Summer 2003

Dear Grandmother Delilah,  

When I wrote my first letter to you some eight years ago, I thought I knew all about you that I was ever going to know. That makes how much I’ve learned since then most amazing! Some of it has come in bits and pieces, but a lot of it came in one large chunk. More on all that later and the many things that have changed as a result of new information.

Descendants Dottie, Rachel, and Esther on Delilah's back stoop in 1992.

Delilah's dining room with living room beyond in 1992.

One thing that hasn’t changed from the first letter is wanting to tell you about what a thrill it was to set foot inside your home in the summer of 1992, to sit on your kitchen stoop, and to know that I was in the very rooms where you and at least some of your dear babies died. I enjoy contemplating what you would have thought if you could have known that, 110 years after you gave up your earthly struggle, some of your descendants would not only be remembering you but caring about you and your home and still visiting the graves of you and George and your precious babies. I’m happy to report that the folks who now live in the house care about it and are taking good care of it. Actually, it’s quite magnificent from the outside with its white vinyl siding (What’s that? you wonder?), and very tastefully done inside.

At the time of the first letter, we knew that you were born in Delaware County, New York, but little else. I am touched, and I think you might be, too, to know that we learned that because your husband’s second wife knew that about much you and recorded it in a family history, forty years after your death and fifteen after his. She is also the one who gave you a maiden name, Champlain, and a middle initial, E. Mary Ann Porter was a remarkable and godly woman—I know you’re grateful for that since God gave her the task of raising your youngest son..

Family tradition told us that you came from a French heritage (the name “Champlain” seemed to fit with that), and that the brown eyes in the family (which your granddaughter Fern—my Grandma Hawkins—had) came from you, also that you never fully recovered from the birth of your last child and died not long after. No pictures of you have survived, but I have an idea what you looked like. Since George had a narrow face and at least two of your children (Mary and Ferd) had distinctly broader faces, I feel sure they looked like you and that I can get a glimpse of you in them.

We now know that neither the “French connection” nor the Champlain name were correct. Rather, your family name was Champlin, and both your father and mother were 7^th generation Americans, descended from the same "Jeffrey Champlin Immigrant," with roots back almost as far as the Pilgrims' arrival in Massachusetts.[1] I wonder if you ever heard of him. Wouldn’t it be remarkable if I know about him but you didn’t? As for Champlain, it was an easy enough mistake on the part of Mary Ann Porter, and a very common one. Truth is, your family had no connection to the French explorer by the name of Champlain—in fact, he had no children and thus no descendants.

My first information about your parents came when I located your death record in the Ottawa County Courthouse in Grand Haven, Michigan. There were their names, Jeffrey and Ellis! That gave me two new ancestors right on the spot. I also found the death records of your baby girls Edith and Effie May, and that information has allowed me to “flesh out” those times in your life much better.

Finding your parents’ names on that record raised new questions because they were listed as “residents of Michigan.” Residents of Michigan? How come I had never heard of them? Why was mention never made of them in the family history I heard growing up? Why didn’t we have their graves to visit along with all the other Michigan ancestors? I wondered at first if they had died so soon after the move that no one else knew or remembered them. Or perhaps they lived and died in another area of Michigan, and George met you and brought you away from them when he married you? We now know none of that was the case.  

It turns out they are buried in the Fulton Street Cemetery in Grand Rapids, and in April 2002 I had the satisfaction of visiting their graves near that of their son and your uncle Stephen Gardiner Champlin.[2] 

We still don’t have information about how or exactly when you got from New York to Michigan in time to marry George as a teenager. Your family is listed in the 1850 census in Delaware Co., NY, and Mary Ann Porter reports that you married George in 1855, so they must have moved to Michigan during those five years. We have no information about what prompted them to migrate westward. Your two brothers, who were 8 and 12 years older than you, also ended up in Michigan, so it is possible your parents were following their footsteps. With their having been born in Rhode Island and living in at least two locations in New York, moving to new locations was not an unknown challenge to them.

We knew from your headstone that you were born in 1839, but that was all. I wanted to know your birthday! I had to wait a long time, but now I believe I have it. Your death record said you died on November 2, 1882, at age 43 years, 3 months, and 1 day. That would seem to make your birthday August 1. Can you believe that is the very date on which my first grandchild was born in 1993? I haven’t been able to locate a record of your marriage to find month and day. If it was after August 1, you were sixteen. If it was before, you were only fifteen.

The following year, 1856, your first baby, Adelbert, was born. His headstone tells us that his middle initial was “F.” Was his middle name perhaps “Ford,” like his father’s?

Sometime in 1857, Adelbert died. Since we have only years for these events (no months or dates), we have no way of knowing whether he was only a few months old or perhaps had lived well into his second year.[3] Whatever, you buried him in a cemetery called Lisbon on 12 Mile Road. Did George make the casket? How many family members gathered with you that sad day? Were your parents there and George’s—Curtis and Hannah? Any from the families of his brothers Henry and Robert, or half-siblings Betsey and David? With the transportation of that day making distances much greater, I have a feeling funerals may not have been as much “family affairs” as they are nowadays. The same day in 2002 that I visited Fulton Street, I went back to Lisbon Cemetery and made a count of  how many other graves were already there in 1857 when you left your first child there. There were only about twelve. 

Mary Ann tells us that 1857 was the year George bought that 80 acres of “prime” Michigan land. He began what would be several years’ work to turn it into a fine homestead.   

In 1858, your grief was somewhat abated as you welcomed a new baby and named him Edmond (perhaps you were already pregnant when Adelbert died). But, alas! before long your joy must have been crushed by disbelief as baby Edmond died, too (in 1859). Though infant mortality was more common in your day than now, I’m sure that never made it any easier for the mother—especially a new mother as young as you were.

That same year that Edmond died, or perhaps the following year, a third son was born. You and George named him Eugene. Undoubtedly you worried a lot about losing him, too—but you didn’t. He would be your first child to live to adulthood.

The Civil War broke out in 1861. For a while I naively imagined that, way off in Michigan, it didn’t touch you very much, but we now know that it affected your family very personally. Your brother Stephen, twelve years older than you, joined up early in the war, rose through the ranks eventually to Brigadier General, was wounded and returned to Michigan, but three months later was again leading his regiment in battle. His unhealed wound “broke out afresh,” and in the end led to his death some eighteen months after being wounded.

In the course of the war, Stephen met personally with President Lincoln and pled successfully for the death sentence to be rescinded for two of his regiment. During that interview Stephen’s only surviving child, your nephew Alexander, ended up on Lincoln’s lap. Don’t ask me what five-year-old Alexander was doing with his military father in Washington, D.C. during a war, but surely that story was told and retold in family circles back in Michigan? However, it did not make its way through later generations to me. I had to learn it through the Internet.[4] 

According to Mary Ann Porter’s account, 1861 was also the year that George, “by courage and tireless industry,” had sufficiently developed that “piece of wilderness into a beautiful farm home” for your fledgling family to move in. Let’s talk about that magnificent house for a minute. What condition was it in (how well finished) at the time you moved in? Judging by its size, I suspect it may have taken many years for George to build it to its current size. I try to picture life for you in those days—scrubbing your clothes on a washboard, sewing your family’s clothes by hand, preserving enough of the summer’s bounty to keep your family alive through the winter, spending evenings with only the light of candles or kerosene lamps. If I were to describe my life to you, you would not be able to picture or even imagine it. 

So there you were, turning just 21 that year, having already buried two babies in Lisbon Cemetery on 12 Mile Road, with a two-year-old boy toddling around. When you moved into the house, you may well have already been pregnant with Elbert, your fourth son, who was born in 1862. How it must have broken you mother’s heart and George’s, too, when you had to make yet another trip to the cemetery so soon after his birth! (within the same calendar year, so Elbert, at least, we know never saw his first birthday).

And before long, you were pregnant again. On June 20, 1863, your heart must have been thrilled with the birth of a baby girl, whom you named Mary Ellis. For so long we didn’t know that your mother was still alive and likely near enough to enjoy her namesake granddaughter. With three of your four babies already in Lisbon Cemetery, how you must have lived on tenterhooks wondering when or how something might happen to her, too![5]

But the months slipped by, one after another, and she was still with you. She made it through the winter. And then, lo! she celebrated a birthday, and then one year became two. In the process, you apparently enjoyed your first year since being married—perhaps even two—without pregnancy. I’m sure you loved and treasured your babies, but just as sure that those couple of years must have been an interlude of relief for you—no pregnancy and no babies dying!

The Civil War ended that spring of 1865, and late that summer you became pregnant again. What did you think about through those long winter nights as you awaited the birth of your sixth child? Baby Ferdinand came into the world on May 29, 1866[6]—and he did not die! Finally you found yourself with as many living children as dead ones. Eugene was seven that year and Mary just turning three. The following year, in 1867, George’s brother Robert died. He was only 44 years old, and he left a family of eight children.

How was your strength holding out at that point? Were you glad, or dismayed, when the winter of 1867-68 found you pregnant again? On May 10, 1868, your seventh baby was born, another little girl whom you named Edith. I can imagine how delighted five-year-old Mary must have been to have a baby sister!

But the joy was short-lived. Was Edith sickly all that summer, or was it something sudden when she died on August 13? (Her death record does not list a cause.) A fourth heart-breaking trip to Lisbon Cemetery. Now it wasn’t just you and George and grandparents to grieve. Eugene and Mary were old enough to share your grief. You had just turned twenty-nine that month, and you had been married thirteen years.

I feel sure that by then all emotional and physical stress was beginning to take a toll on you. After little Edith’s death, it was three years before you were pregnant again. Your eighth pregnancy, and at least your fourth through a cold Michigan winter, stretched on until June 6, 1872, when little Effie May joined your family. Eugene was a half-grown boy by then, and Mary was nine. What a little mother she must have been to her baby sister all through that summer!

In August, however, you suffered the loss of your 74-year-old father, Jeffrey Clarke Champlin. He wasn’t buried at Lisbon, but near Stephen’s grave in the Fulton Street Cemetery in Grand Rapids. That September, the three older children were likely attending the school house just down the road from you. When the school day ended, did Mary hurry little Ferd along on his six-year-old legs as she rushed home to be with the baby? If so, it couldn’t have happened very many times before September 19.

On that day little Effie May slipped away, too (no cause of death listed for her either). Is she the baby Mary told her granddaughters Mary Ellis and Jean about? She said she was present when one of the babies died, that you were sitting holding (rocking?) the baby when it stopped breathing. Her motions in the retelling suggested you were holding the baby up in front of you, perhaps shaking her to get her to breathe. No CPR or 911 in those days. I wonder if the problem wasn’t “croup,” that old-fashioned term that seemed to take in most respiratory problems, especially in children.

Delilah's Great Granddaughter Agnes, with GGG Granddaughters Laurie and Lynèe at the headstones of her five babies.

And so you buried Effie May beside her four tiny siblings. How did this additional loss effect your three surviving children? Did George’s nearly 80-year-old father Curtis make it to the cemetery that day? What about Hannah and Ellis, the two grandmothers, ages 72 and 68? As you stood there, did you try to picture a tall, sixteen-year-old Adelbert standing beside you, instead of lying all those years small and cold beneath the sod? I am sure you grieved afresh for him and each of the others in turn. What I don’t know is whether you felt free to let your tears flow.

So there you were, thirty-three years of age, married more than half your life, with eight pregnancies, five babies in a row on 12 Mile Road, and three children to raise, ages 6-12. You didn’t know it, but in God’s providence, you had just ten years to live. The next one to be laid to rest beside your babies in Lisbon Cemetery would be you.

In the meantime, however, you had ten years with neither pregnancy nor children dying. Were they good years, watching your three children grow, seeing Mary become a young lady and Ferd a teenager? Or were they hard years because your health was already wearing down? Probably both. I can’t imagine there was anything easy about them, with the washing by hand, cooking and canning, and all the rest necessary for the survival of your growing-up family.

Those were also years of loss. In the fall of 1873 your mother and George’s father died within a month of each other. Hannah died in 1878. You and George buried his parents at Lisbon, too, leaving space between the babies and them for you and George. Your sister-in-law, George’s half-sister, Betsey Bennett, died in 1874. We don’t know where Curtis and Hannah lived in their later years, nor where George’s brothers and Betsey lived. Since the parents were buried with George’s family, I can’t help wondering if they were closer to George than to the others, at least geographically. I’ve wondered if they might have lived with your family in your sizable homestead, but I think if that were the case, Mary Ann Porter would have mentioned it.

How must you have felt when you learned, a few months after your forty-second birthday, that another baby was on the way? Was it a difficult pregnancy? I suspect it was. The emotional stress—the possibility of losing another baby—must have been intense, in addition to the physical strain of yet another pregnancy.

Baby Charles Glenn was born on a fall day in late September 1882 (the 25th). How ironic that, after the deaths of five babies, this baby would live, but you would not. When he was less than six weeks old, you gave up your earthly struggle and slipped away. Your death record says you died of “heart disease,” whatever that means, or meant in those days. And so, on a day in early November (you died the 2nd), you made your last trip to Lisbon Cemetery, this time to rest beside your five babies. Though seven years older than you, George would not join you there for another 26 years.

Your three oldest children were grown or nearly grown by then—Gene, about 23; Mary 19; and Ferd 16. Mary’s descendants report that at the time of your death she was engaged to be married, but she postponed the wedding in order to take care of her infant brother. She did not in fact marry until July of 1884 when she was 21, several months after George married Mary Ann Batson in February of that year. I haven’t found records for when Gene married, but Ferd married six years later in October 1888.

I can’t close without mentioning that Ferd cared so much about you that—much to her dismay—he gave his daughter your name. Though she always went by Fern Delilah, or Fern D, I now know that her given name was Delilah Fern. She was never fond of the name, undoubtedly because of its biblical connotations. Perhaps if she had known you and had had a special relationship with you as her grandmother, it would have made a difference. But with your having been gone already a dozen years when she was born, you were not surprisingly nothing more than a name—a name she never learned to appreciate. I wonder if you and she have had any conversations about that in heaven….   

Well, Grandmother, I’ve rambled long enough. I do look forward to meeting you in heaven some day. My closest link to you is that I sat on your son Ferd’s lap (see picture) when I was a year old (but otherwise never knew him). He and his daughter Fern (my grandmother), and even my mother (Fern’s daughter) have joined you there. It hasn’t been too hard coming to grips with the fact that I am just a link in a chain. The births of my grandchildren over the last decade helped to clothe that in reality. Maybe earthly relationships won’t be important when we get to heaven. Okay. But I am glad I will have done what I could to make you and others ahead of us in the chain a little more real to those who come after.                       

                      Your great-great-granddaughter,