Month: April 2007

Lately I have felt a bit like Andy Capps’ Joe Btfsplk.  Not because I feel I am a jinx as Joe was (I leave that to Jonah, king of jinxes), but because of that perpetual cloud over his head:

Dan called to say he had been in the hospital, Thurday night I guess it was.  But because he has a hard time talking, he wasn’t too clear on details.  So I drove to his place Friday and came away feeling upset because I woke him up from a nap, and while he made it clear something had happened, I left not knowing exactly what that was and feeling anxious.  So I drove down again today and Dan’s wife, Kim, said Dan had a mini-stroke. He lost sensation in his left hand but it came back.  At the hospital they did a catscan and pumped him full of a stronger blood thinner.

Kim drew a picture for me and I felt more secure looking at the picture.  It was something like this.  The big red area to the right is the first stroke, and the little red area below the big read area represents the mini  stroke.

In search of Joan’s mother’s first name, I emailed saying maybe it was Bernice, but next morning Brother Dave emailed to say that Aunt Betty’s first name was Bernice and since women, unlike men, do not seem to feel some need to name their girl children after themselves, that pretty much ruled out Bernice.

Brother Dave had found that info by going through stuff on the web; he found Aunt Bernice’s obituary.  So I thought, OK, I will check out the web too, and went to Ancestry.com that has mounds of documents and data bases.  All I had was Joan’s Mother’s last name:  Barrett.  So I started to search for Barretts born in England (that was another bit of info) and, man, you wouldn’t believe how many Barretts were born in England.  And then I remember I search births for England and Wales.  I knew she had grown up in Dorset, but, man, it was like every Barrett born in England was born in Dorset.

Finally I noticed the 1930 Census for the USA.  And bingo, I had it.  On a census children are recorded.  So I typed in Joan Kaller (Joan’s mother’s married name), and up comes one Joan Kaller from San Diego, California.  She is categorized as “daughter” and she is believed to be about 8 years old.  Then I type in Bernice Kaller, for cross confirmation, and up comes one Bernice Kaller in San Diego California in 1930.  And she is listed as about 10 years old; she also is listed as daughter.

And the mother of both was named Mabel.  So Joan’s mother’s name was Mabel Barrett Kaller.  In 1930, she was 41 years old and was indeed born in England in 1881.  Based on what Joan said—that her mother died when she was 12 years old—Mabel must have died in 1934 or 35.

Just to see what the old degenerate, reprobate was up to in 1930, I checked out Joan’s nerdowell father, Barney. He was born in 1888 in Canada, was 41 years old at the time of the census and is listed as “Lodger.”  His occupation is listed as restaurant Chef and he was in the army in WWI.  He apparently lived in a boarding housing with about 15 other people.  The head of the household was one William Crapp.

The categories for people in a household for the 1930 census are interesting.  One finds the usual, head, spouse, daughter, son, cousin, nephew, and so on, but also lodger, renter, boarder, roomer, hired man, and servant.

In any case, we were able to fill in the spot on the death certificate that asks for "mother’s name."

Mabel.

I woke up way too early again thinking, “Bernice?”

After Brother David called the night before last to say Joan had died I couldn’t sleep for a bit and while I was lying there it came to me out of nowhere that I didn’t know Joan’s mother’s first name.  I knew I had asked Joan once, “What is your mother’s first name?” and she told me, but I couldn’t remember.  I never met Joan’s mother; she died in 1934 as I figure it of breast cancer.  And when Joan spoke of her mother, she always called her “mama.”

I guess my unconscious was working on something because late yesterday I get a call from Brother Steve asking me if I knew Joan’s mother’s first name because they ask for that information on the death certificate.  I said I didn’t.  And then Brother Dave called asking me the same thing.

What the hell is a death certificate.  Whose business is it anyway?  Apparently though one has to be filled out before a cremation.

But I went home and tried to plow through the papers and pictures I have and couldn’t find a thing, and tried also to find the phone number of Joan’s one and only friend whom she had known since HS.  But her last name is Smith.  Try finding anybody named Smith. 

So I went to bed thinking “Elizabeth.”  But was pretty sure I was getting Joan’s mother confused with Elizabeth Barret Browning.  And then I thought “Anne” but I am pretty sure that was the name of our little sister who died before she was two weeks old.

This was all sort of funny in an odd way because the logical person to ask what her mother’s name was no longer available for questioning.  Is this what is called “missing somebody.”

———————————————————————————————————–

On the back of the above, Joan wrote: "This was one of mother’s favorite pictures of me.  I was 8 years old then." 

Joan K. Tingle
 

May 20, 1922—April 10, 2007

 I am glad I was able to speak for a few minutes with Joan this last Saturday, I guess it was.  She was pretty much out of it but we had a form of conversation.  We hooked up on something we frequently hooked up upon.  Family.  So I gave her the news about folks back in South Carolina and she asked about people and together we tried to recollect the names of people.  Perhaps because Joan had no family at all to speak of, she was interested in WB’s brothers and sisters and wanted to know what was up with them.  So I guess you could say we gossiped for a bit.  And then her concentration faded.

Here is something Joan wrote.  The top little blurb is by the now deceased editor of the former Tingle Family Newsletter:

Literary talent continues to surface from among many Tingle descendants. On the following pages we are pleased to include a well written and documented article by Joan K. Tingle of Valley Center, California. She is the wife of William Berner Tingle, Jr., a sixth generation descendant of John Tingle of Craven County, N.C. and the latter’s wife, Sarah Purifoy. His ancestor chart appeared in the previous issue (Fall 1988) of the newsletter. Her story, titled MONROE MEMORIES, starts on the next page:

MONROE MEMORIES

Joan Tingle

By May 1862, the alarming news of the critical defeat of the Confederate forces at the Battle of Shiloh, near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee on April 6 and 7, 1862 must have been known throughout the Confederate states. The South had suffered heavy losses in the Western theater of the war and replacement troops were being urgently recruited.

On May 6,1862 ,the four youngest Sons of Daniel and Parthenia Tingle of Monroe County, Georgia enlisted in Company H, 32nd Regiment Georgia Volunteer Infantry—Army of Tennessee.¹

Daniel Tingle, the eldest son of John and Sara Purifoy Tingle who migrated to Georgia from North Carolina in about the year 1803², had married Parthenia Hatcher in Jefferson County, Georgia in 1 823³ and had settled near his father’s home in Monroe County by 1 830.⁴ By the Civil War era, the Tingle family was well established in the Blount Community and active in the Paran Primitive Baptist Church there^.5 Sons and daughters of Daniel and Parthenia had married into neighboring families and were established on their own farms in the area.⁶ Monroe County was not an area of large plantations but rather one of substantial farms cleared from the gentle pine covered hills.⁷

Solomon Willie, the youngest son of Daniel and Parthenia was a lad sixteen years old when he enlisted on May 6. l862.8 His birth date was October 20, 1846. It is recorded that he was in an army hospital in Savannah, Georgia in July 1 862,but he later returned to his regiment and served until April 26, 1865 when he surrendered in Greensboro, North Carolina at the end of the tragic conflict.⁹ Solomon married Georgia Ann McCallum in 1868, settled in Henry County, Georgia, had a family of ten children and is buried in Beersheba Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery in Locust Grove, Georgia.’°

Another son of Daniel and Parthenia, McCarroll, who was horn November 9, 1833, had been married in 1858 to Nary Ann Persons Castleberry. and when he enlisted in the Confederate forces he left his wife with two small daughters and a newborn son.¹¹ On February 20, 1864, McCarroll was wounded in the left leg at Ocean Pond, Florida Records show he was captured at Macon, Georgia April 20—21, l865.¹² He returned home upon his release to farm and care for his wife and children. He is buried near his father and mother in Paran Cemetery in Blount, Monroe County. 13

The third son of this Tingle family who enlisted on that day in May 1862 was James Lafayette Tingle. Pension records show he was wounded in the left leg and permanently disabled at Ocean Pond, Florida February 20, 1864, and never returned to his regiment.¹⁴ His birth date was December 25, 1840, and during his long and active life he married twice. His first wife, whom he married December 26,1866, was Sarah E. McCallum. After her death, he married, on February 26,1884, Tommie Tucker. He fathered eight children by each wife and has hundreds of descendants throughout the South.¹⁵ James Lafayette lived to be almost ninety

years old and died April 21 1930.¹⁶

The fourth son of the Daniel Tingle family who enlisted on this same day in 1862 was Archibald Daniel who was born February 5,1835. He and Mary Mahala Treadwell had married in 1856, and they had three young Sons at the time Daniel Archibald left home to fight for the cause in which he believed. He served for three years and surrendered at the cessation of hostilities in Greensboro, North Carolina on April 26,1865. 17 To quote from the obituary of Archibald Daniel Tingle in a Monroe County newspaper,” At the close of the war he came home to his wife and children to begin again with what the Yankees had left him and to live in peace the rest of his life”.¹⁸ ”Mr. Archie” and “Miss Haley” had six more children, and he was a prosperous farmer and storekeeper in the community where he was born and lived all his life.¹⁹ Daniel Archibald Tingle died March 3, 1917. He is buried in Mt. Vernon Baptist Church Cemetery in Butts County, Georgia.²⁰

The Civil Wa
r years were a sad and trying period for parents both in the North and in the South. Daniel and Parthenia were fortunate that all four of their soldier Sons returned home to live long and useful lives. Their daughter, Louisa Jane, lost her husband, Enoch Tollerson, during his army service, and Daniel’s nephew, Jesse Tingle, the eldest son of John J. and Duemma Tingle died of variola fever while on active duty in 1863.²¹

So that homecoming in the early summer of 1865 was a dichotomy of joy and sorrow, hope and despair. But hope prevailed—hope for the future of the South and for the whole nation united once more.

Sources:

Muster Roll of Company H,32nd Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry Army of Tennessee, C.S.A., Monroe County Georgia. Georgia Department of Archives and History.

2.             Hancock County, Georgia Wills and Estate Records 1794—l804. Volume A—AAAA.

3.             Marriage Records of Jefferson County, Georgia.

4.             Census Records of Monroe County, Georgia.

5.             Research of Edna Brown of Milner, Georgia based on records of Paran Primitive Baptist Church,

6.             Lot map of Monroe County, Georgia which shows property and owners thereof in Blount community.

7.             Appendix l, Monroe County Land Lottery of 1821 shows lots were 202 1/2 acres.

8.             Muster Roll of Company H.

9.             Ibid.

l0. Records of Daisie F. Duncan, Lawrenceville, Ga.

11 . Ibid.

12.         Muster Roll of Company H.

13.         Monroe County History.

14.         Muster Roll of Company H.

15.         Records of Edna Brown Milner, Georgia.

16.         Records of Daisie F.. Duncan, Lawrenceville, Ca.

17.         Muster Roll of Company H.

18.         Monroe Advertiser, 30 March 1917, p. 1.

19.         Records of Mary Tingle, Athens, Georgia.

20.         Tombstone in Mt. Vernon Cemetery, ,Butts County, Georgia.

21.         Muster Roll of Company H.

22.         Records of Tollerson family of Monroe, County, Georgia as compiled by Lorene Saario of Oceanside, Califorriia and based in part on Muster Roll of Company H.

The author, Joan K. Tingle, adds a footnote

I have been waking up at good awful hours for over a month.  At 530 am this morning and it’s still pitch dark outside.  I try to go back to sleep but just can’t.  Other things are involved, but at some deep level I have been anxious about Joan, I think.  Also I was talking to the guy a couple of doors down.  He is in his seventies and wakes up a 300 in the morning and sometimes can’t get back to sleep.  I have heard a person’s sleep patterns change with age.  Maybe I will just have to get used to this.

Right before going to bed, I read the following from Brother Dave:

We just got home. I guess we left j about 8:45 and her breathing really sounded bad. They kept cranking up the morphine but she never slept. I’m not sure if our being there wasn’t keeping her up some how? I mean just being there.Hard to explain I guess. Well, a new nurse came on and we got them to do the suction thing a couple of times. I did sign all the hospice papers and so on. I’m going to LVDN and then hospital in morning AT….after traffic.

“Hard to explain I guess.”  Maybe dying for some one in Joan’s particular condition requires letting go somehow deep down.  The unconscious is a beast.

David and Teresa sat with Joan nearly the whole day, this in spite of the fact that Teresa had been concerned about our having to wear masks when with Joan.  She wrote a day or so ago:

I was concerned about the fact you had to be masked when visiting Joan. I called the nurse to ask what Joan had. She has MRSA (methicillin resistant staph aureus). I was worried because Stephen and David took Jacob last Wednesday without the masks. Joan got this at Palomar Hospital, there’s no doubt. I did find the following info. 

Is it safe for healthy people to be in contact with a person infected with MRSA? Can children contract MRSA from being around an infected person?

Healthy people, including children are at very low risk of contracting MRSA. Casual contact such as hugging is okay, however, hands should be washed before leaving the patient’s hospital room or home. Persons should use gloves, however, before handling any body fluids of infected persons, and remove the gloves and wash the hands before leaving the infected person’s room or home. Before an infected person leaves the hospital ask the nurse or doctor what precautions they recommend be taken at home. In general, follow good hygiene practices, as previously described.

I hate Hospitals.

Who knows what this day will bring?

Brother David sent an email saying Joan had been removed from Villa Del Nortes and put back in the hospital at 3 am this morning.  The nurse had called saying they thought Joan had only a few more hours, so David and Sister-in-Law Teresa drove up to Escondido to the hospital.

As the day wore on (and it was wearing) every time the phone or my cell went off I was sure David would say that Joan had moved on.  But as of 6 pm, this Monday, she has not.  At the Villa she had been turning blue but with the hospital equipment she has done better; the doctor asked David if it was OK if he tried to make Joan more comfortable.  David said OK and so Joan is on a morphine drip.

The morphine drip for me signifies the end.  Indeed, the doctor does feel Joan will never return to the Villa; instead if she does recover enough to leave the hospital she will be sent to “hospice” care.  Of course, we in America know next to nothing about palliative medicine, so in SD there is only one real hospice.  Instead, people are sent to “homes” that have 24 hour nurses and these apparently qualify legally as hospice care.

We are barbarians.  Something needs to be done immediately to allow the elderly some determination of their destiny.  By this I mean, the elderly should be allowed, with minimum interference from a physician, to purchase drugs that would allow them to end their own lives at the instant of their choosing.  

As Walter Benjamin said, to date there has been no act of civilization that has not equally been an act of barbarism.  This is the case with modern medicine as practiced in the United States. 

I expect that laws will be changed.  The yuppies are coming of dying age; they are pretty vocal and well financed, at least for the time being.  Our sheer numbers and the weight we will place on the medical system will lead some to see the legalization of euthanasia as one way to get rid of the decaying elderly with more dispatch.