Marjorie Pearl (Austin) Cecil (1907 - 1984)

Born 23 Apr 1907 in Sylvia, Reno County, Kansas

Ancestors

Daughter of Charles Griswold Austin and Ida Blanche (Watson) Austin

Wife of John Jackson Cecil — married 1 Jan 1927 in Sylvia, Kansas

Descendants

Died 3 Mar 1984 at age 76 in Hutchinson, Reno County, Kansas

Problems/Questions Profile managers: George Kelts [send private message] and Teri Mareks [send private message]

This profile is Genealogically Defined.

Biography

Marjorie Austin Cecil lived all her life in the small town of Sylvia, Kansas. She was the third of Charles and Blanche Austin's four children who survived infancy.^[1] Charles owned the local hardware store, and the family was hard-working and relatively prosperous.^[2]

Marjorie and her siblings did well in school (all but Marjorie were high school valedictorians; Marjorie was third in her class) and Charles sent them all to college. The boys graduated, but Marjorie's sister, Madge, quit after three years to get married, and after two years of college, Marjorie married in 1927. She was 20 and her husband, the town banker, was 30. Marjorie had her first child at home on her twenty-first birthday. Three more children followed in the next ten years.

Marjorie and her husband, John, who was from another small town nearby, raised their family in Sylvia. Marjorie's parents lived nearby as did Madge, who was also raising a family and had children about the same ages. The three families were close; the children played together, and they often saw their grandparents.

In 1932 the town bank closed and for a while John was unemployed. The family got by with some financial assistance from Marjorie's father, Charles. John found work in insurance and real estate sales and then became an oil lease broker.

Marjorie's religious faith was an important part of her life. She attended church every week for many years. Later Marjorie and John watched Methodist services on television.

She died in 1984,^[3] not long after the death of her husband of over 50 years, whom she had cared for as his health failed at the end of his life. Marjorie is buried in the Sylvia Cemetery along with many relatives, sharing a grave monument with her husband.^[4][2]

-- Julie Kelts, written August 7, 2014

DNA confirmation

Marjorie Pearl Austin Cecil is proven to be the daughter of Charles Griswold Austin by five DNA matches between Julie Kelts, Marjorie's granddaughter, (and/or her mother Elizabeth, aunts, and siblings) and other descendants of Charles Griswold Austin and Harriet Curtiss (Charles's grandparents). These matches are third cousins once removed, fourth cousins, and one fourth cousin once removed. Three were in the Charles Griswold Austin DNA circle on Ancestry. The matches range from 100 cM down to 10.8 cM. One of these matches is on GEDmatch, no. A441715, and is a triangulated match on chromosome 17 from positions 15.5 to 33.2 with GEDmatch no. T592740.

Marjorie is proven to be the daughter of Ida Blanche Watson by seven DNA matches between Julie Kelts (and/or her mother Elizabeth, aunts, siblings, and a second cousin) and other descendants of Blanche's parents, John Fletcher Watson and Mary Ann Deffenbaugh. These matches are second cousins once removed and third cousins, ranging from 335 cM down to 57 cM.

Julie Kelts has created a set of chromosome maps for herself and her siblings, and another set for Elizabeth and her sisters, using a method outlined by Blaine Bettinger in an article entitled "Visual Phasing" posted on-line in 2016. This method identifies all of each person's DNA by the grandparent it was inherited from. Each GEDmatch match has been placed on the maps and determined to be consistent with the family branch that has been identified. In many cases, especially when a large number of matches have uploaded to GEDmatch (or used a testing company such as FamilyTreeDNA that provides chromosome detail), some of these matches also match each other, creating three-way (or greater) triangulated groups.

Marjorie's memories

Written by Marjorie Austin Cecil to her granddaughter Julie Kelts, probably around 1969. She wrote a first draft in pencil, then typed it:

They came to Sylvia about 1886 or ’87, the Austins from a farm near Chillicothe, Missouri, and the Watsons from Walton, Kansas. They attended grade school together, these parents of mine, Blanche Watson and Charles Austin. To further his education he went by train to Great Bend, a distance of 50 miles, to attend a business college. He did not commute – he stayed for the term. She, being the oldest of six children, was needed at home and when, in 1894, her mother died, she began the job of raising her first family. My sister, my brothers and I grew up realizing we were her second. Doubtless we profited by her experience.

Her father had a team of horses and ran a draying service to other towns in this sparsely populated area while his father founded and operated a hardware and implement business. I can remember her telling how much fun she and her three brothers and two sisters had when their father was gone overnight.

In 1899 her father moved to Iowa taking the sisters and two brothers. On May 10 of that year she and Charles were married at the home of friends in Peabody, Kansas. They went there by train and she had made her wedding dress. It had several lacy petticoats and I remember her telling how she cut them up to make baby dresses, later. When they returned to Sylvia it was to live in the house her father had built. Little did she think that it would, with many additions, be her home for the rest of her life. The newly-weds thought that fortune really shone on them because they were able to buy lovely, used furniture from some people who were leaving Sylvia. Mother told how one of the large over-stuffed chairs was used for a bed for the first baby and how, at night, she could see him, from her bed by the flickering light of the fire in the base-burner heating stove.

Some of my earliest memories concern the auto shed. The yard around our house was big and in a back corner there was a long, narrow, flat-topped building. It was painted dark red and had been used as a stable for the team of horses our parents owned. But that was before my time. The auto shed housed the family automobile for many years. The first car I remember was a Buick touring model complete with a top that could be folded back. When it was in use, the top could be made to enclose the car by buttoning on side curtains. There was something else that could be buttoned on – doors for the front seat. My Dad had made them out of buggy top material which he sold by the yard in his store (the hardware and implement store of his father’s).

An impressive feature of the car was the brass trim, mostly around the carbide head lights. Of course it was kept polished. And the lights were big. The fuel for them was stored in a tank on one of the running boards. In order to light them a key had to be used on the tank. The bulb-type horn was not used much and there was another noise-maker that was never used unless the family ride took us many miles out in the country. Then we kids had to beg for it. It was a pedal that actually made musical sounds.

In the center of the back yard, at the end of a well-worn path stood another building, the wash house. It, too, was red, and while the back part of it was used to store wood and cobs for fires in the stoves, the front part was for laundry. The washing machine was boy-powered by my older brother, Max. Water was heated on a topsy stove [*] before being dipped into the washer. Sometimes white clothes were boiled in the copper-bottomed boiler. Then they were lifted to the washer with a wash-stick. Mother made her wash sticks from a broom handle and anyone who used one for another purpose got in big trouble. Max turned the big wheel on the side of the machine and it churned away. After a while the clothes were lifted up and put through a wringer into a tub of rinse water. There had to be two tubs, set on a bench so that the wringer could be used in between them. The second rinse contained blu

Well, now that I’ve found out that bluing can be spelled with or without the e we can get on with the laundry. It was added to the second rinse to keep white clothes from yellowing. It came in the form of little balls about the size of small marbles. Mamma tied several of these in a little rag and swished them through the water to get the right shade of blue. The exciting part of the washing process was the boiling of the white things, sheets, towels and clothes, but the fun part for me took place the night before when these pieces were put to soak. This was always Sunday night as noone ever washed any day except on Monday. There was a small room off the kitchen that was called the washroom and in it were a pitcher pump [*], a sink and of course a huck linen [*] towel on a roller rack that hung high on the wall. As the sheets, etc., were put into the cold water and the stains rubbed with soap there was a smell of cleanliness that I still remember. I must have been allowed to play in the water, or on the piles of dry sheets – something about it all impressed me so.

Our backyard had half a dozen or more big shade trees and clothes lines were strung between them and sometimes fastened to one of the buildings. White clothes were hung where they could get the sunshine to remove the stains that the soaking, boiling or washboard had not but colored garments were hung in the shade to save them from fading. In winter clothes were allowed to freeze dry, or almost dry. This, too, would take out stains but was hard on colors. It seems Mamma would wear white cotton gloves when she brought the clothes in, but to hang them out you just had to let your hands freeze.

After supper Mamma sprinkled the clothes that needed ironing and folded the others. Everything was ironed except knitted long underwear and stockings. The clothes basket was a big oval one and she lined it with a folded sheet, four thicknesses. Each piece she sprinkled by dipping her hand in water and then rolling it. Handkerchiefs and napkins were rolled together – there were no Kleenexes or paper napkins. (Not any sanitary napkins, either. Soft rags were used, fastened with safety pins to a home-made belt.) In case one of us had a real bad cold we used soft rags instead of hankies. The last step in the ironing, on Tuesday, was to place the folded sheet on the board and iron the hankies and napkins on it, moving it occasionally so that it was ironed, too.

The first irons I remember were iron with removable handles and heated, of course, on the kitchen range. You had to have two or three and test them with spit to make sure they were sizzling hot. When Papa got Mamma a gasoline iron she was pleased with the improvement but I thought the smell was awful. There was the small tank at the back of the iron and after it was filled with gasoline a pressure pump was used someway. Then when electric irons were heard of some years later women would wonder how in the world anyone could iron with a cord hanging onto the iron.

More about clothes, stoves, etc. later but first let’s visit a little building that was at the back of the yard between the wash house and the garage, which we called the auto shed. It was the CLOSET. The first one I remember was dark red but when Papa got a brand new one he painted it white and in order to provide a little privacy he build a lattice and put it on a slant. That was enough privacy for us kids and we wouldn’t even close the door sometimes. There was one feature in the old one, however, that the builder failed to incorporate into the new one. It was a low seat with a small hole, for children. This in addition to the two customary large ones. Papa was a reserved person and no hand to joke about a private matter so when his brother (our Uncle Frank) came to visit, we kids were delighted to hear him say, “Well, I guess I’ll go visit the old lady” or “Going to see Mrs. Jones again.” And he would head for the path that led out back. As one facility served all something happened one time that was literally burned into my memory. My brother Max and I were somehow in possession of a package of flat candy mints and a few matches. As we sat in the closet we melted the candy by holding it in the small flame. I must have got in a hurry to sample the hot, sweet stuff – anyway, some of it dripped on the back of one of my hands and I had a burn scar for many years.

Back to the house. The wash room served as a place to bathe, in one of the laundry tubs. About 1913, when my younger brother Glenn was born we got a real bathtub and that was when we must have got running water. It came from a large tank on a tower behind the auto shed and was filled by a noisy gasoline powered engine. The top of the tank wasn’t too well covered as occasionally there would be bits of tree leaves in our bath water. Later there was an electric pump in the basement and Mamma had a kitchen sink with faucets. And sometime there was a bathroom built on. Mrs. Jones remained but had few visitors.

Our parents were what was called saving. Mamma made wash cloths out of the good part of worn bath towels and pillow cases out of the good part of worn sheets. Sheets for small beds were made of flour sacks after they were bleached. The flour was bought in 50 pound sacks and kept in large metal cans.

Most of my mother’s sewing, however, had to do with clothing 4 kids and herself. No doubt she had sewed garments for her first family because she told of making her wedding dress plus everything she wore under it – fancy ruffled petticoats panties and a corset cover. Corset covers were later given the more dignified name of camisoles. They were often made with lace insertion and worn with a thin blouse. They came down only to the waist with a little bit to tuck in the petticoat. The garments she made for us included, as well as the customary dresses, petticoats, coats, black bloomers and nightgowns, a thing called an underwaist. This was more than a garter belt as it was like a shoulder harness with a waistband. On the waistband were loops made of twill tape into which garters were fastened with a safety pin. And there [were] lots of buttons on the waistband to hold up skirts. They were yellowish bone buttons fastened on with twill tape run through their big eyes. And she also made the sanitary belts. I doubt if any were available in stores. Women didn’t have Kotex, either, but used soft rags. Some may have thrown theirs away but we washed ours, having to let them soak a long time, of course. I remember doing that even after I was married and when the first Kotex came out women thought it scratchy and very uncomfortable.

Long underwear was worn by everyone except Mamma. Hers came just below her knees. We kids all wore heavy, black, ribbed stockings and it did take a little doing to get them over the long underwear. When girls got to be teen-agers they were allowed to wear lisle [*] knit stockings not nearly so heavy, but still black. All the time I was in Grade School all the kids wore high button shoes. When one of our bunch got some that laced we made fun of her. Soon we were all wearing them. By the time I was ready for High School silk stockings became the style, in Sylvia anyway. I remember my first pair. I wore them on a rainy day and they water spotted. I thought they were ruined.

In the coldest winter weather we wore black leggings that buttoned up one side. There was one part of our clothing that was Papa’s responsibility. Our shoes. He not only kept them polished, he repaired them. In the back part of the house, or in an outbuilding, he would set up his iron last. After tacking on the half sole he would take his sharp pocket knife out and trim it carefully. I can see him, yet, sitting there on a high stool with his mouth holding the tacks. It must have been that when he got tired of fixing run-oer heels that he would put on metal plates. How I hated them.

Sources

1. ↑ U.S. census, 1910, District 0154, Sylvia, Reno County, Kansas (Ancestry record): Cecil, Marjorie, Daughter, Female, White, age 3, birthplace Kansas; in the Charles G. Austin household along with mother Ida Blanche and siblings Madge M. and Maxwell image
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} much of the information in this profile was confided directly to Julie Kelts by Marjorie or her daughters
3. ↑ see obituary and death certificate attached to this profile
4. ↑ Find A Grave: Memorial #129524142

• U.S. census 1920-1940 - Sylvia, Reno County, Kansas
• Paternal relationship is confirmed by DNA as described above.
• Maternal relationship is confirmed by DNA as described above.
• FamilySearch profile no. LDBY-5SW; Kelts-Van Wye-Cecil-Austin Family Tree on Ancestry (tree no. 71402081) - 9 sources