Friends & Others: The Stories
These are some people who mattered to the Stokeys. Most, though not all, were friends.
For another story, you can proceed to the Farmers & the Grays:
Or you can look at more about the Friends & Others:
This page has very brief descriptions of some friends who were important to various Stokeys. I may break it out into multiple pages someday. We’ll see.
Here is the list, in roughly the order in which they appeared in the lives of their Stokey friends. If I add more people, the order will probably become more random.
Here is the list, in roughly the order in which they appeared in the lives of their Stokey friends. If I add more people, the order will probably become more random.
The Bradens
Margaret Jackson
Clara Virginia Jones
Anne Starr
Kamba, Kathleen, and Christine Simango
The McDowells - Reverend McDowell, Bessie, and their son Curtis
Mission people in the US and Canada, other than the Simangos and the McDowells
Mission people in Africa, other than the Simangos and the McDowells
Gladys Green
Margaret Jackson
Clara Virginia Jones
Anne Starr
Kamba, Kathleen, and Christine Simango
The McDowells - Reverend McDowell, Bessie, and their son Curtis
Mission people in the US and Canada, other than the Simangos and the McDowells
Mission people in Africa, other than the Simangos and the McDowells
Gladys Green
The Bradens
The Bradens were Clementine and her husband (first name unknown) and their son John, who was a good friend of Will’s. They were neighbors of the Stokeys in Canton. In the divorce petition there is a mention of some neighbors:
That again in the month of August, 1899, the said defendant was guilty of extreme cruelty toward the plaintiff in this: That he again cursed her, called her names such as set forth heretofore in the petition, and kept it up until neighbors were about to interfere and threatened to have him arrested.
I wonder if those neighbors were the Bradens, but I don’t think I’ll ever know.
Sadly, young John died of Bright’s disease on his 21st birthday, September 21, 1901. I never see a mention of other children, so I guess John was the only child. Mrs. Braden kept in touch with the Stokeys, especially Mama Margaret, long after neither family was in Canton anymore. We have a 1919 letter that Mrs. Braden wrote to Kathleen, talking about Will’s and Kathleen’s visit with the children to the Bradens. This was around the time that Mr. Braden died. Mrs. Braden died in 1921.
Margaret Jackson
Margaret was a school friend of Kathleen's in England. They corresponded, off and on, for the rest of Kathleen's life, and then Kay continued the correspondence. Margaret was living with her parents in Aberdeen when she started writing to Kathleen. Her father was a minister and had recently moved from London to Aberdeen. He died in 1913. Margaret and her mother moved to Reading around 1918, around the time that Kathleen and Will & Maggie & Billy were moving to San Antonio, so they lost contact, there being no email addresses back then to tide them over the moves. They regained contact a few years later through another school friend, Winnie Johnson, a..k. a. (to me) the one who called Kathleen "Gassie".
Our last letter from Margaret is in the 1950s. I assume that she then died, but I don't know, and it's hard to find information online about somebody with such an unindividual name as Margaret Jackson.
Margaret is not important to our family, but we have tons of letters from her. They're mostly about her own life, not Kathleen's, but there's the occasional response to something Kathleen said. What sticks in my mind is Margaret's run-downs of what their school friends were doing. They went all over the place! Africa, India, Australia, Germany - and, of course, Kathleen in the US.
Margaret was a school friend of Kathleen's in England. They corresponded, off and on, for the rest of Kathleen's life, and then Kay continued the correspondence. Margaret was living with her parents in Aberdeen when she started writing to Kathleen. Her father was a minister and had recently moved from London to Aberdeen. He died in 1913. Margaret and her mother moved to Reading around 1918, around the time that Kathleen and Will & Maggie & Billy were moving to San Antonio, so they lost contact, there being no email addresses back then to tide them over the moves. They regained contact a few years later through another school friend, Winnie Johnson, a..k. a. (to me) the one who called Kathleen "Gassie".
Our last letter from Margaret is in the 1950s. I assume that she then died, but I don't know, and it's hard to find information online about somebody with such an unindividual name as Margaret Jackson.
Margaret is not important to our family, but we have tons of letters from her. They're mostly about her own life, not Kathleen's, but there's the occasional response to something Kathleen said. What sticks in my mind is Margaret's run-downs of what their school friends were doing. They went all over the place! Africa, India, Australia, Germany - and, of course, Kathleen in the US.
Clara Virginia Jones
We called her Clara Jones, but everybody knew that she was Clara Virginia Jones. She was a friend of Alma’s at Oberlin. The family story is that she was Alma's roommate. I think that must have been in Alma's first year. Clara taught Spanish, and never married. We're not sure exactly where she taught. Possibilities include New Rochelle NY and Evanston IL.
There was a room at Fernbank that I identified as Clara's room. This room was larger than the cubicle bedrooms and it was off of the living room. I think of it as quite large, but it was probably large only in comparison to the cubicles. When I started talking to people about this, it turned out that this was originally Will's room.
Following Clara's retirement, she lived at the Hotel Wellington in New York City and worked as a Traveler’s Aid. Her languages were Spanish and German. For some reason we saw more of the German than we did of the Spanish. I still associate Stille Nacht (Silent Night) with Clara. She would spend Christmas with us in Wayland - one of those people who felt like family even though they weren’t blood relations. We used to enjoy playing Russian Bank, a rather complicated two-person card game, with her.
Betsy went to visit Clara in New York when Betsy was in junior high. That puts it in the early 1960s. Betsy remembers that Clara had trouble with arthritis, and would take a hot bath in the morning to help with that. One day they were out walking around New York. Betsy looked up and saw the sign for My Fair Lady - they were passing the theater where it was playing. And then Clara grabbed Betsy's arm and pulled her into the theater. Surprise! Clara had tickets for it. Betsy later learned that our mother had paid for them - $7 per ticket.
After Clara retired from her post-retirement Traveler's Aid career, she moved to Arizona for her health. We kept in touch, and she came back east to visit at least once. She died at the age of 93 on November 19, 1974. How I learned of it was that AG reported that her Christmas card to Clara had been returned marked Deceased.
Clara's ashes were mailed from Arizona to my father's (Roger's) office at 28 State Street in Boston. My mother put them on a shelf in the back of her bedroom closet at the Scraggy Neck house. Twelve years later, my mother put her mother's ashes there, too. After my mother's own death in 2012, Clara's and Grandma's ashes went to a closet in Betsy's house. And then, finally, on June 19, 2023, both sets of ashes were buried at Scraggy. Clara's are to the right of a fern that may have come from Fernbank, near the gap in the stone wall that is the entrance to the big garden. Roger (my brother) knew that there was a fern from Fernbank, probably this one, and Betsy recognized this fern as a royal fern, a variety of fern that had been at Fernbank, so if Clara's ashes aren't near a Fernbank fern, they're near a Fernbank type fern.
My mother's ashes are buried in that area, too, to the right of an azalea that she had rescued from certain death. It took us only about 2 1/2 years to get them buried.
Anne Starr
Anne Starr was a good friend of Alma’s. Her full name was Anna Morse Starr. She was born in Ohio in 1867, and graduated from Oberlin College in 1906, so it would have been at Oberlin that Anna and Alma met. Like Alma, she was a botanist, getting an MA from Oberlin in 1907 and a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1911. She went on to work at Mount Holyoke College, like Alma.
Here's a mention of her in Alma's 8/7/1905 letter to Will:
I came up here with Anne Starr who is going to be one of the Assistants [illegible] Botany in the College next year. She is very nice and we have had splendid times. We have a suite of two rooms which we sublet for a very modest sum from a student who was going away for the summer. They are very pleasant and in a good location - halfway between the University + Jackson Park and half way from the Midway which is now a grand Boulevard. We get our own breakfasts + lunches + take our dinners at the Men’s Commons - a pleasant as well as cheap arrangement.
From the letters I get the strong impression that the Stokeys considered her to be very much a member of the family. The question occasionally arises: Was Alma gay? And my general impression is that if Alma was on that spectrum, then it still was not the most prominent part of her life. But I also feel that if in fact she was gay to any extent, then Anne was special in that way. Such a thing would never be suggested anywhere, however.
Anne died in early 1928, at the age of 60. The newspapers report that she had gone to Florida in hopes of recovering her health. So she had some respiratory illness, apparently. Conceivably lung cancer, conceivably tuberculosis. Alma was the executor of her will.
Anne Starr was a good friend of Alma’s. Her full name was Anna Morse Starr. She was born in Ohio in 1867, and graduated from Oberlin College in 1906, so it would have been at Oberlin that Anna and Alma met. Like Alma, she was a botanist, getting an MA from Oberlin in 1907 and a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1911. She went on to work at Mount Holyoke College, like Alma.
Here's a mention of her in Alma's 8/7/1905 letter to Will:
I came up here with Anne Starr who is going to be one of the Assistants [illegible] Botany in the College next year. She is very nice and we have had splendid times. We have a suite of two rooms which we sublet for a very modest sum from a student who was going away for the summer. They are very pleasant and in a good location - halfway between the University + Jackson Park and half way from the Midway which is now a grand Boulevard. We get our own breakfasts + lunches + take our dinners at the Men’s Commons - a pleasant as well as cheap arrangement.
From the letters I get the strong impression that the Stokeys considered her to be very much a member of the family. The question occasionally arises: Was Alma gay? And my general impression is that if Alma was on that spectrum, then it still was not the most prominent part of her life. But I also feel that if in fact she was gay to any extent, then Anne was special in that way. Such a thing would never be suggested anywhere, however.
Anne died in early 1928, at the age of 60. The newspapers report that she had gone to Florida in hopes of recovering her health. So she had some respiratory illness, apparently. Conceivably lung cancer, conceivably tuberculosis. Alma was the executor of her will.
Kamba, Kathleen, and Christine Simango
Columbus Kamba Simango was born in 1890 in Mozambique, and went to the US in 1914 to study, with the help of the American board of missions. There’s a Wikipedia article about him.
He married Kathleen Mary Easmon in 1922. She has a Wikipedia article, too. Kamba and Kathleen traveled around the US fundraising for Africa in 1923. Kathleen died of appendicitis July 20, 1924, and Kamba married Christine Cousey in 1925. Christine’s country of origin was Ghana, but she had several relatives in England and was clearly quite familiar with it. I don’t know the full story there. There are quite a few letters from Christine to Sibyl that I haven’t read, as well as at least one from Kamba, so there is still lots to learn about them.
We have a pamphlet that I think was from the 1923 fundraising tour that Kamba and Kathleen did, though I haven’t read it yet. I think it probable that in the early 1920s Sibyl was thinking of becoming a missionary nurse, and that Kamba and Kathleen focussed her interest on Africa.
Sibyl also saw Kamba and Christine in Lisbon, when they all were learning Portuguese before going to Africa. Not long after she arrived in Angola, she wrote home to her family:
Kamba asked to be remembered to you all in his last letter. He feels as if he knows you all quite well. He is looking forward to the time when he comes to Angola, and so are we. I expect he’ll bring his wife with him, although he had no definite plans when he went to Eng. Please don’t think that he has forgotten Kathleen. He cherishes her very dearly, speaks about her just as much as when she was alive. Christine his new friend, loved Kathleen very much herself and can understand Kamba’s lasting affection for Kathleen and she encourages him to remember Kathleen who meant so much to everybody that she came in contact with.
That’s what made me think that it was Kamba and Kathleen who turned Sibyl’s thoughts towards Africa.
There’s a book called “Toward an African Church in Mozambique: Kamba Simango and the Protestant Community in Manica and Sofala, 1892-1945”. I haven’t read it, and at the moment it seems unlikely that I ever shall…though the Simangos keep becoming more interesting. (Everybody keeps becoming more interesting. It’s very inconvenient.)
Kamba and Christine spent some of their time as missionaries in Angola, but then they moved on to Mount Silinda in what was then called Rhodesia, but what is now called Zimbabwe. I may find out more about that. When I checked Google Maps, I found that Mount Silinda was right on the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique. (In case your knowledge of African geography is lacking: The south of Zimbabwe borders South Africa.)
When Fred and Sibyl parted ways with the Angola mission, Kamba and Christine hoped that they would come to the Rhodesia Mission, but Fred and Sibyl decided to stay in Massachusetts.
Kamba and Christine ended up in Ghana, on the west side of Africa, where Christine’s family was originally from. Ghana was also where WEB Dubois ended up. I saw something about Kamba knowing WEB Dubois in New York, so it seems plausible that Kamba knew WEB Dubois in Ghana as well.
Dubois died in 1963 at the age of 95. Kamba was killed in a hit and run accident in 1966 at the age of about 75, which seems like cradle-robbing compared to Dubois.
Kamba and Christine had three children. The oldest was Louis Kamba Simango, and I find that he married Henrietta (Etta) Cousey - surely some sort of a cousin. This does not seem relevant to us, but I’m throwing the information in here in case it leads to something. The second child was David Easmon Simango, born 2/5/1929. Christine reported his birth to Sibyl in her 2/20/1929 letter:
First of all let me tell you about the arrival of our second son whom we have named David Easmon. The young man had a very narrow escape from being born en route to the hospital at Silinda which is a two days journey by hammock from us. We were ready to start at dawn on Tuesday Feb. 5th but on account of the excessive rain, we delayed, hoping to start a little later in the day or early the next. About 8 a.m. I began to feel sick, from that time onwards everything happened so quickly that David was born at 11:30 a.m. the same day. The road at this time of the year is overgrown with tall grass even higher than the kind we fought our way through at Ochileso the day we went for the picnic, you know how wide the average bush path is don’t you? With the heavy rains, flooded streams and rivers and the fact that there is no such thing as a house on the way, I shudder to think what might have happened to us if we had started, never have I blessed RAIN with so much fervour.
The McDowells - Reverend McDowell, Bessie, and their son Curtis
Reverend McDowell’s name was Henry Curtis McDowell but I think his wife called him Curtis. I’m calling him Reverend McDowell to distinguish him from his son Curtis. His wife was Bessie Cherry Fonville McDowell.
Reverend McDowell was born in Alabama in 1894, and was the first black missionary whom the ABCFM sent to Angola. He is mentioned in the 1923 Annual Report for the African Mission:
“It is a long jump,” writes Mr. McDowell, the pioneer missionary of Galangue, “from the crowded slave pens, scorched highways and deeply worn coast paths, congested ship bottoms, slave markets of America, cotton fields of the southern United States of America, and the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln, to the establishment of this station.”
The Find-A-Grave article for Curtis says:
As the child of a missionary, Curtis was home schooled by his mother, Bessie, and became fluent in Umbundu, the native language of Angola.
When Fred wrote several letters on July 9, 1927, announcing his engagement to Sibyl, one of the letters was to Reverend McDowell, about the staffing issues that it would cause for Fred and Sibyl to be together.
Young Curtis was born in 1919. In the early 1930s, he lived with Fred and Sibyl in Massachusetts for a while and attended Westboro Public Schools. We’ve got a 1933 postcard from 20-year-old Maggie, staying at Fernbank in Woods Hole, to her father, Will, in Atlanta, in which Maggie says:
This morning Aunt Sibyl and Uncle Fred left early to go to Westboro. They are coming back early and bring Curtiss. I didn’t know he was colored, did you?
He ended up as a lawyer in Chicago, dying in 2010. AG tracked him down before his death, and spoke with him once about his time with her parents.
Reverend McDowell and Bessie retired home to the South. There are some newspaper articles about him and I want to take another look, because golly, what an interesting life they had!
Reverend McDowell’s name was Henry Curtis McDowell but I think his wife called him Curtis. I’m calling him Reverend McDowell to distinguish him from his son Curtis. His wife was Bessie Cherry Fonville McDowell.
Reverend McDowell was born in Alabama in 1894, and was the first black missionary whom the ABCFM sent to Angola. He is mentioned in the 1923 Annual Report for the African Mission:
“It is a long jump,” writes Mr. McDowell, the pioneer missionary of Galangue, “from the crowded slave pens, scorched highways and deeply worn coast paths, congested ship bottoms, slave markets of America, cotton fields of the southern United States of America, and the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln, to the establishment of this station.”
The Find-A-Grave article for Curtis says:
As the child of a missionary, Curtis was home schooled by his mother, Bessie, and became fluent in Umbundu, the native language of Angola.
When Fred wrote several letters on July 9, 1927, announcing his engagement to Sibyl, one of the letters was to Reverend McDowell, about the staffing issues that it would cause for Fred and Sibyl to be together.
Young Curtis was born in 1919. In the early 1930s, he lived with Fred and Sibyl in Massachusetts for a while and attended Westboro Public Schools. We’ve got a 1933 postcard from 20-year-old Maggie, staying at Fernbank in Woods Hole, to her father, Will, in Atlanta, in which Maggie says:
This morning Aunt Sibyl and Uncle Fred left early to go to Westboro. They are coming back early and bring Curtiss. I didn’t know he was colored, did you?
He ended up as a lawyer in Chicago, dying in 2010. AG tracked him down before his death, and spoke with him once about his time with her parents.
Reverend McDowell and Bessie retired home to the South. There are some newspaper articles about him and I want to take another look, because golly, what an interesting life they had!
Mission people in the US and Canada, other than the Simangos and the McDowells
Mostly Mission Board people, but also the Woodsides post-retirement.
Mostly Mission Board people, but also the Woodsides post-retirement.
Mission people in Africa, other than the Simangos and the McDowells
Mostly fellow missionaries.
Mostly fellow missionaries.
Gladys Green
Vagabond House. Glady's beach. Saturday night picnics. The tablecloth. Power windows in her car when nobody else had power windows in their car. (So cool to a small child like myself.) Aunt Erna!
1903-1988.
I have added my mother's eulogy to Related Documents for Glady.
Vagabond House. Glady's beach. Saturday night picnics. The tablecloth. Power windows in her car when nobody else had power windows in their car. (So cool to a small child like myself.) Aunt Erna!
1903-1988.
I have added my mother's eulogy to Related Documents for Glady.