You’ve probably heard the oft-told story that poet Wilfred Owen’s parents received their son’s death notice as the bells pealed to honor the end of World War I and the streets filled with celebrating people. I have always thought that story was just horrible, but then I found this family twist on the same theme.
Five years ago, I posted about Dorothy Chamberlin, out great uncle Guy’s wife. In that post I wrote that Guy’s death in France in September 1918, “was, of course, a terrible blow to the family, made more so by the fact that he was the youngest, and that unbeknownst to them he had gotten married just weeks before he died. According to family tradition, the young widow showed up in Vermont to meet her ‘new family’ and was promptly dismissed as a tacky, gold-digger, who had had the audacity to claim the poor boy’s pension.” As it turns out, that’s not how it happened.
Poor Dorothy found out about Guy’s death when she read it in the newspaper! Presumably, he never bothered to tell anyone that he was married. After all, he was young and did not expect to die. He certainly hadn’t told his relatives, who, though they had received a telegram announcing his death, found out about the marriage when the Burlington Free Press picked up the Washington Evening Star story and ran it!
The Burlington paper, where our grandfather worked before the war, had blown it big time. They followed up their blunder with this announcement.
So, Dorothy found out about Guy’s death in the newspaper, and his family found out about her the same way (and we think social media is bad!). The news was too much for the Chamberlins, and yet, one other little detail suggests that they did not reject Dorothy outright. When Anna Hendren Chamberlin, the grieving mother, died in 1919, the Free Press noted:
Someone must have sent her the news. How else would she have known about Anna’s death? Could it have been her sister-in-law, our grandmother? It must have been an awkward trip for Dorothy, who is not mentioned in the funeral notice, but then neither is anyone else in the family.
In another unusual twist, I discovered a poem that our grandmother had written about Guy’s death published in an obscure Mississippi newspaper!
Mississippi? I have no explanation for that one. Maybe one of her college friends lived there and published the poem. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know…
Have a grand weekend and be sure to spend part of it thinking about your ancestors, who deserve to be remembered.
dual personalities 