Southeastern Kentucky was not an easy place to live in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Much of the land was still wild; many residents lived along water courses called branches or creeks. People were poor, living as subsistence farmers on plots of rocky ground. If their crops produced well, they might sell the extras in town. Many men had hazardous jobs in coal mines. This part of the country was a dangerous place to live. Violence was well known in the area, and newspapers as far away as Lexington and Louisville would often report on the deadly feuds. People had little or no medical care and often died of disease or injuries.
Charlotte "Lottie" Allen was born to William Allen and Mary Miller in 1886 in Whitley County, Kentucky. She had three older brothers, including my grandfather, Richard O. Allen. Her mother was pregnant with her younger brother when one-year-old Lottie's father died. Very little is known of the family, except for my grandfather, between 1880 and 1900. Lottie's mother, Mary, marries her fourth husband, Frank Letcher, a newspaperman. Lottie shows up for the first time on the 1900 census. She, her mother Mary, grandmother Crusie, and her three brothers are living in Frank Letcher's home. She is 13 years old.
That same year, Lottie married Daniel McVey, a thirty-five-year-old neighbor. He lives a few houses down from her family. She was fourteen, though the marriage license claims she was 16. She had a daughter, Pearl, in 1904. She divorced Daniel sometime before February 1908, when a newspaper article speaks of the burial of Lottie's "little son," who died of cholera that February.
The next we know of Lottie is her marriage in 1908 to a widower with three young children, William Sherman Bailey. She was 22 years old. Bailey was one year younger than Lottie. She and William married in Knox County, Kentucky, where they remained through the 1910 census. Her daughter, Pearl, was living with Lottie and William in 1910. By 1920, the family was living nearby in Harlan County. They had six children between 1910 and 1922. The family moved quite often following William's work. William was an educated man for his time and place. He even taught school when he was a very young man. He worked farming and building train and road bridges.
Their youngest daughter, Alena, was born in Rockcastle County the same month her father William died, September 1922. When William died, Lottie was left alone with at least seven children in the home. All of Lottie's children were living with neighbors by 1930. The oldest of her children lived with a half-brother. The other children were listed in the 1930 census as adopted or as a boarder in neighbors' homes. One of Lottie's grandsons told me Lottie had been very ill with tuberculosis. Because of this, the authorities took all of her children and gave them away on the steps of the courthouse. Family stories tell us she fought this with everything she had.
Further examination of the existing records showed that William died of tuberculosis at age 43. His first wife died at age 30. Her death did not appear to be childbirth-related; perhaps instead, she also died of tuberculosis. Her two oldest children, Mary and Richard, died of tuberculosis at ages 29 and 43, respectively, and Lottie's oldest son, Leslie, died of tuberculosis at age 40. Because Lottie was so ill, Richard took her in and took care of her for the rest of her life. She died in her 30s of tuberculosis. One of her grandsons remembers visiting an abandoned cemetery in Harlan County. His dad told him Lottie was buried there. He thought a simple fieldstone may have marked her grave. There is no record of the burial.
The poor-quality photograph of a smiling Lottie standing in a field seems symbolic of a woman, somewhat shaded in the mist of time, a woman we know only through a few records, photographs, and family stories. We know she suffered hardship with the loss of her baby boy and her husband. We know she lost her children. We know she died relatively young. We don't know whether she was happy, though she appeared to be, at least for the one day when her photograph was taken in that field in Indiana.
