The Unforgotten - The First Edith Lenora Sauser

I must warn you, this blog post is tragically sad and is the inspiration for my Unforgotten Series.

Years ago, when researching my step-father's side of the family, I came across a conundrum that took me literally five years to solve.

Let's begin with my step-great grandmother, Edith Lenora SAUSER. 

She was the daughter of Paul Frederick SAUSER and Orpah Annette SCHNOOVER who were married in Johnson County, Iowa, 27 July 1911. According to her birth certificate, she was born 07 October 1911 in Prarieburg, Linn County, Iowa. Paul was 23 and Orpha was 28. Edith was born after just 2.5 months of marriage. 

As I began to work my way up her tree, I came across an article published three years before her birth, mentioning her father, Paul SAUSER. It was a plea for divorce by a Margaret SAUSER who claimed abuse and wanted custody of their ONE YEAR OLD daughter, EDITH LENORA SAUSER. 

The Courier; Page 3, Waterloo, Iowa, Mon 30 March 1908

I immediately began investigating this Margaret but couldn't find a marriage record on Family Search or Ancestry. I also began looking for records for an Edith Lenora SAUSER born 1907 and all the results were either completely wrong or records that I knew were MY Edith Lenora SAUSER born 1911.

Years passed by before I thought to search beyond Ancestry and Family Search. I instead turned to google and searched for archived marriage records in North Dakota. I ended up at the State Historical Society of North Dakota. I did a vague search, only entering SAUSER for the groom's last name and then the year 1905 and got exactly one hit. 

SAUSER/BEATTY 

Notice this tells us Paul's middle initial is the same as MY Paul FREDERICK.

The next information I found were two Waterloo, Iowa, city directory entries for Paul F SAUSER, wf Margaret V, for the year 1906 when he worked for the Iowa Dairy Separator Company and 1908 when he was listed as a boilermaker. 

By 1910 I find Paul F SAUSER living in Boulder, Linn, IA, with his brother John M. SAUSER. His marital status was marked 'D' for divorced. 

I then began looking for Margaret V. BEATTY. I found her in the 1900 census as VIOLA M. BEATTY age 12, birth state, Illinois, the daughter of James W. and Edith BEATTY, living in Whitewater, Dubuque, IA. 




And in the 1905 Iowa State census she's enumerated in Cascade, Dubuque, IA as Margaret V BEATTY, listed with J W BEATTY, now widowed.

I then find two obituaries for Margerett's mother, Edith and it creates more questions than answers. 

The first obituary is from page 5 of Monticello Express 11 Dec 1902. It states, "Mr. and Mrs. BEATTY had no children of their own but their hearts were full of sympathy for the little ones who were without parental care"

And the second obituary from page 5 of the Cascade Pioneer, published in Cascade, Iowa on Friday, December 12th, 1902 goes on to name the foster children as "Margaret BEATTY, Mildred RAFFETY, Myrta DAVIDSON, Elon RAFFETY, and Linnie SHOTWELL" 

I searched and searched for Margaret Viola BEATTY SAUSER in the 1910 census but could find no trace of her or the one-year-old baby, Edith Lenora SAUSER, mentioned in the 1908 article. 

I kept searching and found a marriage record in Jackson County, Missouri on the 21 Dec 1918 for a Margaret V BEATTY, born in 1888, to a Charles PRATT. I decided to look for them in the 1920 census to see if this Margaret was also born in Illinois and sure enough, they're living in Kansas City, Jackson, Missouri and she is indeed born in Illinois. But there is no Edith Lenora born in 1907. It's only Charles and Margaret PRATT.

I continue to research this couple and discovered sadly, two short years later, Margaret died from pulmonary tuberculosis. Her death certificate goes on to list her parents as David E. GLENN and Mary L. CLARK. I begin to second guess myself. Maybe this isn't the right woman after all. But when I find the obituary for Margaret, I get some answers..... and more questions.

Page 4, Cascade Pioneer, Thursday, November 30th, 1922

So now I don't know who Margaret's birth parents were and I don't know why baby Edith Lenora born 1907 wasn't with her in 1920 or mentioned at all in her obituary. Did Paul get custody? Was my Edith actually 4 years older? Did they falsify records? Was her birth certificate accurate? Was Orpha SCHNOOVER not her mother after all?

Or, more likely, maybe the first Edith Lenora SAUSER died. Babies died often back then. I could find no birth record or death record no matter how much I searched. I laid everything aside and decided to come back later. Maybe a few days would give Ancestry's algorithms a chance to catch up to all the new information. 

When I came back, there weren't any accurate hints. They all are records for my grandmother born in 1911. But I hit "search" one last time and a Find-a-grave record comes up for an Edith SAUSER born in 1906 and died 24 March 1930 in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma. I feel this is unlikely to be her so far away but the inscription on her stone makes me decide to dig a little further. 

EVEN THOUGH ALONE IN LIFE NOT FORSAKEN IN DEATH

I decide to once again turn to old newspapers, and the pieces began to finally fall into place and her tragic story unfolds. 

Edith had been adopted in 1908 to a Mr. and Mrs. A B HECHT according to an article I found in the Waterloo Daily Courier dated 03 July 1908. 




Two months later a pair articles found running back-to-back in the Semi-Weekly Reporter, give us a little more insight into this story. 




Although, it should be noted that Margaret's troubles with the law were reported in September 1908, two months after giving little Edith up for adoption in July. I also would like to make note that other articles from 1904 in North Dakota can be found where a Violet Beatty and a Kate Brown get in trouble for vagrancy while hanging out with a "snake eater" from the local carnival named "Bosco Kelly".

But Margaret's story is a tale for another time.

It's now 1910 and Edith SAUSER, now going by the name Hazel HECHT, is enumerated with her new parents Albert and Maude, an older brother Kent, as well as a roomer named Irma Mills. They are living on Locust Street, in Waterloo, IA



Because I feel her story is so important, I want to take the time now to point out a few details that we can see from this particular census record. First, notice highlighted in blue, where this is Albert's second marriage and Maude's first. Then highlighted in pink is the columns asking how many children had been born, and how many were still alive. Maude is not Kent's mother. He was born to Albert and his first wife, Minnie SPIKE. Iowa birth records indicate that Albert and Maude did however have a baby girl, named Mary Elizabeth in April 1895 but by May she had sadly passed away. Whether the number 2 indicates Kent, or Hazel, we may not know for sure, but considering Maude is also marked as (inf) for informant, leads me to believe she was counting Hazel. 

In 1912, however, Albert's wife and Hazel's new mother Maude, tragically passes away from a meningitis. Notice that her husband, Albert worked for the same company Paul SAUSER did in the 1906 Waterloo, IA, directory. 



By January of 1920 Albert HECHT had left Iowa and was remarried to a woman named Jessie. The new family is now living in Pomona, Los Angeles, California. This time Hazel isn't listed as his "daughter", but instead as his "adopted daughter".



In June of that same year, Hazel Edith Hecht graduated 6th grade from Washington Elementary

Progress-Bulletin, Sat, 12 June 1920

And the very next year, at the tender age of 14, an announcement is made of the marriage of Hazel Hecht to Alphia O HART, a newspaper man working for the Pomona Press, originally from Enid, Oklahoma. 

The Lahoma Sun, Fri 23 Sept 1921

As it would turn out Alphia was to become a pretty prolific and well-known newspaper photographer. Because of this, we have the following picture he must have taken while he and Hazel were dating.

The Los Angelos Time, 25 Dec 1921

This marriage would be short lived, missing the "seven-year itch" by one year, when the marriage ended in 1927. According to an article in the McCurtain Gazette, a "simple divorce decree was granted in Garfield County." I can only find a one-line statement published in The Enid Daily Times, dated Sept 3, 1927 that simply says, "Hart vs Hart, divorce granted." She is only twenty-one.



Three months later, in the neighboring county of Noble, once again going by the name Edith Sauser, and living in the Rock Island Hotel, the following advertisement is made: 

The Billings News, Fri 02 Dec 1927

After this we come to the culmination of her life in a series of articles that detail her last few years when all the papers begin reporting her self-inflicted death, by poison. 

She ended up in Oklahoma City, working as a waitress at the Topic Cafe located at the 200th block of West California Ave, right below where she lived in the Oliver Hotel

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, City Directory 1930

In January 1929 she had given birth to an "invalid son" at Holmes Home of Redeeming Love in Oklahoma, City. 

Holmes Home of Redeeming Love 

Edith struggled to make ends meet and with a life filled with one unimaginable heartbreak after another, her depression was too much to bear. The stress and struggle led to her own failing health. She was a waitress making $16/week. Because of sympathy and her good nature, her employer, C. C Whiteside, paid her more than the going rate. But life was just too cruel because even when you're making more than the average waitress, without any kind of familial support, she was unable to provide and care for her young son while also working enough to earn the money they desperately needed causing Children's Service Bureau to take him.

I imagine that was the last straw, and she decided to end her life by drinking poison. Her last words: "I'm to blame for everything."

There were no shortages of articles published in the month after her death, detailing her sad life's story. Edith just so happened to have kept a scrapbook with clippings of all her memories, most of which were painful. They told the story of her life. The last entry in her scrapbook was reported as being a "flimsy" that said, "Get the hell out of Oklahoma!" and I guess she chose suicide as her way out. As the news brought to light tragedy after tragedy, everyone became aware of her heartbreak, they shared it and it reverberated throughout the community. Even though she was destitute and could only have afforded to be given a pauper's burial, the funeral home, Marshall & Harper, chose to donate her casket and shroud as well as pay for her burial plot. One woman in the community, tragically remembered Edith had answered an advertisement she placed for a housekeeper and now she regretted she had not offered her the job. One thing was abundantly clear, Edith loved her son and was doing all she could to provide for him. It's my greatest hope that this somehow reaches someone who can help me find him, something that will carry her story another generation further. What was her son's name? What was his fate?

**In coming here to polish up this blog post before turning it into a video I actually made a remarkable discovery. Edith's story caused the public to look more intently into her "invalid" son, and according to an article in The Oklahoma News, :

So, here's to a woman whose history and existence was only to be found in Newspapers for those who would take the time to connect the dots. 

If her son survived and has heirs, I hope they one day find this information. I have no idea what his name was, first or last, or who his father was.

Here's a picture side by side of Grandma Edith and her half-sister by the same name. As well as a picture of their father in later years. 

Until next time
Becky 

I recently heard the following song that made me think of young Edith... 

Link to her Find A Grave Memorial

DNA, Home Remedies, and Customs

This is a picture of my grandmother's maternal grandmother, Clara Inda EVANS ACORD. She went by the name "Indie". In this picture she is about 26 years old. 

Her parents Josiah EVANS and Jane CONNER were some of the early pioneers of NE Johnson County, Arkansas, and they started the little backwoods cemetery known as Evans Cemetery. It sits on a little level area on the side of a mountain  above the Little Mulberry Creek.

Family tradition has always been that Jane's mother, Effie, was Native and her last name was BULL (a few researchers say CHRYST) The only records Effie can be found in are the 1850 & 1860 census in Greene and Webster counties, in Missouri. There are no marriage records. No one can be certain who her parents were. In census records she gives her birth state as North Carolina and says she was born around 1794/5. 

While I may not be able to prove parentage, I'm starting to feel confident about heritage. 

Several years ago, I tested my DNA with 23andMe and noticed that I had trace amounts of "Indigenous American" and "Broadly Sub-Saharan" DNA. I then began to look at my DNA matches and only those who also descended from Grandma Indie also had these results. 

My grandmother's oldest sister tested her DNA with Ancestry.  Ancestry narrowed her African results down to the Cameroon, Congo & Western Bantu Peoples of Africa. This really piqued my interest, but I didn't really investigate further until I began reading a book that was describing superstitions, remedies, and recipes of former slaves and one story reminded me of one that has been told in my own family. In the book a former slave mentioned that cow manure tea brewed with mint could cure consumption. My grandmother tells a story of  how Grandmother Indie made sheep dung tea to cure grandmother's sister of the measles. Her sister didn't know what was in the tea, but grandma had seen Indie making it and was told not to tell her sister! 

This reminded me once again of the African DNA results. But this isn't the only connection to possible slave roots. The Evans Cemetery, I mentioned earlier, has lots of broken pieces of pottery scattered around. Each year when it's time to clean the cemetery, descendants go through and pick up any that have been strewn from weather and wildlife and place them once again on their ancestors graves. This tradition was started by Indie's mother Jane, who was sometimes called "Black Granny". According to stories told by her descendants, Granny Jane would take her grandchildren and walk over the country gathering broken dishes. They would then take them to decorate the graves at the cemetery. Each grave had a wooden frame built around it. Just before decoration, Jane and the children would carry water from the Little Mulberry creek to the cemetery where they would remove all the pottery and glass and wash it. Then they would take newspaper and place it in the frames as a weed barrier and then take the now clean pottery and glass and place it on the newspapers. (Taken from the Evans, Oark, Patterson Springs and Yale cemetery book compiled by Doris Evans and Jimmie Dewberry).

Evans Decoration 1939 (my grandmother is the baby being held by her father, Newell)

Jane's son Rev. William Walker EVANS at his wife's grave.

Below are some current photos of the broken pottery that remains. 

 

Whenever I research this tradition of decorating graves with pottery online, the very first search result said,

The Africans of the Congo introduced this tradition of decorating graves with grave goods to America. They did this by using pots and shells as grave goods to signify certain statuses or traits, honoring and protecting the spirit. [3] This tradition has continued through the twentieth century and has evolved over time.   

Another resource said,

In North America the surface decoration of graves with ceramics and other objects is the most commonly recognized African-American material culture indicator of cemetery sites. William Faulkner, in Go Down, Moses, described a black cemetery with “shards of pottery and broken bottles and old brick and other objects insignificant to sight but actually of a profound meaning and fatal to touch, which no white man could have read”(Faulkner 1942:135; cf. Vlach 1978:139)

 

Notice above the mention of the Congo region of Africa, precisely the same area our DNA results indicate. Using Ancestry, I began to compare DNA results to other descendants of Jane and found several others had the same results ranging from 1%-3% of Cameroon, Congo and Western Bantu Peoples. From Jane's eldest daugher, Effie,  (pictured to the left and named after her maternal grandmother) my great aunt had three matches that shared this same African DNA. From Jane's son "Jody" my great aunt had one match that shared this same DNA as well as one who had Nigerian. And from another son, William, (pictured below) there one descendant who also had Nigerian DNA results. 



 
 

     From the maps below you can see that these two regions border one another. Several of these descendants also had Indigenous markers. All of this leads me to have a strong belief that not only was Jane's mother, Effie, native, but she was most likely also a descendant of a slave. We may not know the names of our ancestors going further back in Effie's lineage, but I think it's truly special that this particular custom belonging to her heritage remains today.

Also, today I noticed my flowering quince that I dug from Granny Jane's homestead a few years ago has bloomed for the first time. 

My Aunt Diane, my mother's sister, tested recently with Ancestry DNA and her results came back with Cameroon and Congo as well! 

02.28.2025 

Pieces of broken glass I've collected from my property and hikes to place around Granny Jane's flowering quince. 

Until next time, 
Becky