Here is a bit of family history shared by a descendant of Augusta Elsken McGlynn. Gusta was born in 1880, the second daughter of Conrad Elsken and his first wife, Elizabeth. Augusta may have been named in honor of Augustus Hesse, the shopkeeper in Germantown, Illinois to whom Conrad was apprenticed as a boy. The skills he learned as an apprentice would serve Conrad well in later years.
Stories my grandmother (Augusta Elsken McGlynn) told me and stories about her life
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| Gusta, front center, celebrated her 90th birthday surrounded by family. Pictured here are siblings Hermina Elsken Udouj, Toney Elsken, Margaret Elsken Beck, Augusta Elsken McGlynn, Greg Elsken, Gerhard Elsken and Henry Elsken. |
By Alice Armstrong Osborn
Her story begins when she was born on July 9, 1880 in Morrison Bluff, Arkansas to Elizabeth Besselman Elsken and Conrad Elsken. They named her Augusta. Her Uncle Henry took her to be Baptized when she was only two days old, in their horse-drawn wagon, to Subiaco. The Benedictines Church there was an altar on the front porch of a log cabin. Split logs were out in front of the cabin for people to sit on. It was an all day trip by the time they returned to their home. Her Uncle had a “sugar tit” to pacify her and proclaimed that she was a very good baby.
An early memory was her paternal grandfather (Gerhard Elsken) teasing her by waving his scratchy beard at her face. She hated that. She laughed recalling her maternal grandmother who also lived with them, getting so angry when anyone mistakenly thought she and the grandfather were a married couple. Also, Christina Elsken, Conrad’s sister lived with them and Charlie, another brother.
She remembered playing dress up with her older sister, Rosa. When they were 6 and 4, Rosa died, and Augusta was terribly upset, crying because she did not want her sister buried in the ground.
Conrad did not like farming, so he accepted an opportunity to clerk in a general store. Soon, the moved to Paris, where Elizabeth opened a boarding house where the family lived. Conrad started a freight business.
Once she rode with her grandfather to pick up two nuns from the Benedictine convent in Shoal Creek. Returning, they had to cross this creek again, noticing the water was higher was higher but nevertheless attempting to crossing. Suddenly a surge of water was sweeping the horses downstream. Grandfather cut loose the panicked horses and they swam out of the stream. Meanwhile, the sloping buggy had Augusta and her Grandfather sitting in water and the nuns in the backseat climbing as high as possible up the back of the buggy to avoid the water, all the while loudly praying and screaming. God heard their prayers and so did so nearby farmers. They came to their rescue and got them all out safely.
There was plenty of work to be done in running a boarding house and Augusta learned to be a capable cleaner by cleaning the bedrooms after the men boarders left for work. Her mother banged on the ceiling with the broomstick handle if she could not hear the sounds of work being done in the upstairs bedrooms. It was very unpleasant to clean up the messes made by the men who sometimes drank too much and their vomit would miss the “slop jar.”
Also, there was fun and excitement being in a hub of activity in the town. The music professor roomed there and gave the older children piano lessons. When she was ninety years old, she could still play “Holy God We Praise Thy Name,{ and the “Blackhawk Waltz,” by memory without missing a note.
The nuns who taught in the Catholic grade school often asked Augusta to have the professor from the public school show her how to work problems in arithmetic so that she could come back to school and show the nun how to do it. She was shocked by the harsh punishment Sister Clara meted out to the “dumb” boys who could not learn their lessons. They had to hold stove wood up over their heads from a long time. Augusta was assigned to tutor them sometimes and she found it frustrating.
That was the extent of her education because there was reputed to be tuberculosis in St. Scholastica’s Boarding School in Fort Smith. Also, she was needed a home. Her mother taught her to cook and she excelled at it, but this is a later chapter in her life story. At this time, she was assisting her mother in preparing about eight lunch buckets every day except Sunday, and other food preparation as well. Her brothers operated some kid of manual fanning devices while the boarders were dining, to keep the flies off the food.
After the families had supper, during cold weather, the children retired to their grandfather’s room where he would take apples out from under the bed that were wrapped in paper. He would peel them, slice them and hand them out to the kids who were delighted with them.
When her father went on an occasional business trip to Little Rock and asked which present she would like, she always asked for shoes.
Her eyes shining, she described the beauty of the Christmas tree decorated on Christmas Eve, and glowing softly with candles. Once she received a beautiful doll that was described as the best present for Christmas.
When she was a shy young girl of ten, she accompanied her father to Saint Louis on a train, with great excitement and anticipation. However, since he had business to attend to, she was left with her mother’s cousin for a week. the cousin expected her to pitch in with the work of caring for a baby and young children and other housework. This woman was not as good a cook as her mother either, so it was not a happy situation for her and she cried herself to sleep every night in her loneliness and misery. Never was she so happy to see her father and Papa took her to see some sights as there was an Exposition or Fair taking place. That year was 1990.
Augusta always enjoyed music and dancing. She liked listening to the Church Choir that practiced at their boarding house and joined them with her soprano voice as a young woman. She reminisced about enjoying German weddings in the country which would be a three-day celebration. The women guests participated in cooking and the men moved aside the furniture in the evenings for dancing. The children played lots of games and slept dormitory style on the floor on pallets.
Another recollection was of a young man sentenced to hang for murder. As the gallows were constructed, many people began to gather in anticipation of the work. Although she did not watch the hanging, she had a vivid picture of the man’s family coming into town in a wagon carrying a coffin so they could retrieve his body and take it back to their home for burial.
Although she was not superstitious she told a couple of tales in amusement. An old man in town vowed he would return from the dead, so many people attended his funeral to see if he would kick the end out of his coffin.
Another old man was very fond of rocking in his rocking chair and watching his fine looking clock. When he died, the clock stopped at that very hour and a mysterious black cat strolled in the door and walked over to the rocking chair, jumping up in it to lie on the cushion.
When Augusta was sixteen, she was asked by a friend and neighbor, Mrs. Fletcher, to be godmother to her sixteen month old son at his Baptism. He was quite a handful she acknowledged. Later he became the long-standing Bishop of the Diocese of Little Rock, Albert L. Fletcher.
Elizabeth Elsken grew very ill, becoming bed-stricken as Augusta entered her late teens. Armed with advice and encouragement received at her mother’s bedside, with the help of a young farm girl and her younger brothers pitching in, she took over the responsibility of caring for her baby sister, cooking for the family and boarders and doing whatever had to be done. After about a year (in 1899), when Cecelia was about two or three years of age, their mother died.
Conrad Elsken turned over the boarding house to Uncle Henry and Aunt Mary who ran it until a fire raging through buildings on the township square in Paris, was not halted until it was decided that the boarding house must be dynamited in order to stop the fire.
Augusta regretted that some of the fine old furniture, like the massive dining table, was not removed beforehand. Instead, Aunt Mary found a large framed picture leaning against a tree, with her picture hat perching on top of it on one corner, and a basket of dirty laundry.
Conrad married again, a young woman, Gretchen Kraemer, who Augusta always respectfully called “Mrs. Elsken.” They had some fun together, however later a rift between the children of Elizabeth and Gretchen kept the family divided until (Conrad and Gretchen’s daughter) Mary Ann died in 1923. Mary Ann was Augusta’s half-sister.
One of the good times in Augusta’s youth took place one Sunday afternoon, when the girls packed up a picnic lunch and the young men pumped a hand car on the railroad track with the whole group on board, to Charleston for a picnic. That was 20 miles, with no traffic on that day.
She had one suitor who she might have accepted except that her father refused to allow it, saying he was concerned about the well-being of his future grandchildren, because there was mental illness in that family.
Biding her time, she happily fell in love with John Michael McGlynn, and they were married on May 2, 1905. She had sewn her beautiful gown, cooked the after wedding dinner and picked the flowers for her bouquet.
They lived in the house with his widowed mother and had two daughters, then three sons. The oldest son’s death before he was a year old was a great sorrow for Augusta as she dearly loved her children and later her grandchildren, and later still, her great-grandchildren. Indeed she was very fond of all the children in the family and others too, playing peek-a-boo with babies anytime she had a chance.
This period was very busy with her children being born, Elizabeth, Kathryn, Martin (who died at 11 months), Leo and “Buddy.” She endured some illnesses and prayed that God would spare her long enough to raise her children. Not only did God grant her request, but she helped raise grandchildren and came to my rescue when her great-grandson was born.
Attendance at church services and serving the church in any capacity were very important to her.
Once they planned to go to Subiaco for a Rogation boys service, but John was detained by his grocery store and urged her to go, seeing that Roebuck was already hitched to the buggy. She went flying as she described it with the horse overtaking and passing very horse and buggy that was in his sight. At first she tried unsuccessfully to rein him in but then she was just hanging on for her life, being a very modest person, she was terribly embarrassed by this race. Her husband, who enjoyed spirited horseflesh was privately very much amused by her predicament. She never drove Roebuck anywhere again.
She nursed her mother-in-law during her final illness in 1923; then nursed her husband through a prolonged and difficult illness and his subsequent death in 1931. Her father died that year too.
Every trial and tragedy in her life, she met with prayer and patience, trusting in God. She lived her faith, alive in hope. She accepted each of her family members with love and without judgment, herself seeking to serve others in their need but never intruding unless she was asked for help.
Elizabeth with her husband and children returned to live with her and all together moved to Fort Smith in 1939.
“Mama” as her children and grandchildren called her, took very good care of all of us living under the same roof. Cooking was a specialty of hers – coffeecake, pies, German fried potatoes, hash, home baked bread and rolls were just a few of her mouth-watering foods to feast on.
She worked very hard for six days of the week, but on Sunday she walked to St. Boniface for an early Mass so she could afterwards cook a big family dinner. Then she rested.
For many weekday Masses she trod the distance of over one mile also.
Later, after many of her family had moved away, she eagerly looked forward to visits from her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. With candy, cookies and her fine cooking, she showed great hospitality to them.
In her sixties, an old beau came for a visit, but she let him know there could never be anyone to take the place of her husband, John.
Hospitalized for the first time in her mid-sixties with pneumonia, she moved in with her daughter Kathryn in Russelville.
For her 90th birthday, the Altar Society had a big party attended by her sisters Margaret and Hermina and her brothers Gerhard, Henry, Ed, Tony and Greg and many other family members as well. She received a statue of St. Anthony who was a special patron Saint of hers.
Soon afterward, her health began to decline and so she entered a nursing home close to Kathryn’s house. There she lived about a year. She received the sacrament of anointing of the sick and died peacefully on July 17, 1972.
As the family gathered around her casket saying her favorite prayer, the Rosary, her brother Greg spoke the feelings of all by saying “thank you God, for Gusta.”
She was buried in the midst of her family, next to her beloved husband in St. Joseph’s cemetery in Paris, Arkansas.
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