EVA'S STORY: ~THE STORY~---related-pages---site navigation
A brief and incomplete biography of Eva:
Here is a picture of Eva in 1911:
Eva was born on April 3, 1885, the youngest of the five Stokey siblings. Her next older sibling, Laura, was four years older than she was. So you can imagine her at age five, craning her neck to look up at Will, age 15, Alma, age 13, Fred, age 11, and Laura, age 9. (Craning her neck… on second thought, perhaps not. Will was not much more than five feet tall.)
Here she is as a baby, in the photographer’s studio:
Here she is as a baby, in the photographer’s studio:
I think she looks stubborn as a mule, but maybe that’s just me.
The general impression is that her four older siblings were very intelligent and that Eva…was not. We have some stories from Fred on the subject. He told his daughter a story about teaching Eva to ride a bike. I figure Eva to be about ten years old, and Fred about 16. I wonder if the bike in question was the very primitive one that Fred rode across New York from Canton to West Point in 1897. It did not have a mudguard, so that mud splashed up onto Eva’s nice white dress. Fred told her that the way to avoid this was to pedal faster to get away from the mud. “Faster, Eva! Faster!” Of course that just splashed more mud up onto her dress. We’ve got a letter from thirty years later in which Fred told his not-yet-second-wife Sibyl,
My kid sister sometimes intimated that I was not a gentleman.
Maybe this was one of the occasions when Eva intimated that.
A story that Fred told Sibyl was:
Alma had broken a dish and Eva was vexed because mother did not reprove her. Mother said that she did not need to be scolded, she was sorry enough. Alma is seven years older than Eva.
It sounds as though Eva was not willing to accept that she, as a younger sister, might have some catching up to do to get to the level of her older siblings. The real problem was that she never did catch up.
Eva was probably around ten years old when her father started becoming really difficult, so she probably missed out on a lot of the good times the others would have remembered, and the encouragement that Papa Charles surely gave to both the boys and the girls in their educational pursuits.
As for the difficulties with Papa Charles, there are very troubling incidents mentioned in the divorce petition, but none of the incidents involved Eva in particular. She would, however, have been at home to witness many if not all of them. But in the one letter we have from her to Will from that time, in 1898, she mentions her father once, cheerfully, in passing:
I’d rather see that than five dollars walking in the door as papa is saying all day today about kitty Nimrod the night hunter.
Eva was almost 15 when her mother finally filed for divorce. Will was probably a father figure to her. There’s no doubt she adored him. Mama Margaret and Alma also adored Will - but Eva was the one who was ten years younger than Will.
All the other siblings had careers in science of some sort: engineering, botany, medicine, osteopathy. Eva’s career was in music. She sang, and sang well, apparently. When she graduated from high school in 1903, she sang in a concert in connection with it - both in a duet and in a solo. She reported in a letter, who was at Oberlin at the time:
I had lots of compliments on my singing. Even people that were not there told me that they heard I had sung well.
In the year after her high school graduation, she worked on her singing, and also kept house for Fred when Mama Margaret took a trip to Michigan with her sister Mary Provines Hicks. Mama Margaret reported to Will, who was a lieutenant in the Philippines at the time:
I know from Eva’s letter that she will be glad to see me home again. It is her first experience in keeping house and I know it has been hard on her. In one of her letters she said she didn’t think she could stand it another day.
Meanwhile, she was thinking about what she would do with her life. In a family like hers, it was not enough to assume that she would get married and have children but no job, though she did consider marriage as a possibility. In 1903 she wrote Will, who was still in the Philippines, about some Filipino fabric that she wanted:
if you ever have a five dollar gold piece to spare I would like to have you get me some of that stuff you got Alma. She hasn’t gotten it yet so I don’t know what it is like but I saw in the Army and Navy Journal that a brides dress was made of it so I want some. I might take a sudden notion to get married and would have to give it up just because I would not have the proper thing to be married in. Wouldn’t that be sad.
In February of 1904 Alma, still an undergraduate at Oberlin, wrote to Will:
When I was at home Eva read me a fragment of a magnificent epic that she had begun in accordance with an agreement that she made with you. I am afraid she won’t finish it unless you urge her. It is howlingly funny. It is the story of her early aspirations.
I think the following must be the poem. Here’s the first page in Eva’s handwriting, then I’ll give you my transcription. I don’t think it is howlingly funny, but there may be nuances to it that, as a non-sibling, I don’t recognize. And it’s rather long, so you’re not required to read it through. But it does show her special feeling for Will.
The general impression is that her four older siblings were very intelligent and that Eva…was not. We have some stories from Fred on the subject. He told his daughter a story about teaching Eva to ride a bike. I figure Eva to be about ten years old, and Fred about 16. I wonder if the bike in question was the very primitive one that Fred rode across New York from Canton to West Point in 1897. It did not have a mudguard, so that mud splashed up onto Eva’s nice white dress. Fred told her that the way to avoid this was to pedal faster to get away from the mud. “Faster, Eva! Faster!” Of course that just splashed more mud up onto her dress. We’ve got a letter from thirty years later in which Fred told his not-yet-second-wife Sibyl,
My kid sister sometimes intimated that I was not a gentleman.
Maybe this was one of the occasions when Eva intimated that.
A story that Fred told Sibyl was:
Alma had broken a dish and Eva was vexed because mother did not reprove her. Mother said that she did not need to be scolded, she was sorry enough. Alma is seven years older than Eva.
It sounds as though Eva was not willing to accept that she, as a younger sister, might have some catching up to do to get to the level of her older siblings. The real problem was that she never did catch up.
Eva was probably around ten years old when her father started becoming really difficult, so she probably missed out on a lot of the good times the others would have remembered, and the encouragement that Papa Charles surely gave to both the boys and the girls in their educational pursuits.
As for the difficulties with Papa Charles, there are very troubling incidents mentioned in the divorce petition, but none of the incidents involved Eva in particular. She would, however, have been at home to witness many if not all of them. But in the one letter we have from her to Will from that time, in 1898, she mentions her father once, cheerfully, in passing:
I’d rather see that than five dollars walking in the door as papa is saying all day today about kitty Nimrod the night hunter.
Eva was almost 15 when her mother finally filed for divorce. Will was probably a father figure to her. There’s no doubt she adored him. Mama Margaret and Alma also adored Will - but Eva was the one who was ten years younger than Will.
All the other siblings had careers in science of some sort: engineering, botany, medicine, osteopathy. Eva’s career was in music. She sang, and sang well, apparently. When she graduated from high school in 1903, she sang in a concert in connection with it - both in a duet and in a solo. She reported in a letter, who was at Oberlin at the time:
I had lots of compliments on my singing. Even people that were not there told me that they heard I had sung well.
In the year after her high school graduation, she worked on her singing, and also kept house for Fred when Mama Margaret took a trip to Michigan with her sister Mary Provines Hicks. Mama Margaret reported to Will, who was a lieutenant in the Philippines at the time:
I know from Eva’s letter that she will be glad to see me home again. It is her first experience in keeping house and I know it has been hard on her. In one of her letters she said she didn’t think she could stand it another day.
Meanwhile, she was thinking about what she would do with her life. In a family like hers, it was not enough to assume that she would get married and have children but no job, though she did consider marriage as a possibility. In 1903 she wrote Will, who was still in the Philippines, about some Filipino fabric that she wanted:
if you ever have a five dollar gold piece to spare I would like to have you get me some of that stuff you got Alma. She hasn’t gotten it yet so I don’t know what it is like but I saw in the Army and Navy Journal that a brides dress was made of it so I want some. I might take a sudden notion to get married and would have to give it up just because I would not have the proper thing to be married in. Wouldn’t that be sad.
In February of 1904 Alma, still an undergraduate at Oberlin, wrote to Will:
When I was at home Eva read me a fragment of a magnificent epic that she had begun in accordance with an agreement that she made with you. I am afraid she won’t finish it unless you urge her. It is howlingly funny. It is the story of her early aspirations.
I think the following must be the poem. Here’s the first page in Eva’s handwriting, then I’ll give you my transcription. I don’t think it is howlingly funny, but there may be nuances to it that, as a non-sibling, I don’t recognize. And it’s rather long, so you’re not required to read it through. But it does show her special feeling for Will.
There once was a foolish maiden
And she was so very queer
She was so very ignorant
But always of good cheer.
At first she thought it in her line
Some verses of poetry to write.
Accordingly at the age of nine
She worked at them both day and night.
Her verses like herself were queer
The sense of them seemed not to appear
And so at last in despair she left
Her cherished plan and to another cleft.
The next idea to seize her mind
Was to become an instructor of youths
So to practise this she often lined
The chairs filled with pillows to represent
The pupils who sought her truths.
But somehow the pupils would not learn
And she at last began to discern
That for a teacher she was not meant
Although her energy in that line was bent.
This little maid with a brother was blest
Who, not like herself, was one of the best
In all studies that ever existed
But who, alas, in the army enlisted.
This sad fate nearly broke the heart
of this little maid, whose start
In this world I’m relating.
But she bravely bore her grief
Because “twas for the best” in her belief.
Presently this brother stately and grand
A rank in the army could command
So the maid felt glad that she
Her grief had born and replace with glee.
And once she even dared to think
A servant girl to be. For ‘twas as easy
At brushes and brooms to wink
As at one of the stronger sex.
But thinking this not a calling high
From her mind she let it slip.
But never yet has lost her love
For what many girls consider dry.
And now my maid has older grown
And childish hopes from her mind have blown
But to her goal no nearer is she
Than when only at the age of three.
But now with delight it has been learned
That this maid’s fortune is her voice
Which with her brother’s cash hard earned
Is causing many to rejoice.
Now to an end the tale we must bring
But as I write I hear her sing
For since her calling has been ascertained
She is losing no time in being well trained.
Written by “the foolish maid”
Eva Christine Stokey’
And dedicated to the “brother stately and grand”
William Provines Stokey
In June of 1904, Eva went up to Oberlin to be there for Alma’s graduation. Alma reported to Will:
Eva came up to visit me on June 12 and stayed until after Commencement. I hadn’t any time to entertain her so I turned her loose on the town. I tried to send her to all the recitals, and she did get to nine or ten, but she missed one and she has been heaping reproaches on me ever since. She had a very good time.
And there was more:
Her susceptible heart had a bad time of it. She fell in love at almost every turn. The most serious cases were Professor Grover and Mr. Tyler. Mr. Tyler was the worst but it is hopeless, for alas! Mr. Tyler was a colored man. He graduated from the Conservatory this June and sings and plays beautifully. He is nice-looking, entertaining, and very popular. Eva never saw a nice colored man before and he was a great surprise to her. She spends all her time wishing he was white. I am relieved that she doesn’t wish she was colored.
Eva went to Oberlin Conservatory starting in 1904. Unlike Alma, she didn’t live with roommates there; her mother and Fred moved to Oberlin from Canton in late summer 1904 so that Eva still lived at home. And this was probably a good thing, because Eva’s heart continued to be susceptible. In March of 1906, Alma wrote to Will - now returned from the Philippines and teaching at West Point - about Eva’s interest in a young man who had been teaching Alma and Eva how to dance:
Dear Will
Eva wants me to write to tell you that she has tonsillitis and wants you to write to her. She has been in bed two days. The doctor has been over twice but she doesn’t seem to get much better. It takes some time for tonsillitis to wear out.
She was wishing last night that you were here to hold her hand. I think she would have taken Mr. Hammond as a substitute if she could have gotten him. He was here Sunday and when he was fooling around with Eva she caught his hands and held them. Then she sat for at least ten minutes holding his hands apparently unconscious that it wasn’t the usual thing to do. That was bad enough but after he went she calmly announced that “he had the dandiest hands to hold.” I fear you have a rival.
She wants you to write instanter. She pines for a letter.
With much love,
Alma.
Please remember that this letter was written in 1906. There has been speculation that the failure of Eva’s marriage a few years later came about because even the thought of the sexual act appalled her. I’m skeptical of that notion.
Aside from her interest in the opposite sex, however, she was seriously interested in music. Oberlin Conservatory was not a girls finishing school; one had to work there. And her continued interest over the following decades shows that Eva’s love of music was real.
But she never graduated from Oberlin Conservatory. Years later she told her niece Barbara that she fulfilled all the requirements except for one: she had to give a vocal recital, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it. This is surprising, given how much she enjoyed the compliments she received for her singing at the time of her high school graduation, and I don’t come across any mention of shyness about her singing in any of the letters that I read. This was Eva telling the story, so there is no doubt that she did indeed make the decision not to do the recital, but there must be more to it than that.
After her time at Oberlin Conservatory, Eva moved to New York for further musical learning. There she met Frank Evans in 1909. He fell in love with her first. I suspect that if they had been in Oberlin with her family, nothing permanent would have come of it, but in New York she was on her own for the first time. Mama Margaret was staying with her, but Mama Margaret had to go to Michigan to visit her dying sister Mary Provines Hicks. By the time Mama Margaret came back from Michigan, Eva was engaged, noting that Frank reminded her of Will. It really was all very predictable, I guess.
The family did their best to check up on Frank. In the summer, Alma rented a house in Truro, near the tip of Cape Cod, with family members encouraged to come stay. Frank came for a bit. Will didn’t come until after he left, but then Will went to New York to meet Frank. Frank seemed fine to them.
Mama Margaret wrote the following to Will on September 23, not too long before the wedding:
Eva told me of the nice compliment you paid me. You don’t know my dear boy, how pleased I was to know that you think I have a good disposition.
It sounds to me as though Will had a rather fatherly chat with Eva about her upcoming marriage. Perhaps Eva was nervous, and Will tried to give her some advice on how to be a good wife to Frank: “You couldn’t do better than to model yourself on Mama. She has such a good disposition.” Somehow lost in this might have been the fact that Mama Margaret’s marriage had failed - but, of course, they all blamed the divorce on Papa Charles.
Frank and Eva were married in the fall, and set up housekeeping. Frank was helpful, and Eva did her best…but problems developed. Money problems. Probably comparisons with Will became tiresome for Frank.
Later in life, Fred wrote a poem, a couple of lines of which, reported with glee by AG, were:
F is for faithful friend Frank;
His wife washed his clothes and they shrank.
It is doubtful that the lines recounted a real incident, but I heard, possibly from Barbara, that Frank wanted children and Eva didn't, so it may be that Eva resented an suggestion that she become a traditional housewife doing the laundry and raising the kids.
By now Will was out west, stationed in California. He looked up New York divorce laws, but he also told her how to save her marriage. No, it wasn’t, “Be more like Mama.” Rather, it was: “Convert to Christian Science. It makes all marriages perfect. At any rate, it made my own marriage perfect.” (Note: that’s a paraphrase, of course.)
So Eva converted, and remained a Christian Scientist until the end of her life. I suspect that initially the main tenet of it for her was: “Will says so.” (A sentiment which would have probably annoyed her husband.) But she became quite a firm and inflexible adherent.
The marriage was not salvageable. Eva later said that if one got a divorce, then one’s children ended up divorced as well. Was this an echo of Will’s advice that she should be like Mama Margaret?
While the marriage was floundering, Eva got a teaching job in music, in Philadelphia. I think that probably Alma's friends Mabel Watson and Lily Love, who lived in Philadelphia, found it for her.
So she was now a teacher, not a student - no longer a promising young singer. She did try to return to singing a few years later. Alma commented in a 1919 letter to Eva after going with her friend Eunice to a concert by a Galli-Curci, a famous opera singer:
On the whole, I was disappointed as I have heard several singers whom I enjoyed just as much. Eunice said she would rather hear you. I am sure I would rather hear you sing “Drink to me only with thine eyes” but for “Lo, the gentle Lark” I’ll take Galli-Curci.
“Drink to me only with thine eyes” is slower and more sentimental than “Lo, here the gentle Lark”, which is more active and has lots of larklike trills, with flute accompaniment. (Irrelevant side note: After I listened to Beverly Sills singing it, the YouTube algorithm suggested that I try the version with Miss Piggy and Jean-Pierre Rampal.) So that tells us what Eva was good at, and what she was not so good at. It sounds as though she didn’t have the musical drive to succeed professionally.
Eva stayed in Philadelphia for nearly thirty years, traveling during the summer. She divorced Frank in April of 1916, but I don't know what prompted her to do it right then. He was out of her life whether they were married or not.
Will’s first wife, Margaret, died in childbirth in 1912 before any of the family actually met her. Mama Margaret moved in with Will and his little daughter Margaret, and functioned as little Margaret’s mother. In the summer of 1915, however, Mama Margaret went on a long trip to California with Alma, seeing the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Will and little Margaret were living in Savannah at the time, and Eva went down to Savannah and kept house for them while Mama Margaret was away.
It may or may not be coincidence that during this time Will started to take an interest in marrying again. Maybe Eva was not as pleasant to come home to as Mama Margaret was, but that’s mere speculation. However it may have been, Will became seriously interested in a girl named Helen. But then - so the story goes - Eva put her foot down. Helen was a Catholic, and Eva would not allow little Margaret to be contaminated with Catholicism. (Did Eva know that Margaret’s wet nurse in California had been an Italian Catholic?) She told Will to take a look at the Farmer girls in the Christian Science church - Kathleen and Ruth. An odd part of this story is that Eva thought at this time that Kathleen’s name was Katherine, but never mind.
So Will didn’t marry Helen, and he did take a look at the Farmer girls, and in 1916 he married Kathleen. Shortly after they were married, Kathleen wrote to Eva:
The maid I hoped to get proved to be Roman Catholic, so I did not care to have her and must begin a search for the right person.
No doubt Eva rejoiced that catastrophe was avoided. But all Eva’s efforts couldn’t keep Margaret from eventually marrying a Catholic, Al Bruchas.
Eva took an auntly interest in Will’s children. The details are sort of fun. Someday I’ll get around to including them.
In some other years, Eva went to Cape May, New Jersey in the summer. There was a trip to Europe in 1926; I haven’t read much about that yet. And in 1934 there was a road trip with Alma to visit Provines cousins in Pennsylvania and childhood friends and relations in Canton.
When Kathleen died in 1940, Eva retired from her teaching work in Philadelphia, and moved to Atlanta where Will was, to keep house for him, since all his children were grown and not living in Atlanta.
Sometime around 1940 the views that I get of Eva start to be no longer from her mother and her siblings, but rather from the younger generation - the descendants of her brothers Will and Fred. And the younger generation viewed Eva differently from how her mother and her siblings did. In the letters of her contemporaries she comes across as a pleasant person, marching to the beat of a different drummer from that of the others, but competent and cheerful. The younger generation didn’t see her that way. They viewed her as obtuse and unpleasant. When she took care of Will’s daughter Margaret in 1915 for the summer, nobody saw a problem with her care for Margaret. But things were different with Alma Grace, Fred’s daughter. Alma Grace’s mother had died in 1937 when Alma Grace was very young, and Fred and Alma raised her together. She sometimes came with Fred to Fernbank, Alma’s summer cottage in Woods Hole. Eva and Will would come up from Atlanta to Fernbank, and Eva did not treat Alma Grace well. The girlfriend of Will’s younger son came to visit, and was appalled at how Eva would berate Alma Grace, making her name sound like an unpleasant epithet. The girlfriend - later my mother, who told this story - decided the answer was to rename Alma Grace as AG. AG herself remembers Eva grabbing her wrist in fury over something or other AG was doing wrong. I wonder if Eva ever reminded her siblings of their father.
I had thought about calling Eva a disaster magnet, but I decided that wasn’t right. It wasn’t that she attracted disasters. The problem was that she was sort of clueless. So it was easy for things with bad possibilities to reach their full potential when they happened to Eva. Here’s an obvious example that my mother told me of Eva’s cluelessness, though disaster was averted: In September of 1944, Eva and Alma were at Fernbank with various other relatives. There was a big hurricane coming - the hurricane of the century! Time to evacuate. But Eva knew they didn’t need to worry, and didn't need to evacuate. They had already had the hurricane of the century in 1938. By definition, this storm simply could not be as bad. Fortunately the Coast Guard came around to Fernbank and told them they were required to evacuate. So, finally, they went to a friend’s house (Glady's) on higher ground. During the hurricane, Fernbank was totally flooded. Alma, the owner, did not say, “Well, that’s that, it certainly can’t happen again.” She had the cottage raised several feet. Maybe Eva told her it wasn’t necessary.
I asked my mother: What did Alma think about Eva’s obtuseness? She answered that Alma basically ignored it. So maybe Alma still thought of Eva as her offbeat little sister. AG noted that when she was growing up, the four siblings who stayed at Fernbank during the summer - Will, Alma, Fred, and Eva - sometimes seemed to be reliving childhood squabbles. She told a story from when she was a teenager: Will said something or other, and Eva corrected him. Will repeated himself. Eva corrected him again. Will snapped, "I know damn well what I said!"
The other siblings had spent their lives adjusting for Eva’s cluelessness. It was just one of those things. As Christian Scientists, Will and Eva should have both abstained from alcohol, and indeed Eva did so, but Will did not. Once when he was ill, he instructed Eva to put a jar of cider in the refrigerator and leave it there until the cork popped out. Eva dutifully did so, with no clue that she was fermenting alcohol for her beloved brother.
Will died in 1950, after a slow decline due to Parkinson’s. Eva was devoted to him long after his death. How many times did she start a sentence with, “Will always used to say…”? She stayed in Atlanta during the winters, and drove up to Fernbank in the summer.
In later life, Eva suffered from arthritis. This was painful to her in more than one way. There was physical pain, but there was also spiritual pain. As a Christian Scientist, she was supposed to be able to pray away the arthritis, but she could not. I don’t know if it ever occurred to her to think, “Kathleen died of a stomach problem. Will died of Parkinson’s. Why should I be able to triumph over Error when Will and Kathleen could not?” Probably it didn’t.
She tried, unsuccessfully, to convert AG to Christian Science. Fred was not a Christian Scientist, but apparently Eva felt no delicacy about trying to convert his daughter.
In her old age she had stacks of unread Christian Science Monitors at Fernbank that she intended to read. They were years old, but “If I haven’t read it, it’s news to me.” I can imagine her laughing as she said it.
She was still a loving, well-intentioned aunt. She sent us Claxton fruit cakes at Christmas, and black walnut cake from some other source. Because she had lived in Philadelphia, she sent soap from a famous Philadelphia store. It was Wanamaker’s Hardwater Soap With Lanolin. I remember the name well because it was the only hand soap we ever used when I was a child.
My oldest sister Betsy went as a teenager on a visit to her in Atlanta, and came back with new Aunt Eva stories. Aunt Eva kindly took her to a movie, Tom Jones, which everybody thought was funny - except for Aunt Eva. And Aunt Eva was kindly driving Betsy around in Atlanta, and, being Aunt Eva, she drove badly (imperiously, Betsy said) and caused problems for other drivers. They honked furiously at her, and she said: “Will always used to say it was a bad driver who had to use his horn.”
I might doubt Betsy’s detail that all the traffic problems were caused by Eva, were it not for a story that Eva told herself: Once on her annual drive from Atlanta to Woods Hole (or maybe it was the return drive), she stopped in Baltimore to visit her friend Ceci. (Ceci who? I’m still hoping somebody’s memory will produce the surname. I asked at a family gathering, and AG and Betsy remembered the story, and happily produced other Aunt Eva stories, but they couldn't remember Ceci's surname.) Eva had directions to Ceci’s house, and she did her best to follow them, but somehow she found herself about to enter a big Baltimore tunnel. And her directions said nothing about going through a big Baltimore tunnel. So she stopped. In rush hour. And she thought it over. And when people around her started honking, she no doubt thought to herself, “Will always used to say…”
She remained there, thinking. Eventually a police car came and the police officer talked to her. “Ma’am, you can’t stop here.” But Eva was adamant: she was not going through that tunnel. And so, according to Eva’s story, the police officer got into her car and took the wheel and somehow managed to make a U-turn so that Eva wouldn’t have to go through the big Baltimore tunnel.
She totaled a car at least once, in the 1960s during one of the summers when Barbara (Bill’s oldest daughter) was at Fernbank cooking and doing whatever else needed to be done. Eva went to the weekly Wednesday night Christian Science meeting, and - kind soul that she was - drove home another woman who attended. It was raining, and somehow Eva drove into a utility pole, which came down on the car. Fortunately neither Eva nor the other woman was hurt; the pole came down on the passenger side, and the woman was sitting in the back seat on the driver’s side. My speculation is that the car had no seatbelts and that in the rain the woman felt safer in the back seat. My father, a lawyer, dealt with the issues arising from the accident. (And that’s a good reason not to become a lawyer.) There was some question about whether Eva should be allowed to continue to drive, but Eva was unshakable when she made up her mind, and she got a new car.
By the late 1960s all her siblings except for Laura had died, and Laura was living in Ohio. Eva had moved from Atlanta to Coral Gables, Florida, and came up to Woods Hole in the summer. The continuous stream of friends and relatives to Fernbank had diminished to a trickle of relatives now that Alma was gone. There were her nephew Bill’s family from Pittsburgh, and in 1965 her niece Kay visited with her family. AG, living in Scituate with her husband and sons, visited. Fred (AG's son, not her father) remembers coming back from Fernbank from somewhere and seeing Aunt Eva through the door and thinking, “Oh, no.” He much preferred Vagabond House around the corner, where Glady Green lived.
In the summer of 1969 Eva’s hip broke while she was at Fernbank. Fortunately there were relatives around to help - specifically, my mother. As a loyal Christian Scientist, Eva refused to go to the hospital for several hours, even though the local Christian Science practitioner encouraged her to go. Finally she realized that she was unable to go to the bathroom on her own, and consented to go to the hospital.
In those days, a broken hip and the resulting weeks of immobility were pretty much the end of life for any elderly person, and so it was for Eva. She spent the rest of her life in the Royal Megansett nursing home in North Falmouth, Massachusetts, occasionally going to the homes of relatives on holidays. Her youngest great-nephew, AG's son Alan, who was born in 1967, remembers going to visit her and getting a Hershey bar when he sat next to her on her bed. So there was a happy memory of her at the end.
She died on April 1, 1974, two days before her 89th birthday.
And she was so very queer
She was so very ignorant
But always of good cheer.
At first she thought it in her line
Some verses of poetry to write.
Accordingly at the age of nine
She worked at them both day and night.
Her verses like herself were queer
The sense of them seemed not to appear
And so at last in despair she left
Her cherished plan and to another cleft.
The next idea to seize her mind
Was to become an instructor of youths
So to practise this she often lined
The chairs filled with pillows to represent
The pupils who sought her truths.
But somehow the pupils would not learn
And she at last began to discern
That for a teacher she was not meant
Although her energy in that line was bent.
This little maid with a brother was blest
Who, not like herself, was one of the best
In all studies that ever existed
But who, alas, in the army enlisted.
This sad fate nearly broke the heart
of this little maid, whose start
In this world I’m relating.
But she bravely bore her grief
Because “twas for the best” in her belief.
Presently this brother stately and grand
A rank in the army could command
So the maid felt glad that she
Her grief had born and replace with glee.
And once she even dared to think
A servant girl to be. For ‘twas as easy
At brushes and brooms to wink
As at one of the stronger sex.
But thinking this not a calling high
From her mind she let it slip.
But never yet has lost her love
For what many girls consider dry.
And now my maid has older grown
And childish hopes from her mind have blown
But to her goal no nearer is she
Than when only at the age of three.
But now with delight it has been learned
That this maid’s fortune is her voice
Which with her brother’s cash hard earned
Is causing many to rejoice.
Now to an end the tale we must bring
But as I write I hear her sing
For since her calling has been ascertained
She is losing no time in being well trained.
Written by “the foolish maid”
Eva Christine Stokey’
And dedicated to the “brother stately and grand”
William Provines Stokey
In June of 1904, Eva went up to Oberlin to be there for Alma’s graduation. Alma reported to Will:
Eva came up to visit me on June 12 and stayed until after Commencement. I hadn’t any time to entertain her so I turned her loose on the town. I tried to send her to all the recitals, and she did get to nine or ten, but she missed one and she has been heaping reproaches on me ever since. She had a very good time.
And there was more:
Her susceptible heart had a bad time of it. She fell in love at almost every turn. The most serious cases were Professor Grover and Mr. Tyler. Mr. Tyler was the worst but it is hopeless, for alas! Mr. Tyler was a colored man. He graduated from the Conservatory this June and sings and plays beautifully. He is nice-looking, entertaining, and very popular. Eva never saw a nice colored man before and he was a great surprise to her. She spends all her time wishing he was white. I am relieved that she doesn’t wish she was colored.
Eva went to Oberlin Conservatory starting in 1904. Unlike Alma, she didn’t live with roommates there; her mother and Fred moved to Oberlin from Canton in late summer 1904 so that Eva still lived at home. And this was probably a good thing, because Eva’s heart continued to be susceptible. In March of 1906, Alma wrote to Will - now returned from the Philippines and teaching at West Point - about Eva’s interest in a young man who had been teaching Alma and Eva how to dance:
Dear Will
Eva wants me to write to tell you that she has tonsillitis and wants you to write to her. She has been in bed two days. The doctor has been over twice but she doesn’t seem to get much better. It takes some time for tonsillitis to wear out.
She was wishing last night that you were here to hold her hand. I think she would have taken Mr. Hammond as a substitute if she could have gotten him. He was here Sunday and when he was fooling around with Eva she caught his hands and held them. Then she sat for at least ten minutes holding his hands apparently unconscious that it wasn’t the usual thing to do. That was bad enough but after he went she calmly announced that “he had the dandiest hands to hold.” I fear you have a rival.
She wants you to write instanter. She pines for a letter.
With much love,
Alma.
Please remember that this letter was written in 1906. There has been speculation that the failure of Eva’s marriage a few years later came about because even the thought of the sexual act appalled her. I’m skeptical of that notion.
Aside from her interest in the opposite sex, however, she was seriously interested in music. Oberlin Conservatory was not a girls finishing school; one had to work there. And her continued interest over the following decades shows that Eva’s love of music was real.
But she never graduated from Oberlin Conservatory. Years later she told her niece Barbara that she fulfilled all the requirements except for one: she had to give a vocal recital, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it. This is surprising, given how much she enjoyed the compliments she received for her singing at the time of her high school graduation, and I don’t come across any mention of shyness about her singing in any of the letters that I read. This was Eva telling the story, so there is no doubt that she did indeed make the decision not to do the recital, but there must be more to it than that.
After her time at Oberlin Conservatory, Eva moved to New York for further musical learning. There she met Frank Evans in 1909. He fell in love with her first. I suspect that if they had been in Oberlin with her family, nothing permanent would have come of it, but in New York she was on her own for the first time. Mama Margaret was staying with her, but Mama Margaret had to go to Michigan to visit her dying sister Mary Provines Hicks. By the time Mama Margaret came back from Michigan, Eva was engaged, noting that Frank reminded her of Will. It really was all very predictable, I guess.
The family did their best to check up on Frank. In the summer, Alma rented a house in Truro, near the tip of Cape Cod, with family members encouraged to come stay. Frank came for a bit. Will didn’t come until after he left, but then Will went to New York to meet Frank. Frank seemed fine to them.
Mama Margaret wrote the following to Will on September 23, not too long before the wedding:
Eva told me of the nice compliment you paid me. You don’t know my dear boy, how pleased I was to know that you think I have a good disposition.
It sounds to me as though Will had a rather fatherly chat with Eva about her upcoming marriage. Perhaps Eva was nervous, and Will tried to give her some advice on how to be a good wife to Frank: “You couldn’t do better than to model yourself on Mama. She has such a good disposition.” Somehow lost in this might have been the fact that Mama Margaret’s marriage had failed - but, of course, they all blamed the divorce on Papa Charles.
Frank and Eva were married in the fall, and set up housekeeping. Frank was helpful, and Eva did her best…but problems developed. Money problems. Probably comparisons with Will became tiresome for Frank.
Later in life, Fred wrote a poem, a couple of lines of which, reported with glee by AG, were:
F is for faithful friend Frank;
His wife washed his clothes and they shrank.
It is doubtful that the lines recounted a real incident, but I heard, possibly from Barbara, that Frank wanted children and Eva didn't, so it may be that Eva resented an suggestion that she become a traditional housewife doing the laundry and raising the kids.
By now Will was out west, stationed in California. He looked up New York divorce laws, but he also told her how to save her marriage. No, it wasn’t, “Be more like Mama.” Rather, it was: “Convert to Christian Science. It makes all marriages perfect. At any rate, it made my own marriage perfect.” (Note: that’s a paraphrase, of course.)
So Eva converted, and remained a Christian Scientist until the end of her life. I suspect that initially the main tenet of it for her was: “Will says so.” (A sentiment which would have probably annoyed her husband.) But she became quite a firm and inflexible adherent.
The marriage was not salvageable. Eva later said that if one got a divorce, then one’s children ended up divorced as well. Was this an echo of Will’s advice that she should be like Mama Margaret?
While the marriage was floundering, Eva got a teaching job in music, in Philadelphia. I think that probably Alma's friends Mabel Watson and Lily Love, who lived in Philadelphia, found it for her.
So she was now a teacher, not a student - no longer a promising young singer. She did try to return to singing a few years later. Alma commented in a 1919 letter to Eva after going with her friend Eunice to a concert by a Galli-Curci, a famous opera singer:
On the whole, I was disappointed as I have heard several singers whom I enjoyed just as much. Eunice said she would rather hear you. I am sure I would rather hear you sing “Drink to me only with thine eyes” but for “Lo, the gentle Lark” I’ll take Galli-Curci.
“Drink to me only with thine eyes” is slower and more sentimental than “Lo, here the gentle Lark”, which is more active and has lots of larklike trills, with flute accompaniment. (Irrelevant side note: After I listened to Beverly Sills singing it, the YouTube algorithm suggested that I try the version with Miss Piggy and Jean-Pierre Rampal.) So that tells us what Eva was good at, and what she was not so good at. It sounds as though she didn’t have the musical drive to succeed professionally.
Eva stayed in Philadelphia for nearly thirty years, traveling during the summer. She divorced Frank in April of 1916, but I don't know what prompted her to do it right then. He was out of her life whether they were married or not.
Will’s first wife, Margaret, died in childbirth in 1912 before any of the family actually met her. Mama Margaret moved in with Will and his little daughter Margaret, and functioned as little Margaret’s mother. In the summer of 1915, however, Mama Margaret went on a long trip to California with Alma, seeing the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Will and little Margaret were living in Savannah at the time, and Eva went down to Savannah and kept house for them while Mama Margaret was away.
It may or may not be coincidence that during this time Will started to take an interest in marrying again. Maybe Eva was not as pleasant to come home to as Mama Margaret was, but that’s mere speculation. However it may have been, Will became seriously interested in a girl named Helen. But then - so the story goes - Eva put her foot down. Helen was a Catholic, and Eva would not allow little Margaret to be contaminated with Catholicism. (Did Eva know that Margaret’s wet nurse in California had been an Italian Catholic?) She told Will to take a look at the Farmer girls in the Christian Science church - Kathleen and Ruth. An odd part of this story is that Eva thought at this time that Kathleen’s name was Katherine, but never mind.
So Will didn’t marry Helen, and he did take a look at the Farmer girls, and in 1916 he married Kathleen. Shortly after they were married, Kathleen wrote to Eva:
The maid I hoped to get proved to be Roman Catholic, so I did not care to have her and must begin a search for the right person.
No doubt Eva rejoiced that catastrophe was avoided. But all Eva’s efforts couldn’t keep Margaret from eventually marrying a Catholic, Al Bruchas.
Eva took an auntly interest in Will’s children. The details are sort of fun. Someday I’ll get around to including them.
In some other years, Eva went to Cape May, New Jersey in the summer. There was a trip to Europe in 1926; I haven’t read much about that yet. And in 1934 there was a road trip with Alma to visit Provines cousins in Pennsylvania and childhood friends and relations in Canton.
When Kathleen died in 1940, Eva retired from her teaching work in Philadelphia, and moved to Atlanta where Will was, to keep house for him, since all his children were grown and not living in Atlanta.
Sometime around 1940 the views that I get of Eva start to be no longer from her mother and her siblings, but rather from the younger generation - the descendants of her brothers Will and Fred. And the younger generation viewed Eva differently from how her mother and her siblings did. In the letters of her contemporaries she comes across as a pleasant person, marching to the beat of a different drummer from that of the others, but competent and cheerful. The younger generation didn’t see her that way. They viewed her as obtuse and unpleasant. When she took care of Will’s daughter Margaret in 1915 for the summer, nobody saw a problem with her care for Margaret. But things were different with Alma Grace, Fred’s daughter. Alma Grace’s mother had died in 1937 when Alma Grace was very young, and Fred and Alma raised her together. She sometimes came with Fred to Fernbank, Alma’s summer cottage in Woods Hole. Eva and Will would come up from Atlanta to Fernbank, and Eva did not treat Alma Grace well. The girlfriend of Will’s younger son came to visit, and was appalled at how Eva would berate Alma Grace, making her name sound like an unpleasant epithet. The girlfriend - later my mother, who told this story - decided the answer was to rename Alma Grace as AG. AG herself remembers Eva grabbing her wrist in fury over something or other AG was doing wrong. I wonder if Eva ever reminded her siblings of their father.
I had thought about calling Eva a disaster magnet, but I decided that wasn’t right. It wasn’t that she attracted disasters. The problem was that she was sort of clueless. So it was easy for things with bad possibilities to reach their full potential when they happened to Eva. Here’s an obvious example that my mother told me of Eva’s cluelessness, though disaster was averted: In September of 1944, Eva and Alma were at Fernbank with various other relatives. There was a big hurricane coming - the hurricane of the century! Time to evacuate. But Eva knew they didn’t need to worry, and didn't need to evacuate. They had already had the hurricane of the century in 1938. By definition, this storm simply could not be as bad. Fortunately the Coast Guard came around to Fernbank and told them they were required to evacuate. So, finally, they went to a friend’s house (Glady's) on higher ground. During the hurricane, Fernbank was totally flooded. Alma, the owner, did not say, “Well, that’s that, it certainly can’t happen again.” She had the cottage raised several feet. Maybe Eva told her it wasn’t necessary.
I asked my mother: What did Alma think about Eva’s obtuseness? She answered that Alma basically ignored it. So maybe Alma still thought of Eva as her offbeat little sister. AG noted that when she was growing up, the four siblings who stayed at Fernbank during the summer - Will, Alma, Fred, and Eva - sometimes seemed to be reliving childhood squabbles. She told a story from when she was a teenager: Will said something or other, and Eva corrected him. Will repeated himself. Eva corrected him again. Will snapped, "I know damn well what I said!"
The other siblings had spent their lives adjusting for Eva’s cluelessness. It was just one of those things. As Christian Scientists, Will and Eva should have both abstained from alcohol, and indeed Eva did so, but Will did not. Once when he was ill, he instructed Eva to put a jar of cider in the refrigerator and leave it there until the cork popped out. Eva dutifully did so, with no clue that she was fermenting alcohol for her beloved brother.
Will died in 1950, after a slow decline due to Parkinson’s. Eva was devoted to him long after his death. How many times did she start a sentence with, “Will always used to say…”? She stayed in Atlanta during the winters, and drove up to Fernbank in the summer.
In later life, Eva suffered from arthritis. This was painful to her in more than one way. There was physical pain, but there was also spiritual pain. As a Christian Scientist, she was supposed to be able to pray away the arthritis, but she could not. I don’t know if it ever occurred to her to think, “Kathleen died of a stomach problem. Will died of Parkinson’s. Why should I be able to triumph over Error when Will and Kathleen could not?” Probably it didn’t.
She tried, unsuccessfully, to convert AG to Christian Science. Fred was not a Christian Scientist, but apparently Eva felt no delicacy about trying to convert his daughter.
In her old age she had stacks of unread Christian Science Monitors at Fernbank that she intended to read. They were years old, but “If I haven’t read it, it’s news to me.” I can imagine her laughing as she said it.
She was still a loving, well-intentioned aunt. She sent us Claxton fruit cakes at Christmas, and black walnut cake from some other source. Because she had lived in Philadelphia, she sent soap from a famous Philadelphia store. It was Wanamaker’s Hardwater Soap With Lanolin. I remember the name well because it was the only hand soap we ever used when I was a child.
My oldest sister Betsy went as a teenager on a visit to her in Atlanta, and came back with new Aunt Eva stories. Aunt Eva kindly took her to a movie, Tom Jones, which everybody thought was funny - except for Aunt Eva. And Aunt Eva was kindly driving Betsy around in Atlanta, and, being Aunt Eva, she drove badly (imperiously, Betsy said) and caused problems for other drivers. They honked furiously at her, and she said: “Will always used to say it was a bad driver who had to use his horn.”
I might doubt Betsy’s detail that all the traffic problems were caused by Eva, were it not for a story that Eva told herself: Once on her annual drive from Atlanta to Woods Hole (or maybe it was the return drive), she stopped in Baltimore to visit her friend Ceci. (Ceci who? I’m still hoping somebody’s memory will produce the surname. I asked at a family gathering, and AG and Betsy remembered the story, and happily produced other Aunt Eva stories, but they couldn't remember Ceci's surname.) Eva had directions to Ceci’s house, and she did her best to follow them, but somehow she found herself about to enter a big Baltimore tunnel. And her directions said nothing about going through a big Baltimore tunnel. So she stopped. In rush hour. And she thought it over. And when people around her started honking, she no doubt thought to herself, “Will always used to say…”
She remained there, thinking. Eventually a police car came and the police officer talked to her. “Ma’am, you can’t stop here.” But Eva was adamant: she was not going through that tunnel. And so, according to Eva’s story, the police officer got into her car and took the wheel and somehow managed to make a U-turn so that Eva wouldn’t have to go through the big Baltimore tunnel.
She totaled a car at least once, in the 1960s during one of the summers when Barbara (Bill’s oldest daughter) was at Fernbank cooking and doing whatever else needed to be done. Eva went to the weekly Wednesday night Christian Science meeting, and - kind soul that she was - drove home another woman who attended. It was raining, and somehow Eva drove into a utility pole, which came down on the car. Fortunately neither Eva nor the other woman was hurt; the pole came down on the passenger side, and the woman was sitting in the back seat on the driver’s side. My speculation is that the car had no seatbelts and that in the rain the woman felt safer in the back seat. My father, a lawyer, dealt with the issues arising from the accident. (And that’s a good reason not to become a lawyer.) There was some question about whether Eva should be allowed to continue to drive, but Eva was unshakable when she made up her mind, and she got a new car.
By the late 1960s all her siblings except for Laura had died, and Laura was living in Ohio. Eva had moved from Atlanta to Coral Gables, Florida, and came up to Woods Hole in the summer. The continuous stream of friends and relatives to Fernbank had diminished to a trickle of relatives now that Alma was gone. There were her nephew Bill’s family from Pittsburgh, and in 1965 her niece Kay visited with her family. AG, living in Scituate with her husband and sons, visited. Fred (AG's son, not her father) remembers coming back from Fernbank from somewhere and seeing Aunt Eva through the door and thinking, “Oh, no.” He much preferred Vagabond House around the corner, where Glady Green lived.
In the summer of 1969 Eva’s hip broke while she was at Fernbank. Fortunately there were relatives around to help - specifically, my mother. As a loyal Christian Scientist, Eva refused to go to the hospital for several hours, even though the local Christian Science practitioner encouraged her to go. Finally she realized that she was unable to go to the bathroom on her own, and consented to go to the hospital.
In those days, a broken hip and the resulting weeks of immobility were pretty much the end of life for any elderly person, and so it was for Eva. She spent the rest of her life in the Royal Megansett nursing home in North Falmouth, Massachusetts, occasionally going to the homes of relatives on holidays. Her youngest great-nephew, AG's son Alan, who was born in 1967, remembers going to visit her and getting a Hershey bar when he sat next to her on her bed. So there was a happy memory of her at the end.
She died on April 1, 1974, two days before her 89th birthday.
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