Leta Clarke Whalen’s 150th Birthday

Today, January 19, 2024, marks the 150th birthday of my paternal grandmother, Leta Mary Clarke Whalen.

Grandma Whalen was born on January 19, 1874, in the town of Hounsfield, New York, to George Roswell and Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Maxson Clarke. Her father’s farm was located on a no-longer existing road between Sulphur Springs and Massey Street Road. According to this 1875 New York State census record, her home was adjacent to her paternal grandparents’ farm.

Grandma Whalen was not quite 2 1/2 when her mother died after the birth of their second child, George. Poor little George also died before he was a year old.

After her mother’s death in 1876, little Leta’s dad often worked away as hired help on various farms, so she was predominantly raised by her maternal grandmother, Julia Ward Maxson. Family members talk of Grandma Whalen always waiting longingly for those days when “Papa” returned home.

Grandma’s girlhood seems like such a sad one. Her daughter, my Aunt Ella, told me that “Grandma Maxson always had our mother’s girlhood dresses made too long so there would be plenty of growing room. Mother was always self-conscious of those long hems and she always made sure our dresses were made at a fashionable length right from the start.”

As an older child, Grandma was “farmed out” as live-in help on various local farms. One such place was at what is now Old McDonald’s Farm outside of Sackets Harbor. On a ride one day, I was told “Grandma lived in that little room there up under the eaves.” Even now, whenever I drive past the place, I look toward those windows and think about the motherless little girl who lived there.

Grandma Whalen went to school in whatever schoolhouse was near to the place she was living in at the time and at some point was a student at the Jewett’s Corner schoolhouse on Military Road outside of Sackets Harbor. She and our grandfather, Charles C. Whalen, met and fell in love there. It’s been said that Leta and Charles were the handsomest students in the school. They were married in Sackets Harbor on March 16, 1892.

Grandpa Whalen had a blacksmith shop in Sackets Harbor and Grandma kept house. They had seven children. They were:

• Gladys Elizabeth, born in 1893 and later married to Charles C. Stoddard,
• Ray Clarke who was born in 1894 and was killed in action in France in 1918,
• Ella Emogene, born in 1896 and later married to Albert C. Hyde,
• Thomas George aka George Roswell “Rossie”, who was born in 1898 and died in 1901,
• Lora Angerine, born in 1900 and later married to C. James Grinnell,
• Kendall Charles, born 12/12/12, who married Marjorie A. Kay in 1946 and Alfrieda Gebo Harrigan in 1976, and,
• Clifford Edward who was born in 1915.

Grandma Whalen was a long-lived and accomplished woman. She was a writer whose poems were published in the Jefferson County Journal and in the Watertown, New York newspapers.

Grandma Whalen was an herbalist. In my archives is an envelope Grandma mailed to my mother, Marjorie Whalen, in the 1950s. It contains a leaf and a note directing my mother to soak the leaf in milk and use the resulting liquid to ease the boys’ [my bothers] poison ivy. (Just as an aside, our mother was a registered nurse. The fact that Grandma Whalen sent the leaf, and that the leaf remained used, says a lot about both my grandmother and my mom.)

For as long as I can remember, Grandma Whalen walked with crutches. She had “rheumatism.” My assumption is that, like many in our family, she had bone-on-bone arthritis in her knees. Despite that, until she fell and broke her hip at age 91, she still did all her own cooking and baking.

She loved her plants. Her yard was filled with tulips, peonies, and so many others. She was written up in the local paper for the beautiful coleus she grew, she sent my Catholic mother a rosary plant, and she always had African Violets on the window sill next to her rocking chair.

Grandma loved her family history. When I was a child I asked her about our family; she told me, “We are Yankees.” (And she didn’t mean the baseball team!) She explained that Yankees were New Englanders and then recounted the names and birth dates of her grand- and great-grandparents dating all the way back to 1786.

In 1955, when Grandma turned 81, her entire family held a birthday party in her honor at my parents’ home in Sackets Harbor. The party was written up in the Watertown Daily Times. One grandchild missing in the family picture below is her namesake, Mary Leta Whalen, born a couple of years later. And that was hardly the last of Grandma Whalen’s birthday celebrations.

Grandma was 91 when she died on October 29, 1965 after a broken hip made it necessary to move into Watertown’s Madonna Home.  In her last days, as she moved closer to her heavenly home, she was heard calling out to her beloved Papa.

Even in those days, Grandma Whalen’s life force held on. Gram “died” three times. During the first incident, a nurse went into her room, saw she had passed and went to the nurse’s station to report the event. By the time a doctor arrived to pronounce, Gram was back.

The second time, Gram was gone long enough for the family to be called in. By the time my parents got there, she was back.

On the third and last time, the doctor left orders for her body to be untouched for eight hours–just in case. And that time she didn’t come back.

Many years after Grandma’s death, Aunt Ella told me that she sat with Gram’s body during those hours, and after several, slipped her hand between Grandma’s body and the bed sheet. She found the body was still warm. As Aunt Ella recalled those moments she said to me, “What a constitution she must have had, Loretta. What a constitution.”

Oh that we could all be so strong.