in 1923. It seems likely, therefore, that the 1924 abortion reported in hospital records, like Maude Mehaffey's, was the result of some irregularity in the pregnancy that threatened Cora's health.

***

The cases pulled from Grinnell's St. Francis Hospital records highlight experience that weighed especially heavily on women: childbirth outside marriage. Still a rarity in the 1920s and 1930s, extra-marital childbirth in Iowa proved resistant to cultural acceptance, so that young women who conceived a child before having married often had to resort to desperate solutions. For many, it meant finding a hospital far from home where they could give birth, and then return home, hoping that neighbors and friends were none the wiser. Occasionally these single mothers elected to keep their children, but this was difficult and, as happened with Hazel Mintle, these women ultimately chose to leave Grinnell—and their babies—behind.

Other unmarried women appear to have elected abortion. The records tell us nothing about how advanced the pregnancies were or whether there might have been medical problems that made abortion necessary. No doubt each case was complicated. Perhaps for some, who even at a young age were accustomed to serial sexual encounters, abortion was no big thing; in and out of the hospital promptly, as Wilma Wentzel was, for example, these women could not allow pregnancy to complicate their lives. Most of the abortions at St. Francis, however, seem to have been performed on married women who already had children. Consequently, their treatment at St. Francis seems to have had nothing to do with avoiding pregnancy and childbirth.

The brief reports of these women's encounters with illegitimacy and abortion, therefore, preserve for us only the dimmest outlines of lives in which pregnancy brought not only medical but also important social consequences that helped define their biographies. These stories were not written into the master narrative of Grinnell's past, and even within the walls of their own homes may not have been much discussed. Yet these stories, too, belong to Grinnell's past.

When Radium Came to Grinnell...

Many history textbooks describe the last years of the nineteenth and first years of the twentieth century in Europe and America as the "Age of Progress." A wave of inventions and a general rise in the standard of living in parts of the northern hemisphere encouraged an optimism that only dimmed when World War I and the "Spanish flu" worked their deadly spells. However, among the developments that gave rise to optimism was the 1898 discovery of radium. Applications did not immediately appear, but gradually the medical community came to realize that the powerful rays emitted by radium might be used effectively to treat disease. Enthusiasm over the newly-discovered element led to the founding in 1913 of a new journal, Radium, "devoted to the chemistry, physics and therapeutics of radium and other radio-active substances."

Cover of first issue of new journal, Radium (April 1913)

At about the same time, news reports began to appear about radium's medical uses. For example, an article in the May 4, 1915 issue of the Ottumwa Courier told of a Keota man who had been hospitalized in Chicago for cancer of the neck. After four months there had been no improvement. But then the patient became the lucky experiment of a German doctor, newly arrived in Chicago and eager to demonstrate the utility of radium therapy. Three applications later, the patient reported that "he feels like a new man," and he returned home to resume his earlier way of life.

As reports of the curative powers of radium multiplied, more and more physicians grew eager to make use of this new therapy. In September, 1917 the University of Iowa announced that it had purchased "two tiny tubes of radium, the weight of which was but 50 milligrams, combined." Although the acquisition had been pricey—$5000—Dr. Bundy Allen declared that "the state now has a valuable equipment for the cure of cancer and other malignant diseases" (Marshalltown Times-Republican, September 29, 1917). Saying so did not prevent the university from losing its precious medicine. As the Daily Iowan reported, the radium was lost in the course of treating a cancer patient who had a tube containing radium placed in her mouth.

When the time came for its removal it was found that the contents of the tube had entirely disappeared. The patient was ignorant of the way in which the radium was lost (Daily Iowan, November 28, 1920). 

Iowa was not alone in losing track of these minuscule, but costly, radium batches. The Des Moines News (November 12, 1920) reported that a Utica, New York hospital had also lost its radium while treating a patient. "The radium burned [a patient] and in irritation she took off the bandage containing the tiny radium tube and threw it down a drain pipe," obliging the hospital to tear up its sewer system in search of the precious commodity. Closer to home, a physician in 1928 Waterloo sought help from Coe College's electroscope to retrieve a tiny ("one-fortieth as large as a dime") bit of radium that was "thrown by accident into a furnace, along with some surgical refuse" (Coe College Cosmos, October 28, 1928).

Undated photograph of A. James Larkin (1888-1936 )
(History of Medicine and Surgery and Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago [Chicago: Biographical Publishing Corporation, 1922], p. 645)

Meantime physicians across the country embraced radium treatment for a surprisingly broad array of illnesses. In 1929 A. James Larkin, a Chicago doctor who specialized in radium therapy, published Radium in General Practice, a physician's guide. The table of contents, each line of which detailed some illness or part of the body for which radium therapy was recommended, occupied two entire pages. In addition to examining radium's use on numerous forms of cancer, Larkin detailed how radium could benefit sufferers of vernal conjunctivitis, deafness, ringworm, nevus, and much else. Presumably there were illnesses for which radium was not suitable, but physicians seemed to be finding more and more applications.

Given the potency of the chemical, radium treatment demanded only small quantities applied for brief periods. In practice this meant placement of a small tube or needle of radium directly on or within the affected area. The idea was that the radium would "burn away" tumors, which seemed more susceptible to the radioactive emissions than healthy tissue. The difficult part was to make certain that the radium damaged only cancerous cells; when this goal was achieved, radium treatment became an effective competitor to surgery.

Illustration of containers used in radium therapy
(A. James Larkin, Radium in General Practice [NY: Paul B. Hoeber, 1929], p. 6)

But the minute applicators necessary raised other problems, obliging physicians to apply secure tethers to make certain that the valuable containers of radium were not ingested or otherwise lost (a lesson learned too late by some of radium's early enthusiasts). Indeed, Larkin was at pains to warn physicians to make certain that the radium applicator was "firmly attached to some object or part of the patient's body during the application so that it is impossible to lose control of it at any time...." This problem was especially urgent when treating the mouth, nose, throat, uterus, rectum, bladder or esophagus (Larkin, Radium, p. 16), all body parts to which radium was frequently applied.

Title page of L. L. Myers's study
(University of Iowa Studies in Medicine v. 1, n. 5 [July 1919])

Although radium therapy gradually exhausted its welcome among physicians, it is easy to understand the enthusiasm with which it was originally received. In a 1919 paper devoted to using radium to treat uterine cancer, Dr. L. L. Myers pointed out that radical hysterectomy, until then the primary therapy for uterine cancer, was not only a complicated and taxing surgery; it was also often deadly. According to Myers, among "experienced operators" twenty-five percent of all hysterectomy patients died during or after the operation, but among less experienced or less-skilled surgeons patient mortality often reached fifty percent. Moreover, Myers continued, those who survived radical hysterectomies often experienced severe pain in the pelvis because of the retraction of pelvic tissues. By contrast, placing controlled quantities of radium directly upon the malignant tissue for brief periods occasioned little discomfort and none of the mortality dangers so common to surgical solutions.

A similar argument was made for many other surgical therapies, which helped encourage physicians to prefer radium treatment over the scalpel. For example, in an era when tonsillectomies were very common an increasing number of physicians applied radium cylinders directly to the tonsils. Doing so removed some of the dangers of infection and helped patients resume normal activities sooner. The same dynamic influenced the treatment of skin disorders and other medical specialties.

***

Grinnell received its first radium in the spring of 1920. Weighing only 12.46 milligrams (about one-quarter the size of the sample that the University of Iowa had acquired), Grinnell's radium arrived "cradled in a needle, fastened in a strong box with boxes and boxes and wrappings and wrappings on the outside." This "tiny but mighty" package cost the Grinnell Community Hospital $1507.20, a staggering outlay for a small-town hospital.

Grinnell Herald, March 12, 1920

Two local physicians, Drs. P. E. Somers and L. A. Hopkins, were named "radium experts" and directed to undertake the training necessary to use radium therapy safely. Hopkins may never have practiced with radium in Grinnell, as he left town for the west coast in 1923, never to return. But Somers clearly did, as several of his professional presentations indicate. At a 1921 meeting of the Iowa Clinical Medical Society in Grinnell, Somers gave a paper on "The Results of Radium Therapy in Epithelioma and Lupus Vulgaris" (Journal of Iowa State Medical Society, vol. 11 [May 1921]:184), indicating that his first treatments in Grinnell likely dealt with skin maladies. The next year at the annual meeting of the Iowa State Medical Society Somers presented a paper on "Chemistry and Medicine," almost certainly detailing more of his work with radium (Journal of the Iowa State Medical Society, vol. 12 [April 1922]:126).

How often and how long Somers pursued radium therapy in Grinnell presently-available records do not make clear. The October 1923 issue of the Grinnell Community Hospital Bulletin devoted a special article to cancer, firmly embracing radium therapy:

The best practice in the treatment of cancer is early removal. It is always preceded by the exposure of the part to Radium where this is feasible, and the area from which the growth is removed is again treated with Radium afterwards. Radium is the best single agent in the treatment of cancers and should be used in all inoperable cases and is the treatment of choice in cancers on the skin.

Each year the hospital published data on the number of patients treated and the therapies applied. The February 1923 bulletin, reporting on 1922 admissions, identified 58 "radium cases" that year, compared with 91 surgeries, figures that confirm the hospital's confidence in radium therapy.

The Drake Community Library Local History Archives does not hold a complete run of the Community Hospital Bulletin, so it is difficult to know exactly how long radium continued to be employed as a cancer treatment at the hospital. The February 1931 issue, however, indicates that at some point before 1930 radium had disappeared entirely from the hospital's cupboard of therapies, perhaps because that year the hospital purchased a new x-ray machine intended for therapeutic as well as for diagnostic use. Consequently, the February 1933 report on hospital admissions in 1932 reported 135 surgical patients and 56 treated by x-ray; no use of radium was reported. The following year showed a similar distribution, again with no reference whatever to radium. Figures for 1937 showed nearly as many patients treated with x-ray (120) as with surgery (124), and in 1938 and 1939 patients treated with x-ray therapy outnumbered surgery patients. Evidently the physicians at Community Hospital had decided sometime in the 1920s that radium therapy was no longer a preferred—or even complementary—therapy for cancer. Perhaps the scare occasioned by the 1925 discovery of disease among women who painted radium onto watches helped persuade Grinnell physicians to seek alternative therapies.

Admission Register of St. Francis Hospital, 1919-1935 (Grinnell Historical Museum)

The register of admissions to St. Francis hospital, however, offers a bit more evidence about radium therapy in Grinnell. To judge by the register, Grinnell's second hospital did not employ radium therapy at all until the 1930s. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, St. Francis physicians regularly resorted to surgery to deal with cancer and other problems to which radium had been applied since 1920 at Community Hospital. But after Dr. C. W. Howell (1887-1941) joined the St. Francis staff in 1931, taking over the practice of Dr. Eugene Talbott (1873-1943), St. Francis hospital began to treat patients with radium. Where or when the hospital obtained its radium supply I do not know, but the register indicates that when Mrs. Cedric Barnes entered the hospital on August 3, 1933, she received "radium treatment," the first time that this phrase appears in the register. John Devereux entered hospital the day that Mrs. Barnes left (August 5), and he, too, received "radium treatment," although for what exact problem the register does not say.

After that, Dr. Howell applied radium treatment sporadically, sometimes more than once to the same patient. For example, Mrs. Mary E. Turner entered St. Francis November 14, 1933, was treated with radium, and then dismissed November 18. Two months later (January 13, 1934) she was back in hospital, once again receiving a dose of radium before being sent home the next day. That summer Turner was once again a patient at St. Francis, being admitted August 21 and dismissed Aug 22 after her third radium treatment. J. A. Breeden of Newburg went through two radium treatments at St. Francis, the first occurring in late January 1934 with a follow-up in mid-March. Mrs. J. G. Strovers (Kellogg) and Mrs. Charles Newcomer (Newburg) also both received two radium treatments in 1934. Four other persons underwent at least one treatment at St. Francis in 1933 or 1934, but between the time Mrs. Newcomer was dismissed in late November 1934 and the end of this volume of the St. Francis register (July 31, 1935), no other hospital patients had resort to radium. Without access to the next volume of hospital admissions we cannot know if Dr. Howell continued to use radium therapy, but if he did, his use of radium did not last long, as Howell himself died of a heart attack in 1941.

With so little information, it is difficult to know what to make of Howell's practice, but it appears that his patients may have benefitted from their encounter with radium. Mary Turner, for example, who had had three radium treatments in 1933-1934 lived until 1984 when she died at age 74 "following a lengthy illness." If Howell had treated her for cancer (as the three treatments imply), the radium treatments may well have prolonged her life, even if it was cancer to which she ultimately succumbed.  James Breeden did not live so long as Turner, but it was an automobile accident, not illness, that took his life in 1957 when he was 66 years old. Ross Coutts, who apparently had just one encounter with radium therapy, died in 1965 in the Grinnell hospital, but he was then 81. Therefore, it may be that Dr. Howell's St. Francis patients benefited from radium therapy.

Nevertheless, as practice at Grinnell's Community Hospital indicated, the therapeutic use of radium had clearly peaked by 1930, replaced by newer, safer therapies. In its heyday, however, the very word—even without its potent radioactive energy—exerted enormous power across American culture, and was especially prominent in the marketplace, tempting entrepreneurs to associate almost any product with radium.

***

Many of these products never came near actual radium, but bore the name in the hope that buyers would eagerly scoop up anything associated with the latest wonder. Dry goods stores, for example, advertised that seamstresses could purchase "radium silk," and clothing stores offered pajamas or petticoats made of "radium silk." As a 1922 advertisement for Grinnell's Brintnalls Dry Goods store put it, "What girl's heart wouldn't be joyous just to feel the soft, clinging Silk in these garments" (Scarlet and Black, December 6, 1922)? "Radium slips," which advertisements admitted were made from rayon satin, were on offer from Younkers in Des Moines, so almost certainly some women in Grinnell wore them. Men's stores in Marshalltown sold cotton socks bumped up by being called "Radium 100" or "Radium 400," so these too could likely be found in Grinnell dressers in the 1920s.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/how-we-realized-putting-radium-in-everything-was-not-the-answer/273780/

Radium butter probably did not make it onto grocery shelves in town, but it illustrates the lengths to which advertisers would go to hype their products. One of the most amusing products in this group was something called "Radium Spray," which borrowed the idea of radium's power to allege that the spray "cleans everything except a guilty conscience."

Advertisement from Des Moines Daily News, May 25, 1912

Most of these products were harmless, containing no radium whatsoever. But some entrepreneurs not only borrowed radium for the names of their products, but also actually used radium in their products. One of the most widely-known was something called Radithor, "certified radioactive water." Produced in New Jersey between 1918 and 1928, Radithor contained both radium and mesothorium in distilled water. Promoters claimed that, when consumed regularly, Radithor could remedy many ills, including sexual impotence.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/187392034476939006

Enthusiastic consumers, like Eben Byers (1880-1932), who was said to have drunk three bottles a day for several years, ended up absorbing enormous quantities of radium. Originally buoyed by his use of Radithor, Byers ultimately fell seriously ill, losing his jaw to cancer and developing holes in his skull. When he died in 1932—a victim of radiation poisoning—he was buried in a lead-lined coffin; when exhumed in 1965, his body was found to be still highly radioactive. Unfortunately, Byers was not alone; experts estimate that some 400,000 bottles of Radithor had been purchased, leaving many other consumers afflicted with radiation poisoning. So far as I could determine, no Iowa publication advertised Radithor, so perhaps Grinnellians remained safe from its radioactive nostrum.

Headline from the Ames Daily Tribune, April 1, 1932

But Radithor was not the only culprit in this wave of quackery. Radium Appliance Company of Los Angeles advertised a "Radio-Active Pad" to be worn on one's "back by day and over the stomach at night." The pad was said to cure "Neuritis, Rheumatism, High Blood Pressure, Constipation, Nervous Prostration, Asthma..., Heart, Liver, Kidney and Bladder trouble."

Advertisement from Mason City Globe-Gazette, October 21, 1930

Other uses seemed less threatening. For example, as early as 1918 Grinnellians learned that they could buy from Hoffmeister's jewelry store on Broad Street wrist watches with genuine radium dials that would glow in the dark. Only later did purchasers learn that the women who painted the radium on watch dials had themselves become victims of radiation poisoning. By the late 1920s, the sordid tale of the "Radium Girls" took much of the wind out of radium's sails.

Advertisement from the Scarlet and Black, October 6, 1918

Nevertheless, hucksters attached the promise of radium to rouge, chocolate bars, suppositories, and much else.

Advertisement from the Chicago Tribune, March 9, 1919

The lure of radium also attracted beauty salons that promised "radium treatments" alongside "vapor baths" and other cosmetic therapies.

Advertisement from Des Moines Register, December 13, 1925

Physicians eager to collect patients attuned to the latest craze advertised in newspapers their commitment to "radium treatment." Davenport's Dr. C. E. Glynn, for instance, advertised "Radium treatments" along with "X-ray diagnosis of the heart, lung, stomach and kidney" (Davenport Daily Times, December 6, 1921). In Estherville R. C. Coleman, M. D. advertised "Operations and Radium Treatments" (Estherville Daily News, July 24, 1930). Inevitably, therefore, swindlers showed up, taking advantage of people's fascination with something they poorly understood. In 1927 both Illinois and Michigan pursued Fred Ashner who was wanted in a dozen Michigan and Illinois communities for "faking 'radium' treatments of persons in rural communities" (Davenport Daily Times, December 20, 1927). Some places, like Davenport, established their own institutes, the better to coordinate delivery of radium therapy. Larger cities like Chicago saw the establishment of services that provided either on-site radium therapy or rented out radium to physicians who contemplated radium therapy for patients.

Journal of Iowa State Medical Society, vol. 11(1921)

***

But then radium's moment in the sun passed.  Even the journal Radium, which had been born on the eve of the element's explosion into medical practice, closed down, its last issue published in 1925, the same year that the public heard about "Radium Girls." Soon the country's newspapers reported the sad tale of Eben Byers's deadly embrace of Radithor, further dulling the gloss on radium's future. As the Great Depression bore down on the country and a new war gradually came into view, radium—dangerous and expensive—lost its hold on the medical profession. The early deaths of enthusiasts like A. James Larkin did nothing to stall radium's death spiral. No longer did hospitals need to spend large sums for tiny tubes easily swallowed, thrown into the toilet, or otherwise lost. Radium's replacement, X-ray therapy, was also expensive, but provided a more controlled dose to aim at tumorous tissue without the same risk of loss, and rapidly edged radium out of medical practice. Certainly in Grinnell the Community Hospital abandoned radium therapy already in the 1920s; why it made a brief comeback at St. Francis Hospital in the 1930s is unclear, but after the death of Dr. C. W. Howell, radium therapy in Grinnell seems to have come finally to an end.

Public fascination with this wonder remedy also passed. Suddenly radium butter and radium silk seemed much less appealing than they had seemed a decade earlier.

Born Black in Grinnell: Overlooked No More

A recent study of childbirth in California revealed that Black mothers—even "rich" Black mothers—and their babies fare much worse in childbirth than do white mothers—even worse than poor white mothers. In this study 350 babies out of 100,000 children born to poor white mothers died before their first birthday, whereas 437 babies per 100,000 born to the richest Black mothers perished before their first birthday. The numbers are even worse for the poorest Black mothers, confirming that, although income powerfully affects the outcome of childbirth in the United States, race has an even more potent effect.

New York Times, February 12, 2023

Grinnell's small population and its even smaller population of African Americans make it difficult to see how this dynamic of childbirth played out in central Iowa. Of course, African American babies had been born in Grinnell almost from the very founding of the town. The great majority of all local births, however, had happened at home and had not automatically entered the record books. After the establishment of hospitals in Grinnell early in the twentieth century and the gradual transition of delivery to hospitals, record-keeping became more regular. But few Black children have been born here since then, making it difficult to know if in Grinnell there was any significant difference between African American births and all other births.

Grinnell Herald-Register, December 29, 1955

I was thinking about this problem recently while skimming the December 29, 1955 issue of the Grinnell Herald-Register where I found a surprise: a photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Thomas—both African Americans—holding their newborn twins, Anthony and Andrea, born December 26, 1955 at Grinnell's St. Francis hospital.

As I came to learn, both Anthony and Andrea (1955-2016) survived their first year, distinguishing themselves from the large numbers of Black babies in the California study who died before reaching their first birthday. But who were the Thomases? I had studied Grinnell's African Americans but I had never heard of Carl or Anna Mae Thomas. Today's post aims to recover the slimly-documented history of this Black American family that spent a half-dozen years in Grinnell in the 1950s.

###

Our story begins not in Grinnell, but rather in Monroe County, some sixty miles south of Grinnell. It was there in 1923 that Pearl Thomas (1882-1960), a 40-year-old African American man, took as his second wife 19-year-old Hazel Hollingsworth (1904-1973) (Albia Union-Republican, March 29, 1923). This union generated twelve children, one of whom, Carl Eugene, became father to the twins whose photo I discovered in the 1955 newspaper.

Albia Union Republican, March 29, 1923

Although Blacks were not uncommon in the early twentieth century in this part of Monroe County where coal-mining had given rise to communities like Buxton where Blacks were numerous, in Albia Pearl's family lived on the margins. Their home in the 500 block of B Avenue West quite literally placed them at Albia's geographic edge, a metaphor for their economic vulnerability. The precariousness of the family economy appears in Pearl's work history that shows him to have moved through a series of low-paying jobs. When Pearl first married in 1912, he worked as a "fireman" for a local firm ("Iowa,  County Marriages, 1838-1934," FamilySearch); the 1920 US census remembers him as a "porter" in a bakery, and 1930 census described him as a "laborer" in an auto shop, a position that may explain how later that year Pearl advertised his business of washing and cleaning cars (Albia Union Republican, June 5, 1930). 

Albia Union Republican, June 5, 1930

After the Depression settled onto Monroe County, Pearl cast about for work; by 1940 he was employed by the Works Progress Administration in road construction. The 1950 US census left blank the space where Pearl's work might have been listed, but evidently he organized a new business, hauling trash and garbage (see, for example, Albia Union Republican, December 29, 1955). 

Carl Eugene Thomas (1928-1995), who with his own family is the focus of our story, was the fourth child born to Hazel and Pearl. In 1940 Carl was still too young to be working, but when he registered for the military draft in 1946, Carl told the registrar that he was employed at a "malleable foundry" in Fairfield, Iowa. The 1950 US census has both Carl and his brother, Kenneth (1932-2014), "trucking fertilizer" for a feed store. Although the census does not identify Carl's employer, he likely worked for Goode Feed & Seed Co., an Albia business that sold fertilizer along with seed.

Lovilia Press, April 6, 1950

Soon after the census-takers left Albia, Carl married Anna Mae Brooks (1933- ) in nearby Pershing. Anna Mae was the child of Leonard Brooks (1903-1933) and Mary Tessel Washington (1910-1981). Leonard and Mary both had been born in Buxton, the mainly Black coal-mining town near Albia. Leonard's father had been a blacksmith (and minister), but from an early age Leonard had worked in the coal mines, an occupation that may have contributed to his early death (at age 30) from lobar pneumonia (Standard Certificate of Death, Monroe County, Rexfield Village, Registered No. 68-6). When Leonard married in Buxton in December 1928, he was 26 and his bride not yet 19 (Iowa State Board of Health, Return of Marriage to Clerk of District Court, 77-13647). At least one brother, William (1929- ) had preceded her into the family, but Anna Mae followed in May 1933, just a few months before Leonard's death in September. Consequently, Anna Mae grew up without knowing her father. Her mother remarried in December 1935, taking the Thomas's recently-widowed neighbor on Albia's B Avenue West, Lewis Dudley (1897-1961), as her second husband ("Iowa, County Marriages, 1838-1934," Family Search). The 1940 US Census shows Anna and her brother, William, living with their mom in the newly-blended Dudley family in Pershing, Iowa.

Carl was 22 in June 1950 when he married Brooks, who was then just 17. How the two met I do not know; Pershing is about 25 miles north of Albia, and in 1940 Anna would have attended elementary school there, and probably attended high school later in Knoxville. It seems likely, therefore, that the couple did not meet at school. However they got together, the match resulted in the birth of eight children. Their first child, Shelia Ann (1950-2013), was born September 1950 in the Albia home of Anna Mae's grandmother, Sallie (Harrelson) Brooks (1878-1952). In a telephone conversation with me (February 20, 2023), Anna remembered that at birth Shelia weighed more than 8 pounds and arrived in good health. 

Undated Photograph of Anna Mae (Brooks) Thomas Juarez
(Facebook account of Anna Juarez)

Until the birth of Shelia Ann, the lives of Carl and his bride had centered on Monroe County, especially on Albia where the 1950 US census found about 4800 people. But at just this moment Carl and Anna Mae decided to take their little girl and move, first briefly to Des Moines, and then to Grinnell whose population the 1950 census counted at 6800. Because of this move, Carl and Anna were already resident in Grinnell when on February 3, 1952 Anna gave birth at Grinnell's St. Francis Hospital to her second child, Gregory Eugene (1952-1995), who weighed a healthy 8 pounds and 1/2 ounce (Grinnell Herald-Register, February 4, 1952). Anna's doctor for this and subsequent deliveries in Grinnell was Thomas Brobyn (1908-1966), who in post-war Grinnell practiced with Dr. Edwin Korfmacher (1904-1960); both physicians were on staff at St. Francis hospital. But it is Sister Pauline (1897-1991), who helped welcome generations of babies into the world at St. Francis hospital, whom Anna remembers now. 

Sister Pauline with Dorothy Tarleton Palmer and Baby Cynthia (1949)
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A12073)

One may imagine that it was the attraction of a job that brought Carl to Grinnell. Several of his siblings left Albia for Moline, Illinois and jobs at the John Deere Harvester Works, but Grinnell had no factory so large as that. If Carl continued the kind of work he had done in Albia, he might have driven a truck for one of Grinnell's two seed companies, DeKalb or Sumner Brothers. DeKalb was the bigger operation, and in Grinnell was headquartered in the former home of Grinnell Washing Machine Company at 733 Main (where today the Elks' Lodge stands). Sumner Brothers Seed Company's home at 4th and Spring was closer to the Thomas's first Grinnell home on Prairie Street (Polk's Grinnell City Directory 1940, p. 182).

Polk's Grinnell City Directory 1940 (Omaha: R. L. Polk & Co., 1940), p. 14

In fact, however, Carl worked at neither of these firms. Anna remembered that instead Carl worked for a Grinnell automobile dealer's service department. All these years later she could not recall the name of the dealership, but did remember that Carl often washed and polished newly-delivered automobiles, following in the footsteps of his father who had done similar work in Albia in the 1930s.

1932-1943 Sanborn Map of Western Grinnell
(https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4154gm.g026731943/?sp=8&st=single&r=-0.14,-0.025,1.281,0.59,0)

When Gregory, the family's second child, was born the Grinnell newspaper reported that the Thomases were living at 1003 Prairie Street, at the intersection of Prairie and Fifth Avenue, which at the time constituted the western-most edge of Grinnell (Grinnell Herald-Register, February 4, 1952). Although today a solid ranch house stands on that lot, nothing survives to describe the building in which the Thomases settled in 1952. When I spoke with Anna by telephone, she remembered the house as having had only one bedroom, and, like the Pearl Thomas home in Albia, the Thomas's first residence in Grinnell stood on what was then the outskirts of town.

Almost exactly one year after having delivered Gregory, Anna gave birth to the couple's third child, Leonard Macey; he, too, was born at St. Francis Hospital, weighing 7 pounds, 6 1/4 ounces (Grinnell Herald-Register, February 23, 1953). Telephone directories indicate (if the initial in the listing ["Thomas Carl W"] is an error) that by the time Leonard came home with his mother, the Thomases and their three children were living at 1031 Elm, a two-story house with three bedrooms, apparently a significant upgrade over the Prairie Street address.

1031 Elm Street (2013 photo)

The 1954 telephone directory found the Thomases at 714 Center Street, an address that brought them close to other African Americans. Carrie Redrick (1886-1969) was then living at 729 Center, just across the street a ways, and Eva Renfrow (1875-1962) was about two blocks away in the family home at 411 First Avenue. One may imagine, given the few Blacks then resident in Grinnell, that the proximity of African Americans brought Carl and Anna Thomas some satisfaction. However, Carrie and Eva, both widows and considerably older than Carl and Anna (Carrie was almost 70 and Eva was in her late 70s), may not have provided as much support as the Thomases hoped for. Moreover, the house on Center Street seems to have been much smaller than their Elm Street residence; a one-story structure, 714 Center could boast only two bedrooms and total living area of less than 1000 square feet.

An Unidentified Newborn at St. Francis Hospital (1949)
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A12074)

It was Anna's next delivery, again at St. Francis hospital, that brought into the world their twins, Anthony and Andrea. The newborns did not weigh quite as much as their older sister and brothers—Anthony weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces and Andrea weighed 5 pounds 10 1/2 ounces (Grinnell Herald-Register, December 26, 1955)—but they were not seriously underweight, and both survived well beyond their first year. When Anna left the hospital, she brought the twins to their next Grinnell home at 723 Summer Street. At this point Carl and Anna had five children under the age of six, but their home had only two bedrooms and a living space of 636 square feet, less than either of their two previous homes. 

723 Summer Street (2013 photo)

As with the house on Center Street, the Summer Street address brought the Thomases close to African Americans: another widow, Mamie Tibbs (1892-1973), at that time resided at 712 Elm which was just across the back yard from the Thomas home, and Mamie's second son, Albert Tibbs (1922-1997), and his family lived down the block from the Thomases at 707 Summer (since razed and replaced). Mamie, who would have been in her early 60s when the Thomases moved to Summer Street, was not in a position to help much, either financially or physically, as she had plenty of challenges to keep her own household operating ("The Hard Life of Widow Tibbs," in Daniel H. Kaiser, Grinnell Stories: African Americans of Early Grinnell [Grinnell: Grinnell Historical Museum, 2020], 157-166). Albert and Virginia Tibbs (1924-2014), on the other hand, although about ten years older than Carl and Anna, were closer in age and also had young children: If Albert, Jr. (1943- ), Larry (1944-2014), and Robert (Danny) Tibbs were older than the Thomas children, Barbara Tibbs (1948- ) was almost the same age as Shelia Thomas and a neighborhood playmate.

Albert S. Tibbs (1922-1997)
(Grinnell Herald-Register, March 3, 1955)

Like the Renfrow children of an earlier time, Shelia began school in Grinnell, the only African American in her class. I could not find a record to confirm my guess, but I assume that Shelia began school at Davis, entering kindergarten probably the same year her mother gave birth to the twins. If the Thomases left Grinnell in 1957, Shelia would then have also done first grade at Davis Elementary, which at that time served most of south Grinnell. She probably made her way to school in the company of her slightly older neighbor, Barbara Tibbs, who was almost certainly the only Black in her class, a grade or two ahead of Shelia. Before the Thomases moved to Wisconsin, Greg might  have started school too, but I found no record to confirm that possibility.

Shelia, Greg, and Leonard Thomas, Grinnell Herald-Register, September 3, 1955
(Thanks to Monique Shore for taking this photograph from the library's bound copy of the newspaper)

On the telephone and again in a subsequent email, Anna made a point of the fact that her family had encountered no racial discrimination in Grinnell. Some support for that reading comes from a surprising source—a series of advertisements for the local dairy. Every ten days or two weeks Lang's Dairy published a photograph of young children, accompanied by an image of a Lang's milk carton and a ditty affirming the quality of the milk. Of the 100 or so Lang's ads I found in the pages of the Grinnell Herald-Register in the mid-1950s, only one advertisement included a photograph of Black children: Shelia, Greg, and Lennie Thomas (September 3, 1955). Of course, there were few non-white children in 1950s Grinnell so we can hardly be surprised that the children of only one Black family gained a place in the ads.

The details of the Thomas family's subsequent days in Grinnell remain unknown. Sometime before June 3, 1957, when Anna gave birth to Jeffrey C. Thomas—the couple's sixth child—, the Thomases left Grinnell for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to live close to Anna's relatives. In addition to Jeffrey, in Milwaukee Anna delivered another two sons to the family—Steven in December 1959 and Ricardo Brooks Thomas (1962-2000) in 1962. All eight of the Thomas children, including the four born in Grinnell, successfully lived into adulthood, although four (including Andrea, the twin) died relatively early. Ricardo, the last-born, was only 37 when he died in 2000; Gregory, the first child born to the Thomases in Grinnell, was 43 when he died in 1995; Andrea, who struggled with both diabetes and asthma (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 7, 2005), was 61 at the time of her 2016 death; and Shelia, Anna's first-born, was just 62 when she died in 2013 (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 8, 2013).

Milwaukee Journal, January 28, 1995
(Thanks to Melissa Shriver of the Milwaukee Public Library who found and scanned this notice for me)

Carl, the focus of our story and father of the Thomas family, also died early; in January 1995 when still only 66 years of age, Carl died in Milwaukee and was buried in Graceland Cemetery there. At the time all eight of his children were still alive, but he and Anna had evidently parted ways: Carl's death notice makes no mention of Anna, but does remember his long-time companion, Evelyn Jean Davis. Anna remarried, taking as her second husband Roberto Juarez. A series of notes she posted in 2014 on the Findagrave websites of her deceased children indicates that she has retained a strong bond with her original family, including those children born to her in Grinnell, two of whom remain alive.

###

The New York Times periodically publishes biographies of people long gone but unnoticed at the time of their deaths. Entitled "Overlooked No More," the series tries to restore to the record obituaries of "remarkable people whose deaths...went unreported in the New York Times." With the little information presently available it is hard to argue that Carl Thomas or anyone else in that family was "remarkable," even for a small town in central Iowa. But plenty of Grinnell people had their ordinary lives regularly documented in the newspaper and in other records—from their church, their business, their club, their sports team, etc. The newspaper even found space to report on visitors or dinner guests. Not the Thomases, however; I could find no one who remembered them and the slim published record that survives does little more than confirm the presence in Grinnell of Carl and Anna Mae Thomas and their children. Born Black in Grinnell, these babies survived their infancy, like most other children born in Grinnell's hospitals in those years. All the rest disappears in the mist.