The Early Life
of
Florence McClure Harlan Means
As dictated to her daughter-in-law Lillian Kolsrud Harlan
Hand published by her granddaughter Anne Harlan
New York
2003
Orphanage Children with Matron and Assistant
Outside headquarters of the Pentecostal Church
Indianapolis, Indiana
Clarence McClure - center 3rd row
Elmer - at his left
Florence - below and to Elmer's left
(2nd row, not white dress)
George - at her left
Marvin - seated in front of Florence
(in light shirt)
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I
was born in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, on August 12, 1892. My father was
Charles Arthur McClure; my mother was Margaret Marshall McClure. Elmer
Earl McClure was about fifteen months old at the time. Clarence and Clara were
also born in Iowa. Four or five years later we moved to Missouri for two years.
While living there Clara died of “summer complaint”, and George and Marvin
were born. Clara was buried in Harmony Cemetery about five or six miles from
Edina, Missouri.
Father farmed some land owned by Uncle George A. McClure, his oldest
brother, who was eighteen years older than Papa, who was the youngest of
eleven children. Mother was next to the youngest of ten children. Mother
became ill with tuberculosis so the family moved back to Iowa. From there they
had hoped to find some way to get to Denver to prolong her life, but the disease
was too far advanced to make that effort. Mother died in January, 1901. We
were living with Grandpa McClure. His eyesight was failing, and he died in
September of the same year.
Grandpa’s farm was north of Mount Pleasant, near Swedesburg, Iowa.
Uncle George lived there, and also Orlie Miller, the son of Papa’s sister Julie.
Orlie was raised by my grandparents. He had a speech impediment but was a
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hard worker, and “worked out” for one dollar a day at times. Papa got a job for
the railroad laying track and repairing roadbeds. He roomed in Wayland when
working on the railroad.
For the next year I lived with Emma and Joe Bushart across the
road and on the next hill, as she didn’t think it was right for me to be living with
all those men and boys. I lived there “a year lacking three weeks”. I had a “ball”
when I lived with them; there were many gatherings with the German relatives
and children to play with. After they had a child of their own I went to live in
Wayland with Grandmother McClure’s sister Julia Jessup, and her fifty-fiveyear-old spinster daughter Viola. Viola’s father, Uncle William Jessup, was
blind. I could help guide him up town to visit with his cronies but I wasn’t
always dependable about being on hand to bring him home. Wayland was
somewhat a retirement town for farmers. I went there in midwinter and went to
school there—my only time in a “town” school.
I remember walking the railroad track with brother George and Papa to
go to Olds, and then got to Mount Pleasant somehow. There we stayed in a
home owned by Aunt Samantha and Uncle Peter Roth. She was an older sister of
Papa’s. Elmer was staying with Uncle Jim Marshall, mother’s youngest brother ,
and his wife Aunt Adaline, as Elmer could help them with their dairy at
Winfield. Clarence was at Aunt Samantha’s at their farm. George and I got
small pox, probably from germs left from Aunt Samantha’s boys when they had
it. The closet may not have been fumigated.
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Papa had heard about an orphanage in Indianapolis that was just starting,
with only four boys. This was run by the Pentecostal Bands of the World. Some
missionaries from there were in the area and Papa was going to send me with
them to Indianapolis, but when we got small pox I couldn’t go. When I got out
of my quarantine Papa took me to their headquarters in Mount Pleasant, and a
lady, Clara Moore, took me on the train to Indianapolis. We stayed several days
in the Indianapolis headquarters. The sleeping quarters were on one side, the
chapel on the other, and in the basement, printing presses for their newspaper,
“Light of the World.” T. H. Nelson and his wife had charge of the place.
I was taken to the orphan’s home which was on the outskirts of
Indianapolis, at the east end of the Washington Street car line. There were four
boys there; two were nephews of the Nelsons, Ellis and Donald. It was a ten-acre
tract of land with houses. One building had been a barn, and that was made into
a school house. The house near there was the boys’ cottage. I lived with the lady
who was the housekeeper and cook. She was very nice, and her name was
Auntie Taylor. I arrived at the orphanage when I was ten years old, in August
1902. Auntie Taylor would teach me Bible verses while she did her cooking.
Sometime that year Papa brought my brother George as he had to be in school
and Papa couldn’t care for him. When Uncle Peter Roth was ill and Aunt
Samantha was busy caring for him she couldn’t take care of Clarence. So Papa,
who was working in a glass factory in Chicago then, went to Iowa for Clarence
and brought him to the orphanage. Marvin had been living with mother’s sister
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Aunt Mat and her husband, Frank Cox; and when she died Papa had to bring
Marvin to the orphanage. Later Papa brought Elmer so we at least were all
together. This had been Mama’s wish.
The entire orphanage moved to Plainfield, Indiana, west of Indianapolis,
where there was land for the older boys to help raise crops. As the orphanage
grew and there were more girls I was moved to the girls’ cottage. When I got
there the teacher, Mrs. Dunbar, said anyone was vain to wear ruffles or lace on
their clothes and made me cut the lace off the dresses Viola and Aunt Julie made
for me before I left Iowa. Mrs. Dunbar had two children who were, of course,
her favorites.
I was in the orphanage a total of five and a half years before my Uncle
George came from Mississippi where he and Orlie and my father had a
plantation four and a half miles east of Canton, Mississippi. I was happy to leave
the orphanage. Uncle George took us by Interurban car into Indianapolis and we
stopped at a department store where he bought one of the boys a much needed
pair of shoes, and a red hat for me to protect me from the Mississippi sun. Uncle
George put what he could in his suitcase, and each of us carried our bundle of
belongings. The train trip took most of three days so we were pretty tired. Papa
and Orlie met us with a carriage, two horses, and a mule. I was happy to see
Papa. There were many Negroes in the town, and everyone gawked at us.
It was a nice house: three rooms upstairs and three rooms downstairs, and
I had a room all to myself. My work assignments at the orphanage helped
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prepare me for the work ahead of me cooking and caring for the seven boys and
men. We arrived there in January, and we had much rain that month. Mud was
deep and rolled up on the wheels. Then the work began in the fields. Papa
worked with the county agent on experimental farming—feed for cattle and
hogs, as well as cotton and beans, a new crop for that part of the country.
I was cooking, washing, and ironing (with irons heated on the stove).
However, Uncle George had been a bachelor for so long he always made the
breakfast, alternating between pancakes with sugar syrup and biscuits with
gravy. The boys helped set out five acres of peach trees. We ordered some
young turkeys but stray dogs would get after them. There was swamp area on
the south end of the property, so they cleared that somewhat of brush and we
then had a fine hay meadow. I baked six or eight loves of bread twice a week.
Sometimes we would have corn bread or mush. I canned peaches, tomatoes,
jelly from wild grapes and plums in half-gallon jars.
Uncle George worked in the garden and not in the field. Clothing was a
problem for me as Papa didn’t have money and I had to go to Uncle George if I
needed something. He would get out the catalog and figure how much things
were and then go to town. I was most embarrassed to have to tell him I needed
underpants. Then, due to the diet, I was chubby and wanted a corset. I sold the
hat Papa bought me for Easter so I could get one dollar to buy a corset. I also
managed to get some dress material and a friend made me a pretty dress. When
I came down to go to the “Snowdiggers” (northern white folks) picnic all dressed
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up Uncle George wanted to know where I got that dress. They couldn’t afford to
have me dressing like that.
I realized there was absolutely no future for me there just keeping house
for the boys and men, so when Lulu Harlan came to visit her sister Mary
Chisman, I decided I wanted to go back to Iowa with her. Mary Chisman and
her two daughters, Joy and Glee, who were pre-school age, were going back to
Iowa too to visit Mary Chisman’s mother, Aunt Cynthia Harlan, and sister Grace,
who taught piano at the conservatory in Ottumwa. ( Joy and Glee used to come
and visit me, and Mary Chisman would phone to tell me to watch for them, as
the old tom turkey would get after them.)
Papa and Uncle George were not in favor of my going back to Iowa as
they felt I would starve up there. What would I do? I wasn’t able to attend
school in Mississippi and do my work too. I insisted on getting somewhere so I
could get an education and have some kind of a future. Uncle George couldn’t
understand my wanting to “go out in the world” and I would probably come
back on my hands and knees and I wouldn’t be welcome. Papa bought my ticket
and when we left he gave Mary Chisman ten dollars for anything I needed. I
wanted to bring my share of lunch to eat on the train, so I fried chicken and
packed it in a tin can and put the cover on to keep it warm. It was around the
first of July and very hot on the train. When Mary Chisman found what I had in
the can she said it wouldn’t be safe to eat so she threw it out the window,
whereupon I started to cry and cried most of the way to Iowa. I couldn’t stand
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the thought of that wasted food when my brothers could have enjoyed it; and I
was then unable to contribute my share for the trip. I was lacking two months
from being eighteen at this time.
On arriving in Ottumwa we went to the Harlan home where Grace, Lulu,
and their mother Aunt Cynthia, lived on Ward Street. I got in touch with Ed
Roth, my cousin, as Papa had asked me to do that. They had me come to their
home but there wasn’t much to do there. He and his wife Ella were on the
hospital board and one day she said that if I was older I could go into nurse’s
training. I decided I would very much like that, so Ed decided he would try to
get me in by bluffing about my age. The Superintendent of the hospital was
undecided about me but finally told me that I could try my two-month probation
period and see how I would do.
I was the thirteenth nurse in the class. Our rooms were on the third floor
of the west wing. We had our classes and lectures in the evening when off duty.
I was a pretty “green” girl from the country and had some adjusting to do to get
accustomed to running water, electricity, and all those conveniences. We had an
hour off a day to study or whatever we wanted to do, and four hours off on
Sunday. Some of our duties would be to accompany doctors on rounds, scrub all
bed pans in the bathtub each morning, make and change beds, and air mattresses
on the porch each time a patient would leave. After a death or contagious
disease the room and everything in it had to be fumigated. We would light a
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sulfur candle to fumigate and would quickly stuff rags all around the door to
keep it from invading the hall.
We would bring trays to the patients. The hot food had been sent up from
the kitchen by dumb waiter to the diet kitchen where there was a two-burner gas
plate. There we would fill the trays. After the two-month probation period, if
we passed, we got our uniform and cap. After two years a band was put around
the cap. The training period lasted three years.
This was a 35-bed hospital, though seldom full. Miss Trotter, the
superintendent, ran the place with the help of student nurses. After graduation
we took private cases, in or out of the hospital. My first private case was in the
hospital—an appendectomy; my second case was in a private home for an
elderly lady with a broken hip. Next was one of the owners of the Iowa Café, a
heavy man with a hernia. I was kept busy on cases with little rest in between. I
was living a couple of blocks from the hospital with Chief of Police, Officer Joe
Beeman, and his wife Clara. A few other nurses roomed there also. They had a
parrot who always greeted Mr. Beeman with “Hello Joe.” Mrs. Beeman was a
seamstress. She later made my wedding dress.
There was not much social life in those three years: long hours, classes,
lectures, studying, and in your room by 10 PM. Grace and Lulu often had
parties, and they always asked me to attend if I wasn’t working. At their place I
met their cousin Orville (“O. D.”) and his younger brother George. Aunt
Cynthia’s house was a good place for parties. We also had sleigh rides in winter
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and oyster stew at the house. Aunt Cynthia would have to water down the stew
sometimes as more and more young people would show up. “We knew you
wouldn’t mind,” they would say.
One Easter when attending the Davis Street Christian Church, O. D. asked
if I would like to walk home. Half way across the bridge it poured rain, and
my Easter hat blew into a puddle. O. D. and George had a horse, but this had
been George’s night for the horse and buggy. We dated some at young people’s
activities, like festivals; or he would come to the hospital and we would visit in
the reception room, or go for walks or occasionally to a movie.
My nurse’s training was completed in spring of 1913, after which I would
accept nursing jobs in homes. One job was for an old couple down on a farm
outside Centerville. While I was taking care of the lady the man had a runaway
accident, so I had to care for him too. They wanted to adopt me. I was anxious
to get back to Ottumwa, so they asked if I had a boy friend up there. Then they
invited O. D. down for a weekend. A beautiful night in the swing under the
trees brought on a proposal of marriage.
While still caring for the old couple I was going out to the pump for cold
water one night when I got my feet tangled in a rope the granddaughters had left
from the screen door. I fell still holding and protecting the two lovely cut glass
tumblers, but breaking my arm—a green fracture. They wanted to send for a
doctor or nurse, or send me to Iowa City, but I insisted on leaving by train the
next day for Ottumwa. There my arm was set, and I was unable to work while it
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healed. While waiting for the arm to heal I went out to Winfield to visit some of
my mother’s relatives: my grandmother Marshall, who was bedridden, and my
two aunts who took turns caring for her in their homes, Aunt Belle Olinger and
Aunt Hattie Hatton.
On January 12, 1914, O. D. and I were married. He was working in Albia
and wanted me to come up there. My landlady Mrs. Beeman had made me a
lovely off-white wedding dress and tried to convince me to get married in
Ottumwa. But I took the dress and took the train to Albia. O. D. had
discouraged my having my brothers come up as we wouldn’t be having any
family at the wedding. Yet when I got off the train I found his father and brother
George were there. We went to the Mayor’s home where we were to be married.
The Mayor’s wife was out, and I stalled, hoping she would get back so there
would be another woman present. I finally came out of the bedroom not
wearing the wedding gown. Next thing I knew the ceremony began. Where I
had been in tears upstairs I found myself laughing, somewhat hysterically I
suppose. When we went out to dinner—the three Harlan men, O. D.’s boss, and
myself—I sat there not eating while the others had a big dinner. The restaurant
was in a depot hotel where we stayed and the next day left by train on our
honeymoon. We stopped off in Council Bluffs two days with O. D.’s aunt, his
father’s sister, then on to Beatrice, Nebraska, where we stayed with O. D.’s Aunt
Jane Ralston, whose husband Perry was a tailor. We also visited her daughter
and family in the country. Nebraska was miserably cold while we were there.
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We went back to Russell, Iowa where O. D. and George had been
rooming. Mrs. Cobb (“Auntie Cobb”) ran the rooming house for railroad men
and construction men. The depot agent always lived there. They had one
daughter Marie, who later married George Harlan. They also raised twin girls,
Catherine and Elizabeth, from the time they were about five months old and
their mother died. Their father was a neighbor of Mrs. Cobb and didn’t know
how he could manage them. When we arrived the girls were about four years
old, all prettied up and sitting on the steps waiting to see the bride.
While O. D. continued working on a school house in Albia I went back to
Ottumwa and stayed at the Harlan home with O. D.’s father in the house on
Chester Avenue that O. D. and George built after their mother died. Their
mother had died the previous year the week before Easter Sunday. She had been
taken to Chicago for surgery but had cancer and died three days later.
Grandma Brooks, O. D.’s mother’s mother, lived in the house next door to
their former home on Ransom Street. I remember how she would shampoo her
hair with rain water, and she had a homemade tonic she would comb through
her hair. Her name was Mathilda, and her daughter, O. D.’s mother, was named
Quintilla. Grandma Brooks was about 81 when she died. She died in 1915 when
Wayne was a baby.
The house on Chester Street was a nice brick home, but for the first year or
so it had no connection with sewers, so there was no indoor plumbing. When I
got pregnant I was sick much of the time. I couldn’t stand the smell of O. D.’s
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father’s pipe. Also, he would sleep late, and I didn’t enjoy having to cook late
breakfast for him. George Harlan roomed upstairs but didn’t take meals with us.
When I became pregnant I made diapers and baby things from outing flannel.
O.D.’s aunt came to visit for a week from Council Bluffs.
In the spring we went to Batavia, two towns east of Ottumwa, where O. D.
and Frank Wheaton were building a school house. We lived in a bunk house
alongside a stream. We stayed there all summer. I could walk down the railroad
track and find wild patches of gooseberries, elderberries, and plums. I went back
to Ottumwa to stay with the Brumleys, because she had had a number of
miscarriages, and the doctor said she was to stay off her feet until the eighth
month to enable to have the one she was carrying at the time. I would help them
during the week and then go back to the Chester Street house on weekends when
O. D. would come home. When he finished the work in Batavia he came home to
the Chester Street, house, so I went back to the house too.
Mrs. Brumley had her baby boy Vernon two weeks before I had my baby.
Wayne was born on December 8, 1914, about 8:30 AM, with Aunt Till as
midwife, as she was for my other three children. Dr. H. W. Vincent delivered the
baby. Wayne Richard weighed 8 ½ pounds, and he was a very good baby.
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