MAMA MARGARET'S STORY: ~THE STORY~---related-pages---site navigation
A brief and incomplete biography of Mama Margaret:
Mama Margaret was my great-grandmother.  Nobody in her life called her Mama Margaret, but that’s what I call her.  Her children often called her Mama, and by calling her Mama Margaret I can distinguish her from the other Margarets in the family - Will's first wife Margaret and his daughter Margaret, who was also known as Maggie.

Reading the family letters from the last two decades of her life, I never know where Mama Margaret will be.  She got around.  She was always with one of her five children, and they could be anywhere.  The five were very close to each other, and Mama Margaret was one reason for that.  She made the family feel like a family.  Eva, her youngest child, was 39 when Mama Margaret died, which means that Mama Margaret had thirty-nine years to glue the five together.  I don’t suppose that was what Mama Margaret thought she was doing.  She just loved her children.  And, fortunately, she loved traveling to see them and meeting new people on the way.

And, of course, she couldn’t have glued them together without their consent.  All five children were interesting, pleasant people.  They consented.

Early days, up to the divorce

Mama Margaret was born Margaret Gracey Provines on August 15, 1844 in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, not too far from Pittsburgh.  Her parents were John Provines, an immigrant from Ireland, and Jane Gracey Provines, born around Pittsburgh.  Mama Margaret was the fourth of ten children.  I get the impression from the few letters I have from some of her siblings that Mama Margaret was more literate than the others, though her spelling was still not always the best.  People-loving person that she was, she kept in contact with her relatives all her life.

An older brother, Leander, was in an Ohio regiment in the Union Army in the Civil War, and died in January 1863.  I don’t know the cause of death.  But we have a letter from November 1862, in which Sergeant Leander Provines was assigned to round up some deserters and bring them back to their regiment.  My theory is that after Leander finished rounding up the deserters, the letter was no longer relevant, so he stuck it in his pocket and forgot about it, and it was still there a couple of months later when his body was sent home.  Maybe his mother, Jane Gracey Provines, kept it, and then when she died, Mama Margaret kept it.

I have come across just one reference to the Civil War in Mama Margaret’s letters, about what the prices were like.  She was 16 when the war started and 20 when it finished, but she didn’t refer back to it in her letters.

Mama Margaret became a teacher in Michigan.  It seems to have been in Ionia, which is roughly halfway between Grand Rapids and Lansing.  I don’t know what she taught.

She married Charles Frederick Stokey on December 23, 1874.  He was a teacher too, five months younger than she.  Why did she marry him?  I hope she loved him.  I think he would have been a colorful, vigorous, attractive character, active in teacher organizations.  I think he made her laugh.  He would have appeared to have a good career ahead of him.  And she probably wanted children.  It’s conceivable that she didn’t care about having children, and that the enormous love she later felt for her five children came as a complete surprise to her - but that seems unlikely.  She was 30 years old, and Charles Frederick Stokey may have seemed like her last chance.  But I find it hard to believe that she hadn’t had any chances before.  She was nice, and she was capable.  If there were any previous suitors, then we haven’t heard of them - but then we wouldn’t.  Mama Margaret wouldn’t have talked about past unpleasantness.  So all we know is that she got married to Charles Frederick Stokey.

I assume she left off teaching after her marriage, especially since their first son, Will, was born a little over ten months later.

Eventually, the couple lived in Canton, Ohio, which was Papa Charles’s home town.  He taught languages at Canton High School.  Some other members of the Provines family came to live there as well, including Mama Margaret’s mother Jane Gracey Provines, now widowed.  Or maybe they came before, and Papa Charles and Mama Margaret met in Canton?  I don't know.

Mama Margaret and Papa Charles had five children together: Will in 1875, Alma in 1877, Fred in 1879, Laura in 1881, and Eva in 1885.  Here they are, in 1885 or 1886, all dressed up to have their pictures taken:


Picture
Fred on the left, Will on the right
The full names of the children were William Provines, Alma Gracey, Fred Eicher, Laura Euphemia, and Eva Christine.  The middle names of the children are family names: Provines was Mama Margaret’s maiden name, Gracey was her mother’s maiden name, Eicher was Papa Charles’s mother’s maiden name, there was an Aunt Euphemia somewhere in the family, and Christine may have come from Papa Charles’s brother Christopher.

Mama Margaret had an older brother William Provines, but my impression is that the other first names are just names that Margaret and Charles liked.  Note that Fred was Fred, not Frederick.  There was a fashion for giving children the names that you were actually going to call them.  Maybe that wasn’t happening when Will was born.  But perhaps it isn’t surprising that the names of the three girls do not lend themselves to nicknames.

We don’t have much in the way of stories about the childhood of the five children.  Mama Margaret commented in a 1910 letter to Will after an illness:

My ear is about well and my hearing as good as it has been for a few years.  I don’t hear as well as I did when you and the rest of the children were small, but I don’t think the noise ever bothered me much.  It would be music in my ears now.

But that doesn’t tell us much of anything.

There was an operation in 1897 that Mama Margaret mentioned in a letter twelve years later, but she didn’t mention what it was for.

The divorce, and after, in Ohio

As time went on, Papa Charles became abusive.  Things got really bad in the late 1890s.  The abuse was both verbal and physical, with Mama Margaret sometimes taking refuge in the bedroom of her daughters.  Here’s a description from the divorce petition of an incident, with Mama Margaret being the plaintiff and Papa Charles being the defendant:

…he struck her over the head with a wash basin, threw water on her, called her a —- liar, a —- brute, a —- mule, a hypocrite and many other names of a similar character, all of which the plaintiff cannot now recall; that when he struck her with the wash basin, as aforesaid, she was protected from further injury by him from her son William, who interfered for the purpose of preventing any further injury, when the defendant seized the butcher knife and undertook to use the same on his son, William, but was prevented from doing so by his daughter, Laura, and by his son escaping from the house.

I think the abuse must have been episodic, with periods of calm in between.  But when it happened, it was bad.  And then there was the weirdness of him trying to force her to sign confessions that everything was all her fault:

…he has written out many confessions and undertaken to compel her to sign them, in which she was to confess that she had been guilty of all the shortcomings of the family, and the cause of all the trouble, and all bad luck, and whatever had gone wrong or between her and her husband was her fault and that he was not to blame in any manner for the same, but that she, alone, was responsible therefore; that he would call the children in and some times his sisters and read the confession or confessions in their presence, and in their presence undertake to compel her to sign the same.

And he stopped giving her money for housekeeping.  Fortunately, by this time some of the children were able to contribute.  This was the beginning of something that continued for the rest of their lives: the five children always supported each other and their mother financially.

Meanwhile, the children started to go out into the world.  Will started at the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1896, and in 1898 Fred joined the Army briefly for the Spanish American war.  Eva noted in a letter to Will in June of 1898:

Mamma says it seems like six months since Fred went it is just thirty-nine days, she says it seems like thirty-nine months since you went.

In 1900 Mama Margaret divorced Papa Charles.  But she didn’t like to talk about unpleasantness, so for the census she said she was widowed.

Mama Margaret did not return to teaching or take any other job; she was always dependent on her children.  They supported her fully.  When Fred came back from his stint in the army, he worked in a watchmaking factory to help support the family.

For the first few years after the divorce, Mama Margaret stayed in Canton.  Her mother was there, and Eva was still in high school.

In the spring of 1903, Will, her eldest child, three years out of the United States Military Academy at West Point, was sent by the Army Corps of Engineers to the Philippines, which had been acquired by the US from Spain in 1898.  Mama Margaret wrote to him that the thought of it made her blue, and gave some advice for the voyage out from California:

You ought to get a good many lemons and mangos to use on your trip on the boat.  Lemons are good for biliousness and you told us why mangos were a good thing to have so don’t neglect to get a supply of both.  

I think that by biliousness Mama Margaret meant seasickness.  And throwing up.  As previously noted, Mama Margaret didn’t like to talk about unpleasantness.  As for mangoes, it turns out they are helpful for constipation.  I just wish I could have been a fly on the wall when Will told his mother why mangoes were a good thing.

Mama Margaret wrote diligently to her far-away son, making sure to tell him the news of his family.  From various letters:

I sent Alma a box yesterday for her birthday.  I hope she will get it in time for the spread tonight.  When she was home she said she had never had a box from home and all the rest had.  So I thought if I didn’t get one sent now I might never have the chance again, or at least not for a good while.

Fred has a boil on the other side of his nose now.  I hope it won’t get as bad as the other.

Laura is still on night duty.  She has pretty hard work just now, so many Typhoid patients.  She comes home to sleep, as it is quieter here than out there, also cooler.

I must now close as Eva is ready to take this to P.O. on her way to school.

Will didn’t write home much at all, and Mama Margaret worried about him.  Alma scolded him vigorously in August of 1904:

I think you might spare half an hour more than three or four times a year.  If I could write your letters I would be glad to do it.  It wouldn’t be half as hard as it is to keep Mama cheered up.  When the middle of the month comes and there is no letter she gets so blue that we can’t do anything with her.  She is all right when she gets a letter.  I feel really very cross when you don’t write every month.  It would be so easy for you to do it and it is so hard on Mama not to hear from you.  The rest of us enjoy your letters, of course, but we keep our spirits anyway and Mama doesn’t.

Will did improve the frequency of his letter writing.  He returned back to the US in 1905, so that Mama Margaret no longer had to worry about her firstborn dying alone on the other side of the world.

In the fall of 1903, Mama Margaret did the first (or anyway, the first that I know) of her many, many trips within the US.  Her older sister Mary Provines Hicks, who lived in Canton, was visiting her son and daughter-in-law John and Gazella Hicks in Ionia, Michigan, and Mama Margaret went along.  It sounds as though Mama Margaret had lived there for a while before her marriage.  Mama Margaret and her younger brother Jim didn’t like Gazella much:

Uncle Jim is here and has been for a good while.  He likes John Hicks but don’t like his wife very well.  She is so stingy.  That is one thing I don’t like about her.  She don’t know how to live.  They are pretty well off. John makes a good deal of money but she is too stingy to have anything cooked.  I have the best appetite since I have been here, I have gained a good many pounds but it was not because things were so good - I just had to eat.  We have visited around among Mary’s old friends then of course we would get every thing.

In the fall of 1904, Mama Margaret moved from Canton to Oberlin, Ohio.  Both Fred and Eva were going to start attending Oberlin College, and although Alma had just graduated from Oberlin, she was about to start work on getting her PhD from the University of Chicago, so Oberlin would have been more convenient for her.  Laura did not come along to Oberlin.  I’m not sure exactly where she was at this point, but she ended up as an osteopath in Canton for the rest of her life, maintaining whatever communication might be needed with Papa Charles.

The move was accomplished in September.  Alma reported to Will in October:

Mama seems to be very well satisfied here.  She hasn’t shown the faintest symptom of being homesick.  Everybody is very friendly.  A great many people have called.

It’s fun to imagine Alma being so concerned about how her mother would handle a move of under a hundred miles, when one thinks of all the moving around that Mama Margaret did later.

Mama Margaret stayed in Oberlin for four happy years.  All her children were nearby, except for Will, who was assigned at various times to West Point, Savannah, and Cuba.  She didn’t go visit him; I guess traveling still seemed like a big deal to her.

Shuttling around between her children

Fred and Eva finished up at Oberlin, and Alma got her doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1908 and got a post at Mount Holyoke in South Hadley, Massachusetts.  Mama Margaret moved with Alma to South Hadley.  Fred stayed in the Ohio/Illinois area pursuing medical studies.  Eva moved to New York to continue studying singing.

Mama Margaret made lengthy visits to Eva in New York, and noted in the spring of 1909 that Eva had an admirer, a tenor.  Not long after that, Mama Margaret heard that her sister Mary Provines Hicks was sick in Ionia, Michigan.  Mama Margaret rushed out to see her but arrived only after Mary died.  She attended the funeral with Fred, then came back to New York to find that Eva had become engaged to her admirer, Frank Evans.  There was a lavish wedding the following fall, and Eva and her tenor husband seemed very happy.  But the happiness did not continue, and a few years later Eva was a divorcée like her mother.  I have not come across any indication of how Mama Margaret felt about this.  As noted before, Mama Margaret didn’t like to talk about unpleasantness.  And anyway, we don’t have every letter that she wrote.

In the summer of 1910, Alma traveled to England for a botanical conference.  Or anyway, that was the excuse; Alma always loved to travel.  Mama Margaret went out to Ohio and stayed with Laura, her osteopath daughter, for several months.  She wrote to Will in November:

I think I will enjoy the winter here better than in Mass; I don’t think it is as cold and Laura’s treatments are doing me good.

But I don’t know exactly what her health issues were.

Mama Margaret's sons married around this time as well.  Will, now an army Captain in California, got married in 1911 to a girl who, like his mother, was named Margaret.  And at Oberlin Fred had met an aspiring medical missionary named Mabel.  He attended medical school and became a medical missionary himself, following Mabel to Africa in 1912 and marrying her.  I imagine Mama Margaret wrote to Fred frequently telling him family news, the way she wrote to Will when he was in the Philippines, but we don’t have any of the letters she sent him, alas.

We do have lots of letters between the family and Will’s wife Margaret; she had no family of her own and was eager to be part of her new husband’s family.  There was talk of Mama Margaret, Alma, and Eva traveling to California so that the family could meet Will’s wife, but the idea never came to pass, and on November 19, 1912, Alma brought home to Mama Margaret a letter that Will had sent to her office, telling her that his wife had died in childbirth.  Will would have wanted Alma to break the news to Mama Margaret; he knew how sad his mother would be.  Of course Mama Margaret immediately wrote a long letter to Will.

I shall miss the dear girl’s letters, they were always so cheery.  She must have had a lovely disposition.  I was so glad when you got married for I knew if you got the right kind of a wife you would both be perfectly happy and I think she was just the right one so you were devoted to each other.  I wonder if she ever realized how we all loved her, that she was to us a part of you.

The baby had survived, and Mama Margaret wrote: 

Is the dear baby near that you can see it every day.  I am glad you named it for the dear mother, and I can claim a part of it too.

Taking care of Will and little Margaret

In February 1913, Mama Margaret traveled from Massachusetts out to California to help take care of baby Margaret.  Although Will was in San Francisco, little Margaret was in San Jose, because that was where the wet nurse lived.  So Mama Margaret found living quarters in San Jose as well, and got to know her granddaughter.  By April Mama Margaret was writing to Eva:

I believe I am the making of a foolish grandma but I will try hard not to spoil her.

Will came to visit his mother and his daughter on the weekends.  [working on more for this.]

Mama Margaret wrote home in April:

I am living well, much better than at the Italian boarding house where we paid six dollars a week.  I had fresh peas yesterday and today.  They were fine.  The vegetable pedlar comes around three times a week and I shall get some more on Monday.  I have had fresh letters and radishes from the Bengood garden.  Another lady down the street said I could have all the radishes I want from her garden, I bought a mince pie from the bakery wagon today.  It is splendid.  It was only ten cents and I think there is that much fruit in it.  It was the first I bought.  We used to get pie occasionally at Mrs. Vilettis but were too tough.  This pastry was good.

Mama Margaret liked writing about food.

Will was transferred back east in the spring, and Mama Margaret followed him with little Margaret, pausing in Canton to visit Laura.  She wrote to Alma about the train trip with the six-month-old baby:

I couldn’t find out anything about the prepared food and trusted to getting it on the train as I was told I could.  However I started with some prepared via Thermos bottle and a quart of certified when that was gone.  I got a pint of good milk on the train and when that was gone I could get no more until we made a stop and the porter went out and got a quart, but it was not very good and caused a little indigestion.  Then I got a pint on the last diner before we got to Chicago and prepared enough to do her until we got here.  As I had expected the food was the hardest part.

Also:

I wouldn’t care to take the trip again, but only on account of the food.  The porter told me it was against the rules to allow an alcohol lamp or any kind.  I felt rather discouraged, but I kept on using it, then he brought his book and showed me the rule concerning it, and I told him it was perfectly safe.  I set it in the bowl in dressing room, he could see it, but he said he didn’t want to see it.  He said he was held responsible.  He said nothing more about it after that, but I hoped the conductor wouldn’t come around when it was going or he might smell the fumes.

She took the baby to Massachusetts while Will was briefly stationed in Pennsylvania for the 1913 Gettysburg Reunion, and then she and little Margaret moved in with him in Washington DC, and later went with him to Savannah, Georgia in 1915.

In the spring of 1915, Mama Margaret and Alma started planning a trip to California together.  Both of them were interested in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, and there was a botanical conference for Alma to attend.  Mama Margaret, mindful of the war going on in Europe, wrote to Alma:

I hope we can take the trip to California.  This is the year for you to go when you can’t go to Europe.  I am afraid you wouldn’t want to go if you could go there again.  But perhaps it will not be so interesting there if they keep fighting much longer.

And:

I hope you can find out something about the expense of the trip.  If we go tourist it would cut down the expense.  If I were going alone again I would prefer to go that way for I met such nice people and all so friendly that the trip did not seem long.  It is likely there will be a good many go that way to the exposition.

Eva came to Savannah to look after two-year-old Margaret, and Mama Margaret and Alma went on their trip.  They went to the Exposition in San Francisco - Mama Margaret more so than Alma, who wrote to Eva:

I attended the Exposition whenever time permitted.  Anyone can see that I did not go as often as Mother - my nose isn’t as red.  The bright sunshine here is giving Mother a fine color but it is also taking some of the skin off of her nose.  We spent more time on the outside than in looking at exhibits.  The grounds and the buildings are wonderful, by day or by night.

And then they went to the smaller version of the Exposition in San Diego, stopping for other sights as well.

They met a few Provines cousins here and there, and took the train back east in August.  In a stopover in Salt Lake City, Alma reported that they divided the labor:

Then we had to go down town to get our Pullman tickets as they didn’t sell them at the station.  I never saw anything so slow as that office.  There were two men waiting on fifty or sixty people.  They would stop and sharpen pencils while one was standing there two and three deep.  While I was struggling in that crowd Mother was out buying sandwiches.  She has never recovered from the fact that they charged her 15¢ for ham sandwiches - ordinary sandwiches.

They visited Laura in Canton on the way home, and also some more Provines relatives.

And then, in September, Mama Margaret came back to Savannah.  Will had bought his first car, a Buick, and Eva told Mama Margaret about a good poultry seller she had found in Savannah.

Eva went back to Philadelphia, and Mama Margaret resumed looking after little Margaret.  She absorbed the atmosphere around her.  When there was trouble with bedbugs, she wrote to Eva:

We have to look for B.B.’s every morning.  I have not found any on my bed or Margaret for several days, and two days since I have found any on Will’s.  Will told Mr. Lemon what a time I was having.  And he said every old house in Savannah had them and the new ones too for that matter.  He says the niggers all have them in their houses and they get them in their laundry.  He they get rid of them and it is not long there is another crop brought in.  Don’t you think that is discouraging.  I have used gasoline twice.  The folks down stairs are making a fuss about the spots on the ceilings.  I told the old lady the spots wouldn’t bother like the B.B.s  I can’t bear the thought of having them in my house.

She wouldn’t spell out the word bedbug, but she had no problem with the n-word.  I do not know if she ever thought about the difference between Savannah and Oberlin.

She attended Christian Science services with Will and Margaret, although she didn’t give up on medical science.  She wrote to Eva in November 1915:

I am having a hard time with my leg.  I was to see the MD again today.  Or did I tell you that I was there before?  He says it looks more healthy, but it is very painful yet.  He has adhesive plaster in my ankle to keep the blood pressure I believe.  He calls it a varicose ulcer.

In the same letter she mentioned that the ladies at the church were taking an interest in Will:

I must tell you that Mrs. Brigham said someone told her that all of the eligible ladies in the church had their eyes on Will.  I suppose Miss Sylva is one.  She is Mrs. Teasdale’s daughter by her first husband.  She is very nice.  Then the Farmer girls, she said she thought the youngest Miss Catherine would make him a fine wife.  She is such a good Scientist, such a conscientious girl.  They are both very nice and very fond of Margaret.  I said one day to Mrs. Brigham that I wished Will would get married again if he could find a wife like Margaret.  She said “there are no two alike.”  She has had experience.  It was then she spoke of Miss Catherine Farmer. 

The Stokeys became friendly with the Farmers - the two sisters, Ruth and Kathleen (not Catherine) and their parents - who had emigrated from England a few years before.  They lived quite close to each other, and Will often gave them a ride to church.

Eva came down from Philadelphia to Savannah for Christmas, and wrote to Alma that Will had taken her and the Farmer sisters to see a movie.
The friendship with the Farmer family continued.  Mama Margaret wrote to Eva in March:


Sunday is such a busy day that I have no time for either reading or writing.  Our breakfast is always late.  Then I get Margaret off to C.S. and straighten up a little in my room then get ready for church after church take the F family home, then our dinner, get the family and go out riding, usually about three o’clock.  When we returned from the drive yesterday we all came to 1717 and had supper.  Mr. Farmer walked over.  Will went after him but he was in the garden and didn’t hear Will ring.  I had invited him for 7 o’clock and told him Will would go for him.  We had fried chicken and white pudding, fruit salad, celery cake and cocoa.
We had a very pleasant time.  Ruth and Kathleen both helped me.   I had the chicken stewed and ready to fry.  Also had the pudding boiled and ready to bake.  Ruth made the cocoa and Kathleen the salad.  It is not much trouble when one has two good assistants.  I didn’t know until Sat. when were at dinner that we were going to have them.  Will said it was good pudding, I said I had just made some then he said we ought to have the Farmers over, we had been talking about it when we were there and they had never eaten any.  They all liked it very much.

In June of 1916, Will learned that he was being transferred to Cincinnati.  Mama Margaret liked the idea, but wasn’t looking forward to house-hunting:

I received a card from Alma today - from Buffalo.  I hope she will come on to Cincinnati and help hunt a house.  I dread that part of it.

And she would miss the Farmers:

I am only sorry to leave the Farmer family and they are sorry too to have us go.  Will brought Mrs. F. and the girls over last night.  Mrs. Farmer said she and Ruth sat down and cried when Will telephoned to them that he had orders to go.

She wondered, however:

I called Mrs. Brigham up today to tell her we were going, she said she was very sorry and asked if we were going to take any body with us?  I must now stop for awhile.

Mrs. B. said the people in the church think Ruth is the favored one.

So the church ladies thought it was Ruth that Will was interest in.  On the other hand:

After Will brought the family over last night he took Kathleen out riding.  He never did that before take one out without the other except when he took Kathleen to church and then go after her again.  I have been wondering if it had any significance.

And sure enough, Will married Kathleen and took her to Cincinnati with him.  So Mama Margaret didn’t have to worry about house-hunting, after all.

Shuttling around between her children

Mama Margaret thought about visiting Florida with Mrs. Farmer, but I don’t see any sign that that actually happened.  So I guess she went straight back to Massachusetts - unless she stopped for a few days to visit Eva in Philadelphia.

She stayed with Fred and his wife, Mabel, for a while in East Northfield, Massachusetts.  The couple had come back to the US in 1914 after Mabel developed tuberculosis.  Mama Margaret helped with the sewing in preparation for the wedding of Mabel’s sister Frances, and also met Mabel’s younger brother Wilfred, who was going to Massachusetts Agricultural College.  When the sewing for the wedding was finished, Mama Margaret did something that I think was more to her liking: cooking.  Mabel reported to Kathleen:

Mother is busy these days canning fruit and making jelly.  There are quantities of pears and apples and berries here, to be had for the picking, so we are indulging quite freely.

Or anyway, I think that was Mama Margaret.  It's possible that Mabel was talking about her own mother.

Mama Margaret went to visit Will and Kathleen in Cincinnati in November, and she was in Cincinnati again (or maybe still?  I’m still working on this era) when Kathleen gave birth to her first child, Billy, on April 19, 1917.  Mama Margaret may have gone up to Canton for a while to visit Laura, and then come back to Cincinnati.  She was there when Fred came for a visit in June, still grieving Mabel’s death on May 6, 1917.

Both of her sons had lost dearly-loved wives.  Will was now happily married to Kathleen.  Would Fred find a second love, too?  Yes, he would, but only after Mama Margaret had died.

And then she went back to Canton to visit Laura again, then on to Pennsylvania to visit her Provines relatives there, and then to Cape May, New Jersey, joining Eva.

​I think it would have been at Cape May that she celebrated her 73rd birthday.  Her abusive ex-husband had died a year and a half before, but Mama Margaret was still going strong.

I’m still working on the rest

[More to come.  Here’s what I originally wrote in what was to have been a very brief write-up.]

She loved nice clothes, but wasn’t terribly fond of sewing.  I think she preferred cooking.  Sewing things tends to be mentioned as a duty in her letters, whereas she seems to take more pleasure from cooking stuff, detailing what she cooked and how it was received.

She wasn’t necessarily the smartest person in the room, but she was probably the nicest person in the room.  [Drat!  I need to insert AG’s story about Alma and evolution.]

She died on May 8, 1924 in Cincinnati, Ohio, while traveling north from Will's home in Atlanta to Laura's home in Canton, with plans to go to Pennsylvania to attend the funeral of a younger brother -  the Uncle Jim who had not liked the stingy wife of their nephew John Hicks.  The cause of Mama Margaret’s death was an intestinal blockage.  So maybe the dislike of talking about unpleasant things caught up with her - but I don’t like to say mean things about such a nice person.

Note: there are letters from when she died, and I need to update this narrative with what they told me, but I've uploaded them, so you can go read them yourself.
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