Josie Miller Must Have Liked Quirky

DAVID OWENS m Sarah Holler > LUCY OWENS m Ira Miller > JOSEPHINE MILLER REDINGTON SWANGER

I loved exploring the family of David Owens, my 3rd great grandfather. He was a good farmer, a solid citizen, and had an adventurous spirit that took him from Indiana to Illinois to Iowa and finally, to South Dakota. He married three times and had a total of 14 children.

Among his children was Lucy, my 2nd great grandmother. She married Ira Miller and they had nine children, among them my great grandmother, Florence and her sister Josephine, the fourth of the nine.

Josie, as she was known, was born 05 Nov 1882 in rural Urbana, Benton County on the family farm. She first got married to a man who would be described by the newspaper as a "well-known Vinton character," in earlier articles and in his obituary.  This item, listed under "Just for Fun" in the Cedar Valley Times on 16 Oct 1936, describes him philosophizing while a resident of the County Home:

"Ed Redington was around town talking politics today. Ed says he hasn't decided whether or not he will vote at the general election next month. However, he does make his position clear insofar as his choice between the two presidential candidates is concerned when he asserts: "If I do vote it will be for Roosevelt. But as I don't believe he will need my vote to win, I don't think I'll bother about going to the polls."

"According to Ed, he has been having considerable trouble of late with people breaking into his trunk and taking things that don't belong to them. Ed said that only recently someone broke into his trunk, which he left locked, and stole two pairs of underwear, two shirts, two quilts, besides a good army overcoat. "They even took my dishes," declared Ed, "and that is what I call a low-down truck." Ed maintains that he has lost practically all faith in humanity on account of the unfortunate experiences he has had lately."

WCF&N Trolley

His name was James Irving Edmond Redington, son of Mr & Mrs Ben Redington. Josie and "Ed" married 14 Feb 1905 in Benton County, Iowa. They had a son, Ira Edmond Redington, who had some sort of mental disability and lived in the Hospital for Epileptics and School for the Feeble Minded in Cass, Iowa from at least 1930. Ira died in 1966. The couple divorced and Ed went on to several more marriages before dying at age 62 in April 1940 in Vinton.

Josie then married Charles H Swanger on 23 Apr 1923 in Waterloo, Black Hawk County. Charles was born in Fredericksburg, Iowa on March 11, 1882, to James and Hattie Sisson Swanger. Charles had previously been married to Cora, whom he married in 1903 and was divorced from in 1911 in Waterloo, having alleged adultery and addiction to intoxicants as grounds.

In 1931, Josie's widowed mother, Lucy Owens Miller, came to the Swanger home for the last five weeks of her life, with Josie caring for her.

Charles worked as a section man on the WCF&N Railway, the interurban rail and trolley system that ran in the Central Valley and its surrounding towns. On December 22, 1932, while he was out shoveling snow off the tracks, he was struck by an auto driven by Mrs Roy Hamilton. Mrs Hamilton said her car got caught in the tracks and she attempted to turn when she skidded into Swanger. He survived!  He retired from the company in 1941 after 25 years of service.

Both Josie and Charles were very active in the Salvation Army for many years. In addition to taking care of the home, Josie also sold magazines on the side. Josie died at Allen Memorial hospital of a heart condition on 12 Jan 1954 in Waterloo and had services in the Salvation Army's Stone Church on Park Ave at Mulberry. After her death, Charles remained in the family home at 1104 Franklin St. In August 1964, be received a knock at the door one day from two men purporting to be from the public utility company wanting to inspect the electric meter. While one distracted him, the other robbed his house of $280. The article in the paper was a warning to citizens that this con was being worked in the area and to always verify identity with the IPS ID card or by calling the utility.

He kept busy after Josie died by continued work for the Salvation Army. Charles ended up spending 40 years with the Salvation Army, attaining the rank of Sergeant Major, until his second retirement in 1948. He continued volunteering with them after that. This article outlines his trips to the front entry of Rath Packing Co. where he handed out the Salvation Army War Cry newspaper every other day for 13 years and was dubbed "Uncle Charlie," by those who worked at Rath. His eventual absence, which started in 1968, was noted by many and the local paper wrote this article about what "Uncle Charlie" was up to now.

Waterloo Daily Courier, Mar 29, 1968

                 

He spent the last years in the Platte Rest Home in Waterloo before dying at Allen Hospital on 22 Apr 1970.

Remembering Florence Miller

DAVID OWENS m Sarah Hollar > LUCY OWENS m Ira Miller > FLORENCE MILLER m Charles Linsey

Today, I'm remembering my great grandmother, Florence Miller, who was born 132 years ago on a farm in rural Iowa. She was my paternal grandfather's mother.

Wedding of Florence Linsey, 1903

Florence Miller Linsey was born 17 Sep 1884 to Ira S Miller and Lucy “Lizzie” Owens Miller. The Millers farmed outside of Center Point, near Urbana. She married Charles Lindsey (later Linsey) 12 Aug 1903 in Vinton, Benton County, Iowa.

Florence and Charles had three children survive. Charles, a laborer, died in 1933, leaving Florence a widow left to support herself and the remaining child at home, Charles Jr “Junior.”

She went to work as the laundress and kitchen staff for the Iowa School for the Blind and could be seen walking the two miles each way back and forth to work each day until her retirement in the 1950s. She lived in the same home for many decades on the east side of Vinton.

The very small home, which had had a bathroom and small bedroom added in the 1930s to give it two bedrooms, originally had an outhouse that was later converted to a garden shed. Florence planted a large garden each year and from the bounty of that garden, was able to subsist quite well without outside assistance. The room most used in her home was also the largest – the kitchen. She spent hours upon hours each year canning vegetables and making preserves which would later be stored in the dirt cellar accessed by pulling up a rope in the middle of her kitchen floor and traversing the treacherous stairs to dimly lit room.

About 1962 in Vinton with son Leo and grandson
Larry

Once the children were grown and gone and the grand children and then great grandchildren came to visit, they could invariably be found either playing in the large back yard or in the small bedroom with the ancient erector set and tinker toys.

 At 72, she had a heart attack and the doctors, according to Florence, said, that the reason it didn’t kill her is that she walked so much. She blamed her health problems on hard work and the doctors said she’d live to 100 because of her hard work.

 A proud and often stubborn woman, she refused help of almost every kind, even as her hearing and sight began to fail. In 1980, at the age of 95, she was interviewed by the Cedar Rapids Gazette about her acquiescing and accepting energy assistance. She was quite perturbed by having to do so, but her small Social Security income and small work pension just didn’t stretch as far during those high-cost energy years.

She admitted to the Gazette, “I’m awful savin’ on my oil. I cut down, but the way my house is cut up, I have to have two fuel sources.” She had an oil-burning stove in her kitchen and gas heater in her living room. She added, “I was awful afraid I wasn’t going to make it last year. This takes so much,” she said pointing to the gas heater. “One month, it was $71. It took both checks.”

She stayed in her home, despite her growing blindness and the need for a cane and continued to care for herself until a serious fall in her beloved kitchen, breaking her hip at age 97. She spent some time in hospital and then moved to the Sunnycrest Nursing Home in Dysart, Iowa where she passed away, just shy of her 99th birthday. Her daughter Lucy and son Junior survived her. Her son Leo preceded her in death along with an infant daughter and two infant sons.

He Looked Down Upon Me and Laughed

In the little town of Vinton, Iowa, just down the road a spell from the big state mental hospital, and home to of the best popcorn fields in the world, there sat a little tarpaper shack, where the weeds grew unchecked between the cracks of the neglected tar and gravel street, down near the railroad tracks.

The house sat right up against the street, with two lop-sided, rotting wooden stairs leading to the front door. The yard was huge and full of all types of Iowa wildflowers and a large, meticulously tended vegetable garden. In the back was an old outhouse that eventually became the garden shed. The entire house was probably 700 square feet. The floors sloped and waved and jutted from 70 years of settling and warping. The bare floor was sprinkled liberally with simple hand-made throw rugs to keep the chill of an Iowa winter at bay.

The house had that aged, musty smell yet was invariably spotless. Long-faded wallpaper with patterns out-of-date by the 1920s covered each wall. The kitchen was the largest of the rooms and obviously the most used. Under the simple kitchen table was a small rope with a knot in the end that served as the handle to lift up the cellar door. Once open, stairs led perilously down several rickety stairs to the tiny, pungent, dank, dark, dirt room where the year’s food supply, culled from the bountiful garden, were stored.

The living room was small—with a coal burning stove eventually replaced by an electric heating stove. A short couch lined one wall, and directly in front of the couch; facing the same direction as the couch, sat the one comfortable chair in which a woman sat for much of her day watching the small black & white television at the other end of the room. Hanging above the television, a small, lonely picture of Jesus looked down upon the room, surveying the every thought, word, and deed of generations.

The woman, who lived to somewhere between 99 and 101 years old, depending on who you took as authority on such things, was tall and lean. Her dress was always immaculately ironed. Her hair was white as pure driven snow, and was always covered by a hairnet. When she spoke, her voice warbled and rasped from too many years of use. Age and gravity had some interesting repercussions. Her face was very, very long, reminding me of a tired old Bloodhound with wrinkles on top of wrinkles. Her earlobes had somehow managed to extend nearly to her shoulders, and her breasts, well, she was never one to bother with such frills as a bra…she was old, let’s leave it at that. Whenever I saw her, a particular Girl Scout song would pop into my head, “Do your ears hang low, do they wobble to and fro, can you time them in a knot, can you tie them in a bow, can you throw them over your shoulder like a continental soldier, do your ears hang low?”

As a child, I paid little heed to her, and as my conversation wasn’t very interesting to her, we never made a connection. I probably spoke a total of 10 words to her my entire life. She visited freely with her son and grandson (my grandfather and father), but my sister and I were left to our own devices playing on most visits at the back of the house in the tiny closet-sized bedroom, with an ancient erector set and tinker toys. All I really knew is she spent over 65 years a widow, raising her kids the hardscrabble way, but most of it was spent alone in that little house, taking care of her business.

Our last visit came when I was about 20, on leave from Germany. Her hearing was nearly shot and her eyesight failing. My father pulled up a straight chair to be near her. She sat in her chair, facing the same direction we faced sitting on the couch behind her—which was always so odd to me—looking at the back of her head. My senses dulled as I listened vaguely to them speaking. Finally, out of the blue, she said, “Lori, where are you?” I snapped out of the daydream state I invariably slipped into, thinking, “Wow, she is actually speaking to me.”

I reached forward and gently and lovingly placed my hand on her arm, feeling suddenly quite warm and sentimental, sure she was asking because she could neither hear nor see me from her current vantage point, and said, “I’m right here Great Grandma.” Perhaps at last, we'd make a connection!  And, then she sighed heavily, and I swore I heard Jesus laughing as he looked down upon me.  She said, “No GOD DAMN IT, where are you in Germany? Larry, what is wrong with the girl?”

Copyright,  2008