An Empty Place at the Table: Cora Redington

David Owens > Lucy Owens & Ira Miller > Josie Miller Redington Swanger > Cora Redington

A child. Born after the last census and dies before the next, can be lost to history. Their place at the table still goes missed.

Before, I'd talked about the husbands of Josie Miller, James Irving Edward "Ed" Redington and Charlie Swanger. Ed was a wild one - a town eccentric and multiply married fellow. Charlie was a wild one when younger, but found The Salvation Army and led an exemplary, alcohol-free life in the latter part of his life.

To date, the only child I was aware of in the Redington-Miller marriage, was Ira Edmon Redington, namesake of Grandpa Ira Miller, who was born in 1905 and suffered from some sort of disability that eventually had him living Woodward State Hospital for the "feeble-minded" in Boone County, Iowa. He died at the age of 61.

In searching for something else completely, I ran across this article:

No name is mentioned and I certainly hadn't run across anyone having died so tragically in previous research. No mention was ever made that I recalled of any such horrific event. The story, which began on a beautiful day with children playing and ended in an instant in calamity of the worst kind, went like this:

Young Cora Mae Redington, born in 16 Apr 1903, died on her 3rd birthday,16 Apr 1906, in Harrison Township, Benton County, Iowa at the home of her grandparents, Ira and Lucy (Owens) Miller. The uncle mentioned is unknown as none of the children of Ira were 13 at the time of this event. Jesse was 11 and is the most likely solution. She was buried in Bear Creek Cemetery in Benton County, where several other Miller descendants are buried.

The Redington's had not married until February of 1905, so whether Cora is his biological daughter of Josie, Ed, or both, is not known, but she did carry the Redington name.

No mention is made in Edmond or Josie's obits about Cora, nor Ira Edmond Redington, their child born in 1905 who lived in the Woodward State Hospital for the "feeble-minded" for most of his life.

A Little Pile of Treasures

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My dad and I have spent much of the last forty years either estranged or annoyed with one another.

When he remarried when I was 14 years old to a woman only 9 years older than me who spent a lot of time subtly sabotaging our relationship, we were never the same. Then, though many years younger than my dad, his wife died last December, quite unexpectedly. In that moment, our relationship moved from eternal darkness to dawn.

As his life went on, the retired Army recruiter, his son and wife, plopped themselves down in a house near a major military base in the Midwest. He made his home there for over 20 years. A rambling house, of good bones, but which had little attention in the past few years as my dad became more and more challenged to finish projects, it had become too much for him to care for. Now, he's moving out of his home and to a new adventure in a seniors community here near me.

My sister and I helped for a week organizing him in the first step to prepare and in the meantime, I located photos he hadn't seen in forty years. Photos he'd forgotten about. Photos no one else living had seen. I got my first glimpse into the childhood of my dad and his brothers. Into my grandmother's relationship with her first family's children. Into what my grandpa looked like with hair. No one knew him then. I don't think they ever owned their own camera, strictly based on the fact there are so few photos. I have a lot of work to do.

What a treasure.