We're talking about why Pearl left West Virginia and her family and went, North, to Michigan.
Sherry's telling me about how things ended with Pearl's husband, Ben (or Glenn) Wilson.
Sherry: And when, right. And then after this happened, after Mom was born and she was little, I don’t know the age, she may have been, maybe she was like seven or eight and Grandma Pearl decided that she had to get away from Ben Wilson because he wasn’t good to her, he was, he had a very bad temper and he abused her…So she left West Virginia and somebody from West Virginia went with her to…Michigan and his name was Charlie McVicker and that’s who Mom knew as her Dad. He was her step-father until she was fourteen and then when she [Betty] was at the age of fourteen, Charlie McVicker died.
L: Did Pearl marry Charlie McVicker?
S: Yeah, they were married…until…
L: And they went to Michigan?
S: Well, I don’t know if they married after they went to Michigan or before…Grandma ran…I know she ran away from West Virginia and she never went back again. And then she did marry Charlie McVicker who came with her from West Virginia but I don’t know when they got married.
L: Right.
S: And they lived at Skidway Lake.
L: In Michigan? Skidway Lake?
S: Skidway Lake and that’s where Grandma had a beautiful cottage and, ah, Charlie McVicker was a hunter and Grandma worked at the butcher shop and, um, then when Mom was fourteen, Charlie McVicker had a cerebral hemmorage (sp?) and he died in the oil fields. And Mom was fourteen and then shortly after that, I think because Grandma was a beautiful woman and you know, she was, didn’t want to be alone, so then she married Jess.
She'd had to get away from her husband.
Lara: Okay, but now, when, when Grandma Pearl needed to leave West Virginia…
Sherry: Yeah. She may have been in love with Charlie McVicker and maybe they, you know, as soon as they got married…
L: They had a baby?
S: Maybe. I don’t know what happened between Ben Wilson and after Charlie McVicker…I don’t know how long Grandma Pearl was in West Virginia away from Ben…I don’t know how old Mom was or…what happened in there…
L: Did she leave Louise?
S: And definitely, Louise got, stayed and was raised by Grandma Ida.
L: Okay.
S: By great grandma Ida, so she was raised by her grandma and Grandma Pearl left and because she was, so many things hurt her and, you know, she just couldn’t go home again, so and maybe she was going to have a baby.
Sherry tells me honestly, "I don’t know for sure…"
____ ____ ____ ____ ____
I've found some census records from 1930...
And it might've been Pearl or it might've been Glenn who answered the questions for the Census taking workers.
The Federal questions and some of the answers in 1930 went something like this:
Name and residence.
Age.
Estimated birth year.
Relation to Head of the House.
Spouse's name.
And, Race.
The next round of questions could've raised even more of a problem.
Occupation
Education
Military Service
Rent/Home value
Age at first marriage
And, "Neighbors."
The Household members listed, give us this record:
Glenn Wilson, 32
Pearl, wife, 26
Louis D. Wilson, maybe age 9
Betty J Wilson, already two.
And, I'm told through the research grapevines that they mis-spelled childrens' names quite often, hence Louise got recorded as Louis.
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"And maybe Mom never faced the reality that that was really her Dad (Ben), you know maybe they never told her, maybe she never thought about it. I don’t know." Sherry punctuates the end of tidbit.
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Back at the desk we find a picture of Pearl which we think is right around the time of 1930 since it says so on the back.
NORTH TO MICHIGAN
Sherry is explaining about Michigan, "Skidway Lake and that’s where Grandma had a beautiful cottage and, ah, Charlie McVicker was a hunter and Grandma worked at the butcher shop and..."
they worked hard to recover from the bad times.
We saw his picture in the newspaper with the St. Leo Puddlejumpers.
Then we found this picture of him when he's a bit older. Mama thinks Betty might have taken this photograph. Possibly around the time when Betty and Grover Candy were courting. Charlie was in the fashion of sticking up for women and wouldn't stand for no guffaw from a young hotblood like Grover. This irked a teenage Betty because she didn't understand how hard things could get when people don't stick to their guns about being married and being family.
Betty didn't find a sympathetic ear with Pearl neither. Her parents were trying to find the right balance between strict and the latest round of modern!
Betty was trying to find balance too. A new wave of success talk was beating path through Michigan. OIL.
Together with the demonstrated proof of so many people buying cars and the factories employing more and more people, the talk of oil worked it's way into another buzz.
In reality, just a little bit of money to people who'd come out of the Depression with NOTHING may have seemed like great riches, especially to teenagers who didn't really understand where they themselves fit into America. And because Pearl and Charlie wanted to give each other the moon and share this with their daughter, Betty may have had the impression that she was more fancy than farm.
In fact when speculators and piece of paper salesmen blow through neighborhoods and regions, the tiniest holes in the ground can take on the dreams of a people.
Pearl would've been w(e)ary. She always was.
But she'd grown up in West Virginia where the domestic oil boom of the earliest 1900's had brought a little wealth to her own father, Elias Fox.
Online we find a report:
"Results of exploratory drilling in Michigan during 1947 were considerably more favorable than during 1946. Of the 263 wildcats drilled, 20 were completed as producing wells, resulting in the discovery of 10 oil fields and 4 gas fields and in the extension of 5 oil fields and 1 gas field. The Kimball Lake field, Newaygo County, Mount Forest field, Bay County, and Stony Lake field, Oceana County, developed new oil reserves. The new gas fields were not of significant size. Permits to drill 886 wells were issued during 1947, an increase of 164 over 1946. In all, 896 wells were completed compared with 823 completed in 1946. Of these completions, 36 per cent (318) were oil wells, 21 per cent (191) were gas wells, and 43 per cent (387) were dry holes."
--Developments in Michigan in 1947
Lyle W. Price
AAPG Bulletin
Volume 32, Issue 6. (June), Pages 931 - 939 (1948)
That's how it is with facts and/or work purporting to tell the facts about environment and resources. Brief snapshots which don't quite match up with peoples' memories of events. At least in the old days.
Price writes, "Core drilling continued to be the most satisfactory method of exploration. Permits were issued for 289 geological tests, an increase of 103 over 1946. Two hundred thirty-eight of these were issued for the West Michigan district, the most active in Michigan during 1947. The most significant oil discovery during 1947, the Kimball Lake field, Newaygo County, was the result of core-drill exploration. Little or no seismograph work was done. The outstanding deep test of the year was the Ohio Oil Company and Pure Oil Company's Reinhardt well No. 1 in the West Branch field, Ogemaw County. It was commenced in February and at the end of 1947 was drilling at approximately 10,600 feet with no substantial showings of oil or gas."
And it seemed like Charlie was doing something right, between his experience and planning, he was making some money from being involved.
"Okay, so that's Chris Finger and he'd had a brother..." Mama Sherry tries to explain the whole story while we're getting some old things out of her memories trunk.
S: I’m just telling you. After Charlie died or when Charlie was still living they were friends with the Fingers because they lived at Skidway Lake.
L: Who were the Fingers?
[I was hearing all this...formally...for the first time.]
S: The Fingers. They are a lovely family. Reetha Finger, isn’t that the funniest name? Reetha Finger and her husband Bill Finger, then he died, then she married his brother, and Reetha Finger and her husband had these cottages at the Lake and people would go there and fish and pay their money for staying in the cottages and that’s how they made their living and Grandma Pearl and Charlie had a place at Skidway Lake and that must be how they met them. And they even took trips together. I have a picture of Mom up at Niagra Falls, you know standing like this…
Mama stands cross-armed.
Mama says those were happy years for Pearl and Charlie and Betty at the Lake.
And even after Charlie died, Pearl stayed friends with the Fingers.
I can tell you that when Charlie died, as most deaths do, it was shocking and it was like a stoppage in time for everybody in the family...all through the ripples...the news went out and people responded in kind.
Mama gets out her memory box.
There were gold words that read
father
husband
friends
These are wrapped in angel cloth material.
Charlie was only in his fifties.
He'd been born on the 24th of June, 1892.
Betty wrote in the book, This is the worst day of my life.
And nobody could stop crying.
This was a time when Pearl's Hymnal (property of Skidway Lake) would've gotten more and more worn.
And the girls would've had to go home alone.
