"Aunt Ada" Reinvents Herself

"Aunt Ada" living in Toledo, Ohio, sent this penny postcard for Easter, 1914 to her nephew, "Master Wallis Wood," in Cleveland, Ohio.

The recipient was then 9 years old and accustomed to postcards tumbling out of the mailbox from relatives on every conceivable occasion.

Even before he could read, he was receiving greetings from cousins, aunts, and uncles.

The sender this time was Adelaide Mary Ann Slatter Baker (1868-1947). She, unlike nearly every correspondent who sent a card to the young boy in Cleveland, spelled his name correctly!

"Aunt Ada" was the great aunt of my husband, a woman with a very, very difficult childhood.

Census Records Reveal Real Trouble 

Adelaide Mary Ann was the daughter of John Slatter (1838-1901) and Mary Shehen Slatter (1837-1889), living in the notoriously poor London neighborhood of Whitechapel. I didn't immediately recognize the hint of trouble beyond poverty when I found Ada for the first time in the 1871 UK Census, living at 3 Half Moon Passage in Whitechapel with her parents and 4 siblings.

In the previous Census of 1861, I easily found the parents and their first child, Thomas John Slatter. However, Thomas didn't appear in the 1871 Census with his parents and siblings. For a long time, I believed he had died young, not an unknown phenomenon in this poverty-stricken neighborhood.

One of my wonderful blog readers tipped me off to where Thomas John Slatter was in 1871. The UK Census shows him in Christchurch Southwark, another poor section of London, at the unimaginative address of "32 Gravel Lane." He's 10 years old, living with his grandmother and step-grandfather. Also in the household are 2 other grandchildren! So this grandmother and step-grandpa were apparently rescuing 3 grandchildren from desperately impoverished conditions.

With Thomas in another household, Ada and her siblings were only 5 mouths for their parents to feed. Alas, still too many for a simple laborer who wasn't always with the family. Ada and her Mom and 4 siblings were in and out of poorhouses and workhouses during the 1870s, I learned. Ultimately, Ada's mother entered an insane asylum and died there.

The children were then on their own. The girls were in a school for the poor, the boys went to a "training ship" on the Thames and ultimately joined the Army. During these years, Ada was accustomed to watching over her baby sister Mary (my husband's grandmother).

Ada Reinvents Herself

In spring of 1895, Ada sailed from Liverpool to Montreal, enroute to join her father, who had left London for Ohio a few years earlier. The outbound passenger manifest lists her occupation as "servant." Miraculously, her U.S. border documentation lists her occupation as "lady."

One year after arriving, Ada married James Sills Baker (1866-1937) in Cuyahoga County, Ohio (where Cleveland is located), just 3 weeks after Easter Sunday.

They moved to Toledo, where their first child was born 9 months and 1 day after their marriage. Their second child was born another 4 years after that.

Ada regularly kept in touch with her baby sister Mary and all of her family, in England as well as in Ohio and beyond. She sent penny postcards on many occasions and had her two children write greetings to their first cousins, including Wallis W. Wood, a son of baby sister Mary.

I continue to be impressed that Ada and her siblings grew up, married, and had productive lives after the grinding poverty and appalling workhouse experiences of their childhood.

Note: With my presentations at Family Tree Live coming up, I won't be able to look at any reader comments for a little while. Thanks for reading!