Category: Shakers, Pleasant Hill

[ARTIFACTS] Obituary keepsakes from January 1963

My great grandmother’s obituary produced as keepsakes by the local newspaper. It has been interesting to live as witness to the demise of the print journalism industry.

In Memoriam

HERALD-LEADER

Lexington, Ky. January 8 1963

Mrs. Martha B. Corman

Mrs. Martha Bradshaw Corman, 81, the widow of Suber* Corman, died at 7 p.m. Sunday at St. Elizabeth Hospital, South Fort Mitchell.

She was a native of Lexington. Mrs. Corman lived at 6 Floral Avenue in South Fort Mitchell and was a member of the Madison Avenue Christian Church there.

She is survived by five daughters, Mrs. Fanny Dean Mathews, Nicholasville; Miss Viola Corman and Miss Madeline Corman, both of South Fort Mitchell; Mrs. William Englett, Victorville, Calif., and Mrs. Joseph Neal, Kansas City, Mo; two sisters, Miss Susie Ghant, Nicholasville, and Mrs. Minnie Scanlon, Prineville, Ore; 12 grandchildren, and 21 great grandchildren.

The body was taken to the Allison and Rose Funeral Home in Covington.

It will arrive here at noon Wednesday and will be taken to Kerr Brothers Funeral Home where services will be held at 1:30 p.m. Thursday. Burial will be in the Lexington Cemetery.

One of two examples of obituary keepsakes laminated and serve as bookmarks.

A TRIBUTE

published in the pages of

THE LEXINGTON LEADER

LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY

JAN 7 1963

Memorial Obituary

Mrs. Martha B. Corman

Mrs. Martha Bradshaw Corman, 81, widow of Suber* Corman, died at 7 p.m. Sunday at St. Elizabeth Hospital in South Forth Mitchell.

A native of Lexington, Mrs. Corman had lived at 6 Floral Avenue in South Fort Mitchell and was a member of the Madison Avenue Christian Church there.

Survivors are five daughters, Mrs. Fanny Dean Mathews, Nicholasville; Miss Viola Corman and Miss Madeline Corman, both of South Fort Mitchell; Mrs. William Englett, Victorville, Calif., and Mrs. Joseph Neal, Kansas City, Mo., two sisters, Miss Susie Ghant, Nicholasville, and Mrs. Minnie Scanlon, Prinville, Ore.; 12 grandchildren and 21 great grandchildren.

The body was taken to the Allison and Rose Funeral Home in Covington. It will arrive here at noon on Wednesday and be taken to Kerr Brothers Funeral Home where services will be conducted at 1:30 p.m. Thursday. Burial will be in the Lexington Cemetery.

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PHOTO: The Corman Carers

You might say educating is in my blood and these women were paramount in my own formation. Educators, living their Christian service and love instilled by the Shaker-educated youth of Martha Jane Bradshaw Corman, mother, and three of her daughters – Madeline, Viola & Fanny Dean. Two of the sisters taught school at the elementary and middle grades in northern Kentucky while the other, my grandmother, taught in one-room school houses throughout the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, specifically Jessamine County, with names like Sweet Home and Oak Hill.

Fully enjoying summers traveling, they invited the grandchildren-age generation of cousins on their annual summer trips across all these United States. The ORIGINAL aunt camp (*credit: S. C. Mathews – I see you Pebby). And, the original Ya-Ya’s, as we say in our family.

Photo: (left to right) Iva Madeline Corman, Martha Jane Bradshaw Corman, Viola Josephine Corman, and Fanny Dean Corman Mathews, my grandmother.

I remember visiting Frankenmuth, Michigan, as well as author and artist Gwen Frostic’s studio/visitor center in Benzonia. I have a beautiful collection of her work gifted to me, purchased by me and bequeathed to me through the estates’ transitions. It is on that trip with Aunt Vi & Aunt Madeline that I began with Christmas tree ornaments collecting as mementos from my travels.

It feels as though caring is woven in my DNA and was nurtured along by simply spending time with my great-aunts. My grandmother passed when I was in 4th grade living in Pittsburgh, PA, and my memories with her are fuzzy. When I look around my home, I pause to appreciate the things from my family, much of which ties back to them. Any artifact’s value perhaps felt priceless only to me, ultimately. It is the STORIES I crave and these hand-me-downs bring the memories and my soul to rejoice. I want to protect and preserve.

Maybe my heart’s call as service to others honors my ancestors, lives out in legacy. I can confirm I am a lifelong learner – and, most often the hard way. But, if it comes from the heart, is it ever wrong? Let me tell you, if you keep with these ancestry storylines I’m putting down – along the way, your heart will ache. Fair warning.

But, let’s first take a moment to reflect with some levity. Where my educators AT?!

Check out this excerpt from my WKU folk studies professor William Lynwood Montell’s 2011 publication, Tales from Kentucky One-Room School Teachers:

In 1872, the Kentucky State Legislature formally mandated its nine “Rules for Teachers”:

  1. Teachers each day will fill lamps, trim the wicks and clean chimneys.
  2. Each morning teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.
  3. Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.
  4. Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they attend church regularly.
  5. After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or any other good books.
  6. Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
  7. Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.
  8. Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good cause to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.
  9. The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week for his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.

Okay, with so much to unpack here, is it even possible? Take a moment. Read it again. Read it aloud to someone. I wonder how much of this was still codified when my grandmother was a one-room school house teacher almost 50 years later.

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Ever learning, ever loving

that.Kentucky.girl

Martha Jane Bradshaw (1881-1963), born Mercer Co, KY.

paternal great-grandmother

Oh, my Martha Jane. Her story will break your ever-loving heart. She lost her mom when she was five years old. She and her sister were raised by Shakers at Pleasant Hill, KY. Plucked suddenly from that idyllic, utopian children’s life to then carrying the weight of consummate caregiving for a family in crisis.

She was brought to apply all the learning of Shakers care full-time for the family of her eldest sister, Mary Bell Bradshaw Murphy. Martha was thirteen years younger than her sister, who needed help even before her mental breakdown.

Martha Jane broke off a romance after she was scorned by the mother of the man she loved. Martha Jane then married Surber Corman, a young widower with two small children after the recent tragic loss of their mother.

Martha Jane endured burying babies and children from more than one angle. She endured harsh conditions. And, her own tragic end is hard to conceive with the cause of death noted as “2nd & 3rd degree burns over 60% of her body,” according to the KY death certificate.

Traumas and taking on the yoke of someone’s tragedy lives in my DNA. I don’t need 23&Me to tell me that, even if they could. I can think of repeat experiences that fit that depiction.

More on Martha Jane Bradshaw in S1:E 23-E24-E25, coming later.