|
In 1900, seventeen-year-old Nellie lived away from
her hometown in Barry, Illinois. She lived with her Martha Ellen
"Peggy" Padgitt Grant (1845–1910),▼2
and cousin George Walter Grant (1867–1937), a
watchmaker. Peggy's husband, William T.
Grant, was that year operating a sawmill out of Chicago while Peggy ran a boarding house.
One of Peggy's four
lodgers was thirty-year-old Francis
"Frank" H. Folice (1869–1936), who operated a large
railway depot newsstand for Union News, the division
of the American News Company that for many years
monopolized newspapers in the railroad industry.
On December 22, 1902, just shy of her twentieth
birthday, Nellie married Frank, and the pair set up
housekeeping at 301 Claremont Avenue. (In 1909, the
street address was changed to 508. It may have been
an apartment above a storefront.)
It is unknown where Nellie was seated in the
auditorium or with whom though it may have been her
husband. Her body was located at Jordan's funeral
home and identified by Frank. Also
searching for her body was her uncle William
Grant and probably her cousin Walter Grant
She was
cremated at Hillside, and her remains were
buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery — until a
month ago, without a grave
marker. That's
when descendent Doug A. Padgitt stepped in and
honored Nellie's memory with a marker.
Such an amazing act of family respect.
Nellie is Doug's grand aunt, her being
sister to his grandfather — John William Padgitt.
R.I.P. Nellie, your family has your back.
|
 |
Nellie's family
Nellie was the second
oldest of fifteen children born to John William Padgitt
(1855–1928) and Florence Eva Harnsher Padgitt
(1861–1937) who had married in 1880. The family home was at 181 Rodgers
street in
Barry, Illinois. Barry is a burg in
west-central Illinois, the nearest city of size
being Mark Twain's Hannibal, Missouri.
John Padgitt worked as a section foreman for the
Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railroad.
Nellie was around fifteen or sixteen when she
went to live with the Grants. They lived
then on South East Street in Jacksonville,
Illinois (a city that had once been home to the Padgitts). When the
Grants relocated to Chicago just prior to 1900, Nellie went along.
Nellie's brother George and sister
Ida Mae also relocated to the big city, and
Nellie's sister, Bessie Pearl, was "farmed out" to work
as a domestic servant around age twelve.
Possibly Nellie's role in
her aunt Martha's household was part niece and part
household helper. Moving to Chicago when they came of
age became a family tradition for the Padgitt
children.
As to Nellie, she may have left Barry skipping and
grinning — leaving behind ten siblings under age
ten, with more coming for the next several years. I'd have had
the zoomies for sure. Had she confided a sense of relief to her aunt,
Martha would have understood because she was one of ten
children herself.
Frank's unhappy life after the fire
Frank Folice was the son of Phillip and Margaret Reed Folice of New York.
He remarried four years after the Iroquois Theater
fire to a woman named Blanche Watkins who had a twelve-year-old son by a
prior marriage. By 1920, at age fifty-five, he was
one of over two thousand inmates in the insane
asylum in Ogdensburg, NY, St. Lawrence State
Hospital. He was out of the facility in October
1925, living in Ogdensburg, when his widowed mother
came for a visit. She died while staying at his
home, and by 1930 he was again a hospital inmate. He
died there of a heart attack after seventeen years
at the facility. I found nothing in newspapers to
hint at the reason for his committal but from
researching other families know it cannot be
assumed he was mentally incompetent.
Despite the nomenclature, such facilities
sometimes accommodated patients with other
conditions such a tuberculosis, lameness or
blindness that prevented them from caring for
themselves. They often worked communally
in the asylums' fields or kitchens.
Frank
lived with his brother Albert for a few years
prior to residing in the asylum.
|
|
Discrepancies and addendum
In 1894 a fire that destroyed half the businesses and several homes
in Nellie's hometown, Barry, IL, started at the Hollembeak Opera House. The population of Barry
during Nellie's childhood and today is around 1,300,
with fewer than 550 households.
I am
obligated to Padgitt family historian Margie
Hill for her 2005 description of her
grandparents arrival in Barry and life there.
Nellie was counted twice in the 1900 U.S. Census —
once as a resident of her aunt's home in Chicago and
a second time as a resident of her parent's home in
Barry, Illinois.
The name Padgitt was sometimes spelled Padgett and Padget.
1. Though described as twenty-one years old and
twenty-two years old in 1903 and 1904 newspapers, in
multiple 1900 census reports, and on her marriage
license, Nellie's birthday was given as January
1883, making her twenty at the time of her
death.
2. In 1900, US Census recorder's handwriting for
"Grant" looks like "Yrast.
|
