In honor of Women’s History Month, I have decided to write a series of posts dedicated to various women in my family history who have stories I wish to pass on to others. The histories have been compiled through oral tradition, historical documentation, and in the most fortunate circumstances their own words. Given the nature of these posts, I have decided to start with a woman who I never met but whose life I have studied voraciously.
Nancy Edith Turner née Henderson was born in a tiny town in Alabama merely a day after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand thousands of miles away. To those who see signs in all of life’s events perhaps this could be seen as an omen for the role death would play throughout her life. The first to touch her directly would be the death of her father, William Francis Turner Henderson. He died when she was only 11, leaving her mother to raise 3 children alone. I do not doubt that it was her mother who taught her how to endure life’s sorrows, lessons that would see her through all of the deaths to follow.
Please note that her life was not all darkness, far from it. It is the sheer brilliance of her life that shone through the darkness that led me to see her as a paragon of endurance for our family. Family lore tells that when she was but a child she saw the older brother of her dear friend and knew he would be her husband, with no regard for the difference in age or the distance that would inevitably separate them when he took up a job working across the country on various projects such as the Hoover Dam and numerous railways. The family lore also says he felt the same for her, a statement that seems irrefutable given the way their lives played out. When she was 21 he sent her a train ticket to take her out of Tallapoosa County bringing her to meet him in Montana. They married there and began their lives together. It is from this time that we, her descendants, have been able to see her life as she saw it. She left behind a diary that covered her years in Montanna, detailing all the little aspects of her life that she found valuable. We can read about her singing career in the small theatre, as well as her musical contribution to helping viewers enjoy the new films that American audiences were quickly coming to love. Tragically we also are privy to reading of the sorrows and pains she suffered when death returned to her doorstep. This time it would be a facet of death that every parent dreads to face, the death of her children. In the summer of 1936, she gave birth to her first children, twin girls named Mable and Louise, they lived only a few short hours. The entries that follow these deaths are raw and show a truly vulnerable young woman facing a tragedy no parent should ever have to endure. However, that is not all they show. It is in these later entries that the woman I consider our family paragon of endurance can be glimpsed fully. A woman who knew in her heart she wanted to lie down and never get up, yet forced herself to keep moving. She began to, as my mother says, keep busy. Filling her time with things that brought her joy and kept her from sinking into her grief.
Time passed and my great-grandfather’s work brought them back to familiar surroundings sometime in the early 1940s with a young baby in tow, my great-aunt. He built her a house in Columbus, Georgia that remained in the family until 2012. It was around the time they moved to Georgia, that my great-grandmother lost her younger brother. George Warren Henderson had enlisted to fight during World War Two. He was one of the thousands of soldiers who left our shores headed for Normandy. His ship never even made it to Europe. Somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland, his ship sank. His remains were eventually repatriated to be buried alongside our ancestors in Dadeville, Alabama. Yet again through this tragedy, my great-grandmother endured.
In the years following she would give birth to 4 more children, for a total of 7 children. My grandmother was her 5th child, born in the same town where many years later my mother, and then myself would be born. She became an established member of the Columbus community, and to this day there stands a garden dedicated to her memory at Rose Hill Baptist Church. She was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star, raising her children in the various organizations attached. She was known for her cooking and loving family. Despite all the joy and happiness she and her husband had built through these years, death followed closely. At 43 years old she was widowed, raising 5 children on her own, the youngest was only 6 at the time.
It is here that I often find myself wondering how she survived all of these tremendously difficult deaths. We all inevitably must part with loved ones but to bury so many before she was 45 is nearly inconceivable to me. Perhaps it is not the events I find inconceivable but rather her ability to endure and keep herself moving forward. I do not know if I would have had the same strength even though her DNA is part of mine.
Time moved forward and gradually her children fell in love and one by one moved onto their own lives raising families of their own. My great-grandmother did not fall away in this time, I would say she became even more fierce. She loved her children’s spouses as if they were her children, my grandfather spoke often of his deep affection for her. She taught them all how to love as fiercely as she did, a blessing to those of us who would not have the privilege to those of us born after her time had passed.
There would be a few more deaths that I count as incredibly significant before her own. In 1964 her older brother died at age 50. In 1967 her mother passed away at age 73. A note of great heartbreak would be the death of her only son in the summer of 1971 the result of an accident on the job as a lineman. He was buried alongside his father in the family plots in Parkhill Cemetery.
Joy would fill the rest of my great-grandmother’s years. She would teach her granddaughter, my mother, so many important lessons that were later passed down to me. She taught her how to sew, how to crochet, how to write appropriate thank you cards, how to polish silver, but above all she taught her how to hold tight to those you love while they are yours and how to endure all tragedies with an unbreakable will. Because of this, the date of her death is non-existent, she lives on through these lessons.
I know that I have left out countless stories of her life that would create an even richer picture than the ones told here. Truth be told, I do not know all of the stories and only highlighted the ones I do know. I hope that what I have chosen to write does at least a small semblance of justice in portraying her. I never met her but my family has done an incredible job at making sure I knew her. For all she endured and for all she accomplished throughout her life I wanted to make her my first post for Women’s History Month. Thank you to everyone who read through this lengthy post. I hope that this small slice of her life story impacts you by showing that even when all the world seems to crash down around you it is possible to stand steadfast and endure the storms.