4 - Jean Abercrombie 1900-1976

Born: Longhorsely, England  May 9, 1900

Died: Hallandale, Florida Sep. 10, 1976

 

Your great grandmother Jean was born in Longhorseley, Northumberland, England in 1900, to Susannah Orkney and Isaac Abercrombie. Both Susannah and Isaac (Ike) had returned to England after emigrating separately to the US, meeting, marrying, and having children. 

 

My dad (her son William) wrote this in the late 1980s:

 

My mother said she was carried to America at about 2 or 3 years of age. The family settled in or near Sandy Creek, a village about 10 miles north of Pittsburgh. Other relatives lived nearby, including both Ike's and Susannah's siblings."

 

Although William wrote that his mother had no memory of England, I vaguely recall she said she could remember seeing her blind uncle Thomas peeling potatoes and her older sister Hannah helping with her grandmother Hannah's fish-and-chips cafe. (In Choppington, I later learned.)

William wrote: "Her entire life up to her marriage was spent in or near poverty level. In high school, she was apparently a good student with interests in music and math and girls’ basketball. She could sing well, read music, and pick out a tune (one finger style) on a piano. Later, she was always good at math and money management. She was apparently a good athlete, but could never capitalize much on this. She remembered that she owned one dress called a “middy” in those days (like a sailor’s jumper). She wore this to school daily and it also served as her gym suit in which to play basketball. 

She was apparently quite a tom-boy. Among other things, she served as a practice catcher for her brothers who were aspiring pitchers on the local sand lot baseball team call the “Silver Leafs.” Mother claimed she could catch anything the regular team catcher could. Once in a long while, she would play catch with me or Frank before we got to teenage.

Sometime before I knew him, Ike deserted his family--a wife and six children--and went west to work on the railroad. (Note: Although he may have been gone for months at a time, he shows up at home with the family in the 1910 and 1920 federal census.) He contributed little or nothing to supporting his wife or children. Jean’s two brothers, Alex and Hugh, were working but stopped supporting the family as soon as possible, got married and contributed nothing, and reportedly spent all their own earnings and sometimes some of what was in the family pot that had been earned by the girls. 

Mom expressed some bitterness about this era. She had to quit school as soon as she could legally do so in order to go to work to support the family. Mom and Aunt Sue finally were the sole support for themselves, grandma, and Aunt Eleanor. Mom lived with her mother and sisters until she married, then Dad moved in also.

"Grandma, Sue, Mom, and Hannah eventually moved to Verona. Aunt Sue did very well considering her circumstances. She worked for years at the Verona Building and Loan, where she did well. She invested in real estate, at her peak owning several rental properties in Verona and Oakmont, including the one where her brother Alex lived. She made enough money to support Eleanor and Grandma until they died. After retirement she went to live with Aunt Hannah in Oakmont on 8th Street. Eventually her entire estate went to put Aunt Hannah’s son, Richard Brose, through Pitt with a PhD in Public Medicine." (Note: Dick Brose had a good career as a hospital administrator in Missouri until he was caught embezzling and sent to federal prison.) 

"About the time I was about 4 years old, Eleanor started a beauty shop in the apartment in Verona, but soon had to quit because of health.

"Mom worked at Bollinger-Andrews (now defunct) in Oakmont and walked to work about 2 miles or more one way. She was a telephone operator and typist/clerk. She may have worked for one other company before she wound up as a clerk-typist at Edgewater where she met Dad. Mother claims she came home from work one day and told her mother, “Today I met the man I am going to marry.” And so she did. Married women (except widows) didn't work then (for wages/salary, at least). Besides, she was soon pregnant with me."

Granddaughter Karen’s comments:  Because Jean was born in England, she had to be naturalized as a US citizen. When I found Jean's naturalization record dated 1934, I wondered why she'd waited so long--by that time, she'd been in the States for three decades, married, and had two kids. Ellen remembered a family story that Jean had assumed that citizenship came automatically with marriage to a US citizen, so she simply started acting like one--voting and all--until someone set her straight, at which point she finally filed the paperwork and became a US citizen.

I saw Jean no more frequently than I saw Hollis, but I remember her more. Jean was a big, strong woman, in every sense of the word, except fat. She was just large, not fat.  One odd childish memory I have is her appearance of having three breasts. When I got older and developed my own oversized chest, I figured it out: She wore bras that were too small and so had substantial spillage in the center. Under her clothes, it gave the appearance of a middle breast. I don’t recall her smiling, though oddly I do recall a big booming laugh.

My memories of Jean are strongly colored by my mother’s impressions. She intimidated my mother.  My mom said that the first time she met her future mother-in-law, they were cooking together and Jean scolded her for not removing the strings from the celery before cutting it up for the salad. I used to have a recipe for date cookies that Jean had copied for my mom. After the standard ingredient list and instructions, the notecard closed with something along the lines of: “The date mixture is impossible to work with. I don’t know why anyone would want to make these cookies. This recipe is from the Ark.” And yet she saved the recipe and gave it to my mom.

Jean was occasionally employed as a secretary or typist. I remember her telling me—emphatically—that women needed a marketable skill and had to be prepared to use it.

After retirement, Hollis and Jean moved to an apartment in Hallandale, Florida. Hollis died of emphysema; Jean of heart failure in 1976.

Parents: Isaac Abercrombie and Susannah Orkney
Son: William Hollis McKim

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