KATHLEEN'S STORY: ~THE STORY~---related-pages---site navigation
A brief and incomplete biography of Kathleen:
Kathleen is not a star.

She was lovely.  She was well-educated.  She was pleasant.  I think she laughed at Will's jokes.  (This seems to be a requirement in any Stokey spouse.  They don't have to be funny, they just have to laugh when their Stokey spouse is funny.)  She was a good housekeeper and a good Army wife.  And, for the most part, she seems to have been unflappable.  It doesn't make for an exciting biography.  But she was very, very nice to be around.

And yet...there are stray comments in the letters.  She didn't like Catholics, and she didn't like African Americans.  Disliking Catholics would have been a standard Christian Scientist attitude at the time, and Kathleen was a devout Christian Scientist.  As for African Americans, I daresay she saw few if any of them when she was growing up in England, and when she moved with her family to Savannah, she absorbed the attitudes of the local whites towards blacks.  I wish she hadn't.  I hope that if she had lived in our time, she would not have had these prejudices.  But I don't know that.  All I know is that she lived in her own time, and she had these prejudices.
Earlier life

Kathleen was born in 1888 in England, the youngest of three children: Ruth, Cecil, and Kathleen.  Her parents were William James Farmer and Ann Gray Farmer, known as Annie.  William James was called Will or Willie, but I call him WJ to distinguish him from his son-in-law Will Stokey.

Kathleen grew up in Wanstead in Essex, often visiting Farmer relatives at Leigh-on-Sea and Gray relatives at Sevenoaks, all places not very far from London.

The family was Christian Scientist, which is interesting because Christian Science was officially founded in the US in 1879, and didn’t come to England until 1896, when Kathleen was eight.  The whole family adopted it, whole-heartedly.  What was the attraction?  I don’t know.  It doesn’t appear that any of WJ’s or Annie’s siblings converted.  It was just this one nuclear family.

​The Farmer children grew up when automobiles were starting to become common.  Kathleen’s schoolmates noticed the similarity between “Kathleen” and “gasoline” and tried calling her “Gasoline”, which is surprising since in the UK they call it petrol.  Years later an old school friend wrote a letter to her: “Dear Gassie”, after a hiatus of several years.  But by that time nobody else was calling Kathleen that.  Her father called her "Bobs", and I have no idea how that might have come about.  Nobody else called her that, as far as I can tell.
In the early 1900s, Kathleen's father moved for his work from England to Savannah, Georgia, in the US.  He wasn’t leaving the family; Annie and the kids stayed behind only until the children finished their education, and they kept in touch with WJ.

Kathleen received a degree from the University of London in 1909.  Her interests were Latin and music.  The music would have been seriously encouraged by her mother Annie Gray Farmer, because the whole Gray family was musical.  We have a certificate from 1877 for Annie from a musical institution, The Tonic Sol-Fa College, a name which sounds to me like a shady health resort but which in fact was related to a well-respected way of teaching music.  (“Sol, a needle pulling thread, Fa, a note to follow Sol.”)  And we have letters that Annie’s sister-in-law Jennie Gray wrote to her, always mentioning the Gray family’s musical endeavors.

In 1910, WJ came back to England to escort Annie, Ruth, and Kathleen to Savannah.  I assume Kathleen could have stayed in England.  I don’t get any sense of a potential husband for her there, but she could have had a teaching career in England, as several of her friends did.  But the Farmers stuck together.

WJ, Annie, and Ruth all went back to England for visits later, but Kathleen never went, though she did talk about going for a visit.  She kept up with friends from England throughout her life.

​What did Kathleen think of Savannah?  I don’t know.  I find very little commentary from her about it.  I know that she did pay attention to her surroundings; her school friend Maggie Jackson in Aberdeen, daughter of a minister, wrote to Kathleen about receiving a letter from her.  (“Budget” is “a quantity of material, typically that which is written or printed.”)

Father was hovering about (having spotted the “fist” + the postmark) + was anxious to know if you still smiled at the Yanks.  As a great favour I let him read through the budget + he was very bucked - he thinks he would like to come out for a holiday one day.  He says he got enough information to make a sermon on the Black + White problem.  I hope you don’t mind.

Savannah would have been a more diverse area than Kathleen had been used to in London, although she probably tended to stay within the Christian Science community there.

And it was definitely hotter than London.  She noticed it, but it doesn’t seem to have oppressed her.

At the moment, that’s all I can think of about Kathleen and Savannah.

Kathleen worked as a teacher in Savannah, sometimes in a school, sometimes privately.  It sounds as though she loved working with children.  But I think she didn’t rake in much money teaching, and that she ended up working in her father’s office.  I’m not 100% sure about that, however.
Meeting and marrying Will

The Farmers attended the Christian Science church in Savannah.  In the spring of 1915 there was a new attendee at church: Major William Stokey, a widower with a two-year-old daughter, Margaret.  That summer, there was an additional attendee, Major Stokey’s sister Eva, in Savannah temporarily.  The Stokeys lived fairly close to the Farmers, and Eva encouraged Major Stokey to become friendly with the Farmers.  Will often drove the Farmers to and from church, and his little daughter became a great favorite with both Ruth and Kathleen.  The old ladies at church wondered whether it was Ruth or Kathleen that the Major had his eye on.  They thought it was probably Ruth.

But when Will received notice that he was being transferred to Cincinnati, it was Kathleen whom he married, within the space of two weeks.

One always thinks of one’s grandparents (as this couple is to me) as being inevitably together, but it’s worthwhile to take a second look at Will and Kathleen.

First of all, there’s simply the fact of them being in the same place at the same time.  Will had been stationed in Savannah before, but hadn’t gotten married then.  And Kathleen had spent most of her life in England.  I am sure that if Will hadn’t married Kathleen, he would have married somebody else.  He liked family life, and he wanted a wife.  But if Kathleen hadn’t met Will, I’m not at all sure that she would have found somebody else.  She had her family, and she was happy with them.  It is clear from her letters that she really loved Will.  I don’t think she was looking for a husband in 1916, and I wonder if she herself knew during that spring that she was the one that Will had his eye on.

Second, there’s the Christian Science aspect.  Again I note that it’s interesting that Kathleen’s family had converted to Christian Science while still in England.  I don’t think Kathleen would have married anyone who was not a Christian Scientist.  Will was not dogmatically Christian Scientist, but his sister Eva, a fairly recent convert at the time, was seriously involved with Christian Science, and encouraged Will’s interest in Kathleen.  In fact, she pretty much shoved Will in the direction of the Farmers.  Maybe Kathleen knew before the wedding how much shoving Eva had done, maybe she didn’t.  She probably knew eventually.

​And finally, there’s little Margaret.  Usually a prospective stepchild can be viewed as a complicating factor in a marriage.  But Kathleen loved children and loved Margaret.  So Margaret was an attraction.

Still, I have to wonder: what did Ruth and Kathleen think was going on in the months of Will driving the Farmers to church?  Kathleen was twenty-seven years old, and happy in her life with her family, but then at the drop of a hat - or rather, at the drop of some transfer orders from the Army for Will - she was a married woman with a stepdaughter living hundreds of miles from her beloved family.

​They were married in the morning on Thursday, June 22.  Here’s the newspaper article:

And here’s the part of it that catches my eye:

In her pretty wedding gown of net and lace, the bride was a girlish and charming figure.  Her frock was simply made over soft white silk, a pointed tunic of net with insets of lace falling over the full skirt.  She wore her mother’s tulle wedding veil and carried a bouquet of white roses.

In particular: “She wore her mother’s tulle wedding veil”.  Her mother, Annie Gray Farmer, was married in England on October 25, 1884 - over 30 years before.  There had been many moves since then, including a move across the ocean.  But when Kathleen was married with just two weeks to pull the wedding together, the veil was available for the ceremony.

Here’s a wedding picture.  Note the veil, and the setting.  The photograph must have been taken at the Farmer home in Savannah, and the house looks nice.

And then the newlyweds drove cross-country to Cincinnati in Will’s Buick.  Kathleen noted their itinerary as they went along.  Apparently she never finished writing it, but it is sufficient.
Augusta, Greensboro, two nights in Atlanta, Cumberland Mountain, Murfreesboro, Springfield Kentucky (it must be Kentucky and not Tennessee), Louisville, and so to Cincinnati.

Note the strikethrough for the first mention of Murfreesboro.  Kathleen reported in a postcard written in Murfreesboro to Ruth:

We rode right over Cumberland Mountain and spent yesterday night in the Buick on the summit in a mud hole!  About 4,30 A.M. some lumber men came along with mules and pulled us out - then we stuck again and they pulled us out.  The roads were terrible - there has been so much rain - We go to Nashville today and then on further.  Stayed here last night - we are all very well and enjoy ourselves very much.  Love to you all.  K.

And that's Kathleen for you: unflappable.  Spending the night stuck in the mud on a mountain on her wedding trip, and laughing about it.

I think Margaret, aged three and a half, was with them on this road trip in the rain, but I'm never quite sure.  Just one more detail.
Married life

Given the placidity of Kathleen's letters, it’s interesting to think about all she took on when she married Will.

There was Margaret, of course.  Kathleen treated her as her own daughter, and in fact it was quite a surprise to Margaret to learn, a few years later, that Kathleen was not her mother but her stepmother.  Kathleen wrote to a friend in 1917:

Margaret is a very sweet child.  I loved her before she was mine and now I feel just as if she were mine in every sense of the word, and I am trying my best to bring her up well and I have always found her a great joy.

Then there was a new house in an unknown city.  Will was very helpful to her…perhaps sometimes a little too helpful.  Mama Margaret, visiting in late 1916, wrote to Eva:

Will is too slow about getting furniture.  He wants to wait until he can get very good and they can’t do that now with everything so high, I think perhaps he will get some but am not sure.  This morning at breakfast he said he thought he would get Margaret a stand for the telephone.  It is still on the floor.

Then there was baby Billy, Will’s and Kathleen’s first son, who was born not quite ten months after the wedding.  It was not an easy birth.  He weighed eight and three quarters pounds, and Mama Margaret reported that both a doctor and a surgeon were involved.  Christian Science allows such things in childbirth, but for Kathleen it must have added great mental stress to the physical pain that she endured.

Mama Margaret’s presence for Billy’s birth brings forward another issue: Will’s family.  They all visited.  Alma visited.  Eva visited.  Mama Margaret visited for months on end.  Fred visited for a few days in 1917 when his wife Mabel died.  (I always wonder about the unmentioned thoughts between the devout Christian Scientist Kathleen and the Congregational medical missionary Fred, but I have no doubt they were sincerely friendly and pleasant to each other.)

All the visiting sounds like a nightmare in a new marriage - except that my impression is that Kathleen was happier when people were visiting.  When she realized in the fall of 1917 that they wouldn’t be able to go to her family in Savannah for Christmas, her immediate response was to plan to have all the Stokeys come to Cincinnati for a big family Christmas.

One might almost wonder whether Kathleen ever really wanted to be alone with Will - except that the only non-placid note in Kathleen’s letters seems to occur when she was writing to Will when they were separated for some reason or another.

Please come home soon, and if you cannot, do find time to write your girl a letter so that we may at last know where you are.
Will was transferred to San Antonio in the spring of 1918.  Kathleen took Margaret and Billy to stay with her parents in Savannah until Will made living arrangements for them.  Once Kathleen got there, she does not seem to have been too happy with Texas.  I checked and found there was a Christian Science church in San Antonio at the time; in fact their website says, “In 1916 a new edifice was built to accommodate the growing membership of the Church.“  So that wasn’t the problem.  But perhaps she didn’t like the Army atmosphere; the letters are all addressed to the Staff Post at Fort Sam Houston.  Or maybe she didn’t like being so far from the rest of the family, although there were still family visitors, or maybe her second pregnancy was uncomfortable.  Her daughter Kathleen, later called Kay (and also Pickle!), was born on December 13, 1918.

Fortunately, Will was transferred back to Cincinnati in 1919.  I think it must have been in the late summer.  Kathleen and the kids went to Cincinnati and her sister Ruth joined them, but Kathleen and Ruth took the kids to Savannah for a month with the agreement that Will would do the house-hunting.  I have the impression that Kathleen wasn’t feeling entirely well, but that would not have been mentioned; the closest we get to it is a mention that in Savannah she was supposed to get rest and grow fat.  She reported in one of her letters:

Ruth weighed herself + has lost about ten pounds!

Will responded:

This reminds me that although my chances for observation were not what I should have liked, I think Ruthie could afford to lose 10 lbs much better than you could, and I hope you have followed the opposite course.

One way in which Kathleen did not gain weight was another pregnancy at this time.  She reported to Will:

I recently had a visitor to tell us we had not started an additional member to the family.  Expect you are glad to hear this.

Will asked:

When did your visitor arrive?  Don’t tell me that you have forgotten.

It sounds as though he knew his wife well, because she responded:

I really do not know when my visitor came.  I never thought of the date.

Another minor detail from Kathleen’s letters: She says, on more than one occasion, that the children are “bonny”.  I figure she got the word from her mother, since the Gray family originally came from Dundee, Scotland.

One thing that did not get mentioned was current events.  1919 was the year after World War I ended, and there was quite a lot of rioting in various places - most memorably in Chicago and in Elaine, Arkansas - with vigorous efforts by whites to make sure that returning black soldiers didn’t think they were entitled to equal treatment.  The book I read about it, Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America by Cameron McWhirter, mentioned Savannah:

Police across the country conducted riot drills and stockpiled riot equipment.  In September, Savannah police said they did not expect trouble in their city, yet they purchased pump-action shotguns, bayonets, riot guns, and 10,000 rounds of ammunition.  State militias were put on alert.

But neither Kathleen nor Will mentioned any of this.

Will’s house-hunting efforts were successful, and the family came together again in Cincinnati.  Kathleen’s third and final child, Roger, was born there in 1921.  Roger was my father, and the story in my family is that it took them a year to decide on a name for him.  I used to think this must be an exaggeration, but now I’ve read letters in which they waffled even over naming the first son, who was William Farmer Stokey, after his Farmer grandfather and surely after Will as well.  It must have been really baffling for Will and Kathleen to have no parental or grandparental names left to choose from when the second son was born.  (No, they weren’t going to name their baby after Will’s late abusive father.)  I do not know how they settled on the name Roger.

And then Will was transferred in 1923 or so to Atlanta, where Kathleen could be close to her family.  Here’s the Christmas 1923 picture of the four Stokey children:
Picture
Christmas 1923: Roger, Kay, Billy, and Maggie
Will retired in 1928, which was not financially the best idea.  But Will hated the Army and he loved his family, so spending more time with them would have been very attractive to him.

They were a Christian Scientist family.  When Roger broke his arm at some point, he was taken to the doctor to have it set.  This is allowed in Christian Science.  But Roger’s memory associated his father with the visit to the doctor, so I’m betting that, even though Christian Science allowed broken bones to be set, Kathleen didn’t want anything to do with doctors.
Illness and death

The Farmer family in the US dwindled away in the 1930s.  By 1940, the only ones left were Cecil, widowed in Pennsylvania, and Kathleen.  Kathleen remained a committed Christian Scientist, attending church and lectures.  In late 1940, she developed peritonitis.

Here is an internet definition of peritonitis: 

inflammation of the peritoneum, typically caused by bacterial infection either via the blood or after rupture of an abdominal organ.

And an internet definition of the peritoneum:

the serous membrane lining the cavity of the abdomen and covering the abdominal organs.

Peritonitis is usually associated with a burst appendix, but we don’t have confirmation of that detail for Kathleen.  In fact, I don’t even have real confirmation that it was peritonitis.  The story from Alma was that it was peritonitis, but how did Alma know?  Kathleen was Christian Scientist.  Who made the diagnosis?  The only answer I can think of is that somewhere along the line - possibly during the following summer in Woods Hole - Will told Fred what the symptoms had been, and Fred diagnosed peritonitis from afar.  But that’s just guesswork on my part.

Whatever Kathleen’s illness was, she became too sick to write her usual periodic letter to Roger, who was in college in Massachusetts at the time, so Will wrote the letter instead.  Will did not mention the illness in the letter.  Roger knew from the fact that the letter was from his father, rather than from his mother, that his mother must be ill, but he was not told this directly.

At some point Kathleen was admitted to a private hospital, which must have been a Christian Scientist hospital or nursing home, with Christian Scientist practitioners and nurses.  Antibiotics had been developed by this time, but they would not have been used in a Christian Scientist facility.  Very possibly Kathleen didn’t even know about the existence of antibiotics, since devout Christian Scientists don’t want to know about anything medical: to admit the existence of disease invites the possibility of disease.  Never mind that the disease was already there in Kathleen.  Probably she wasn’t even given aspirin.

She died at the age of 52 on December 14.  Roger received notification of her death, and immediately took the train from Boston down to Atlanta for her funeral.  I think Kay was in school in New York.  I don't know where the other children were.

Here are the ages of the children at the time: Maggie was 28, Bill was 23, Kay turned 22 the day before her mother died, and Roger was 19.  One of the sad things about looking for a little background on Christian Science has been to learn that there are quite a few people who were relatively young, like my father and his siblings, when their Christian Scientist parents died.  Kathleen’s story was by no means unique.

Kay told her children that her mother had a beautiful English accent.  I wish I could have heard my grandmother’s voice.
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