More on the Hutchinsons. Wanting to tell their story.

Today I was supposed to start a class on Nonfiction Creative Writing but the class filled up over the weekend and as an employee with a waiver I get the leftovers as far as seating. I was kind of anxious about taking the course anyway. I wanted to take the course to help me with writing the stories of these ancestors. I have learned so much that sometimes I feel I know them personally, but when trying to share their stories with someone else, I get the feeling I don't know them at all. I keep trying to think of what life was like, how they felt, how they spent their every days, what was usual, what was not. I think of Marguarite, coming from a family that were knee deep in Appalacian culture. I am not even sure what that really means. I have started the "Trail of the Lonesome Pine" because supposedly it was written about a branch of the family after the civil war. I find it hard though to get quiet time to read so have just started it. But from the snippets I have read around the relatives it was a closed and isolated society until the railroad came in. So I wonder if this family had a clue about life outside the mountains (or do they call them hills?). I am as ignorant about the Appalacians as I am sure they were about Minnesota and Washington.

According to what I have recently read, after the civil war it was not just about reconstruction and the Union Soldiers claiming the south. In the area where the north and south interwined with each other, like Wise County VA, it broke family and friends apart as some were Union and some were Confederate and a lot were like my family, starting on one side and changing to the other. I cannot even imagine what they went through. In some of the stories you can find on the Internet, in Wise county, the local Union soldiers were more like marauders then soldiers; raiding, pilaging and plundering. Killing just because they were sanctioned, no one to press charges. So I wonder how it was for the Wrights, Taylors and Hills after the war. Did the Taylors leave because of opportunity or was it personal, were they now less welcome where they lived? Did fighting for the union make it easier for them with reconstruction efforts or did anyone who came from the north treat all southerners as the enemy, slave owner sympathizers.

What I wonder about the most though is the family after it settled in the west. And back to thinking about Marguerite. All of the census and local records state that she was born in Virginia (or in some cases West Virginia) but I am not positive that she was not born in Minnesota. Always have to go back and look that stuff up. Some of Weitzal and Sarah's children were born in Virginia, some in Minnesota, but as her husband Richard Hutchinson was born in Mississippi, I think he liked that she was a southerner. If Marita is her daughter, like we always thought, and as Gretchen said was born maybe between the first two wives, did she have a  long standing affair with R A? He seemed to have a lot of political clout and money. Was he one of those guys that could romance a woman but was dangerous to be married to?

 Marge Womach posted on the Internet obits and information about the Hutchinsons who were buried in Mondovi Pleasant View Cemetery where R A, his father and brother and families were buried.  Even though Marguerite was buried in Spokane she was included in the paper, in fact there seemed to be more information on her than anyone, except maybe Richard Ashton. His last wife Josephine, who was thirty years his junior outlived him (surprise). Amelia, the first wife had a rather short obit. She died in 1891, or maybe 1893 because it has both dates on the data given by Womach. Said she left two minor children Margaret (Bessie?) and Ida. Wow, on Marguerite's obit it says she was the second wife leaving out the other wife that Gretchen found. What was so secretive about her?

 I grew up with the story of Marguerite being murdered, while sitting on her porch, a drive by shooting. But the newspaper account was that she committed suicide in her bedroom. Below is the account of Marguerite's obit etc. as posted on the Internet by Marge Womach:

Hutchinson, Marguerite Wright (2nd wife of R A; said to be buried here); {Edit: married 2-09-1895; died: 16 May 1915 in Spokane; d/o W A Wright; w/o Richard A Hutchinson) “Mrs Hutchinson Dead. Shot Self. Wife of Spokane Senator Long Sufferer From Melancholia. Tragedy at Home. Suddenly overwhelmed by a paroxysm of melancholia, Mrs Marguerite Hutchinson, wife of Senator R A Hutchinson, ended her life with a revolver at 8 o’clock yesterday morning in the family home at S1762 Grand Boulevard. Her condition was the result of periods of extreme suffering in the last three years, caused by a series of severe operations she was compelled to undergo, but against which she opposed so much cheerfulness and charitable activity that few outside the immediate family knew anything of it. Although she had been lately struggling under mental depression, there was no indication that the final breakdown had come when she entered her husband’s room Sunday morning and procured part of the paper he was reading. She exchanged greetings pleasantly and remarked that she felt much better than on the previous evening. A few moments later the senator and his son and daughter heard a shot. They found Mrs Hutchinson lying on her left side with the weapon at her finger tips. The bullet entered the right temple and death ensued almost instantly. Dr F M Hoag, a neighbor, was summoned, but could be of no service. Suffered Severe Nervous Strain. Under the influence of dejection resulting from pain and ill health, Mrs Hutchinson had several times intimated the hopelessness of living and she had been under a severe nervous strain the day before, but after a walk with her husband in the park seemed to have regained something of her usual spirits. Two years ago these attacks became noticeable while Mrs Hutchinson was in Olympia for the legislative session with the senator and the veteran legislator went through some of his hardest fights on the floor when he had been in attendance on his wife all the night before. His constant hope was that the best medical care and influence of a beautiful home would eventually restore her health. Came to Washington in 1883. Mrs Hutchinson was born in Virginia and her father, Wetzel A Wright, moved to Eastern Washington in 1883 when she was 13 years old. They moved to a place at the foot of Badger Mountain, in Douglas County, before the town of Waterville was founded near there, and although educational opportunities were lacking Mrs Hutchinson taught herself so well that at the age of 16 she was able to take charge of the first school in Wenatchee. Senator Hutchinson was a member of the legislature when they were married and in the 20 years since she has kept closely in step with him, attending the sessions except when it was necessary for her to remain at home and supervise their business affairs. To her ability and energy the senator assigns most credit for his success. Her literary taste, especially in classic poetry, has furnished the home with a rare library, and she managed to find time to exercise a marked natural talents for painting. Four Children Bring Wild Roses. One of the first tokens of sorrow to arrive at the home yesterday was a little bunch of wild roses sent by the children of an impoverished family Mrs Hutchinson has made comfortable through the winter. Her main efforts were devoted to children and she was particularly active in sending to country homes juvenile unfortunates who otherwise would have gone to the reform school. As a member of All Saints’ Cathedral congregation she served as president of the church home for children, and when ill health compelled her to resign that office she accepted a managing directorship of the institution. Although a stepmother to part of her family the children never realized it. Her charitable work, while constant, was performed in a manner that brought her very little public mention. The family had resided in Spokane since the senator retired from personal supervision of his Lincoln County farms years ago. Members of the family are Senator Hutchinson, his daughter Rachel and son Richard, who are at home; Mrs Marita Wales of Tacoma, Mrs Bessie Hayes of Portland, Mrs Ida Kemp of Duluth and Dean Hutchinson of Baker City. Mrs Hutchinson’s father is still living at North Yakima.” (Spokesman Review: 5-17-1915, pages one and six, and front page photo; contributed by AskALibrarian); “Hutchinson Burial Thursday. Spokane County Pioneers’ Association to Attend in Body. Funeral services for Mrs Marguerite Hutchinson, the wife of Senator R A Hutchinson, will be held from All Saints’ Cathedral Thursday afternoon at 1:30 o’clock, the Very Rev William C Hicks officiating. The Spokane County Pioneer who are members of the Pioneers’ Association will meet Thursday at 1 o’clock at the Willard Hotel and attend the services in a body, Senator Hutchinson is president of the organization, B A Eslick, the vice president, arranged for the meeting last night.” (Spokesman-Review: 5-18-1915; page 8; contributed by AskALibrarian);“Marguerite Hutchinson. Residence: S 1703 Grand Blvd. Female, white, married. Birth: Feb 9, 1870, VA. Aged: 45 yrs 2 mos 7 days. Father: W A Wright, born VA. Mother: unknown, born VA. Informant: R A Hutchinson , Spokane , WA . Died: 5-16-1915, Spokane , WA . Coroner’s Case. Cause: Shooting herself in the right temple with a 38 Smith & Wesson. Suicide. M B Grieve, County Coroner . Burial: Greenwood , May 19, 1915.” (WA State Board of Health: Certificate of Death).

So we have a son Dean who must have been from wife two, but a second wife before Marguerite was not mentioned in the newspaper. I think I have already stated somewhere in this blog that I have not found where they lived in Waterville etc (I thought was Okanogan County but I guess Douglas County). Did R A try to reinvent her background? Are we missing something, or was it just misinformation?  Of course it could be what everyone was told including R A.

Three of the Wright sisters moved to Spokane. There was my grandmother Clara, Sylvia Field and Marguerite. Joan Boomsliter (granddaughter of Nip) said that her mother would go by train to Spokane to stay with two if his sisters, I am not sure which two, and they would dress her up in modern clothing. She had the best times. It seems that at least two of the sisters were hell-raisers. Were these trips after Marguerite died? It just does not seem to me that this family could have a member that would commit suicide, especially with a gun and with her children in the house. If she loved children, how could she think about doing something like that where her children could hear and see.

The only persons I really knew from that family was my grandmother and my father (and his brother - but not so much) My grandmother Marita was a fighter and made the most out of life. She loved to tell stories, loved to do things that would embarrass other persons. She was a dumpster diver before anyone knew what that was, and before it was popular. My sisters said that she would find things in the dumpsters and give them as gifts and tell the receiver that it was a family heirloom. While I have lots of memories of her when I was a child, I left Spokane when I was 9 and did not return until I was 17. I was so impressed with her in her later years. When I came back to Spokane she was already in a nursing home. She had osteoporosis so could not live alone. But she made more out of living in a nursing home than anyone else I have ever known. She had her bed pushed in a corner to give her as much space as possible in the room. She painted and she made cloth dolls, the most impressive dolls with pioneer type clothing and bonnets on thier heads. She entered her crafts in the fair in Spokane and won ribbons. She had a little ice chest in the room so she could keep her own food. She was a printer by trade and so she started a newspaper for the residents of the home, announcing birthdays and visitors. She was the type of person when given lemons made lemon meringue pie. She had church members and boy scouts visiting her. My father was the same kind of person. He made life happy, he may have made others crazy but he never let life make him unhappy. So I cannot imagine Marguerite letting life beat her, not enough to shoot herself.