My parents lived in Nemaha at the beginning of their marriage, since my father was manager of the grain elevator there. Three of my sisters were born in Nemaha, at home, as were most births of that time. Since Sac City was the county seat, their births were registered there. Below are two of the houses where they all lived in Nemaha. These houses were across the street from each other on the north end of town. Dorothy Ann was born in the first house (she is standing in front of that house in the second photo - my mother told us that the porch on the front was not closed in and was a screen porch when they lived there). In the second house, Jean and Merry were born. The bottom photo shows that house, and it is not in the best shape now.
Dorothy Ann Cooper Herman in front of the house where she was born in Nemaha, Iowa
Merry Janet Cooper Kelley (left) and Jean Barrett Cooper Brown (right) in front of the house where they were both born in Nemaha, Iowa, across the street from the first house, but a few lots to the west of the first house.
Here is Dorothy Ann when she was an infant, the first child of my parents, and born at home in Nemaha, Iowa.
This photo shows Dorothy Ann as a young child in a baby 'stroller' being pulled by a young boy I do not know. The photos says it was taken in front of the Brownell's home in Sac City, so perhaps the boy is a child from that family.
The house owned by Mrs. Scarboro which my parents rented from her when they first lived in Humboldt. Below is the walnut buffet my mother recovered from Mrs. Scarboro's basement.
Here is a photo of Dorothy Ann, Jean and Merry when they were little girls in Nemaha.
The house above is the first house my parents bought in Humboldt.
This is my mother, Wilma Cooper, when they lived in Humboldt. She was probably about 30-35 years old in this photo.
The red house was also located in Humboldt, and my sister Margaret May was born in this house. I don't think there was any drama with the home births of Dorothy Ann, Jean or Merry, but with Margaret, it was a different story.
Later, my father accepted a job with the post service in Humboldt, Iowa and the family moved to that town. My youngest sister, Margaret, was born in Humboldt.
The family lived in their first home in Humboldt which was owned by a neighbor lady, Mrs.Scarboro. Mrs. Scarboro had an old walnut buffet with a marble top and walnut shelves to hang on the wall above it, and she was storing that piece in her basement. My mother, always on the lookout for something someone might not want any longer, asked if the lady would sell the buffet. I believe Mrs. Scarboro gave the buffet to my parents. I have posted a photo of it below.
Margaret was born in December, and in Iowa, that month can be very cold and snowy. The doctor came for the delivery, and the baby was born. After her birth and after the doctor left the house, the string he had used to tie the umbilical cord on the baby came undone. She began to bleed rather profusely, and my father did his best to tie a new string on. He did succeed, but it is my opinion (not being born until 11 years later, I really don't know if this is fact or not), she was weakened from this accident. In fact, just six weeks later, Margaret got whooping cough. That was before the invention of vaccines to stop this horrible coughing disease, and she was quite ill with it. My parents slept with her between them, and when she would begin to cough, one of them would hold her by her feet (upside down), and the other would reach a finger into her little throat to pull out the sticky mucus that was a part of this nasty disease, and which caused the 'whooping' sound that went along with coughing to try to dislodge that mess. Little Margaret did recover, but still weakened, came down with pneumonia when she was just six months old. She also recovered from that ailment, but was always the more shy and reticent of the four older girls. Perhaps, because of the shaky start, she just never felt really strong. I don't know... but, she did thrive and grow, in spite of her fragile beginnings.
All four of my sisters were nursed back to health in this house when they all contracted scarlet fever. Back in those days, scarlet fever was a serious disease because complications from it could lead to rheumatic fever and heart problems. So, every effort was made to isolate anyone who had the disease. My parents put all of the girls beds into one bedroom upstairs in the red house in Humboldt, and my mother stayed up there with them to nurse them back to health. My grandmother Barrett moved in with the family and did the cooking and housekeeping while my mother stayed upstairs with the girls. My father and grandmother slept downstairs to try to avoid getting sick themselves. Somehow my mother never was sick very often. She did not get the disease. The girls entertained themselves when they got well enough to want to do more than just lie in their beds. Their favorite past time was cutting people out of the Sears & Roebuck catalog and making 'paper dolls' of them. They would also cut out clothes and try to make them fit on their paper dolls with little tabs of paper. My grandmother would cook meals for Mother and my sisters, and would set a tray for all of them on the landing halfway down the stairs. Then, my mother would come down that far, pick up the tray, and carry it back up to get the girls to eat, as much as they were able and felt like eating. My mother rigged up a pulley arrangement between the beds of the little girls so they could run a basket between their beds and pass paper dolls back and forth. I'm sure they were made to stay in bed until they had no more fever, and probably were made to stay upstairs until they were all well and eating regularly. No one made light of disease in those days, since death was an often outcome, even with disease we rarely think of as being 'deadly' in this day and age.
The stock market crash in 1929, the same year Margaret was born, caused all kinds of problems in the rural economy. My father found that people were not able to pay their bills with cash, and they would often pay with produce, eggs or meat, if the business would accept that kind of payment. I am not really clear about my father's employment at that time. I do know that for a while, he worked sorting mail on a train that traveled through Dakota City (very close to Humboldt), and my mother and one or the other of her daughters would ride a bicycle over to Dakota City with a sack lunch so they could hand it to him when the train stopped there. But, it seems that my mother told a story about customers of the Nemaha elevator paying their bills in cabbages, chickens and eggs, because of the bad economic times, so I am unsure of the actual dates when my father ran the elevator, but I do know they lived in Nemaha when the older three girls were born, so it makes sense to me that my father was working at the elevator at that time. So, unless she was talking about the elevator in Sac City which was managed by my grandfather until he retired which would have also been at the time of the 'Great Depression,' I cannot say for a fact just when my father started working for the postal service, but I do know they would take his lunch to him via a bicycle to Dakota City, next to Humboldt, and that would have been in the later 1920's.
In any case, when things were so bad in rural Iowa, my father was fortunate enough to get a job at the post office in Chicago, and the family moved there in 1936. And, I was born there.
Cunninghams and Coopers (Jean on left; Merry in the back) on the day the Coopers left for Chicago.
Stay tuned....
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