Bessie Hendricks Radcliff, my maternal grandmother’s mother, died at the age of 35 on May 14th, 1935 after delivering her twelfth child in two decades. Because her husband Elmer was an abusive alcoholic and unfit to parent, her surviving eleven children were soon scattered to the wind.
The newborn died, a still birth.
Wannita who was only seventeen at the time of Bessie’s death, had to quit school and stepped up to raise her siblings. At nineteen she married John Carroll and they raised Robert who was only two when Bessie died, along with their own children for several years in rural Woodruff and Tazewell counties. Her other siblings stayed with them off and on as well.
Brothers Harold (4 years old), David (5 years old) and Barney (13) were taken in by Bessie’s sister Annie Harris and her family in Danvers (McLean County).
Agnes (8 years old) was taken in by Bessie’s other sister Mary Hill and her family in Mackinaw.
Mary (9 years old) went to live with Bessie’s parents, Nancy and Ed Hendricks near Deer Creek.
The older boys, Ray (14) and Pete (15) found jobs working as farm hands on separate farms in rural Washington IL.
And the eldest, Charles (19) married and set up house on his own.
