#52 Ancestors: Week 15 - Leona's Solitude

For this week's prompt, I'm going to take a broad interpretation of the concept of solitude.  The generally accepted definition of solitude is "the state of being or living alone."  Other common definitions include "an absence of human activity" or "a lonely, unfrequented place."  All have a distinctly negative vibe. And yet, the ancestors I was considering seemed to bask in their single-ness.  One gentleman lived a long, unmarried life, but he brought joy to those around him with his voice.  One woman found herself divorced in her late 30s.  It was the early 1900s, but rather than marrying again, this woman took advantage of her "solitude" and spent the rest of her life making her way up and down the east coast of the United States.  Her name was Leona Deane 'Sally" (Green) Terpinitz, and this is her story.

Leona was born in Pulaski County, Illinois, in November 1878. She was the only daughter born to Thomas J. Green and Harriet A. Isaacs.  At the young age of 16, in August 1895, Leona married Charles C. Terpinitz in Union County, Illinois.  A single daughter, Jennie Grace Terpinitz, was born to them in April 1898. They are enumerated in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, in 1900 and then in Walnut, Kansas, in 1905.  Charles was a jack-of-all-trades, so there is no telling why they moved further west.  By 1910, however, they have returned to Illinois and are living in Centralia.  Various newspaper articles place Charles and family in Centralia in 1913 & 1914, but sometime before 1917, he and Leona presumably divorce, as Charles marries Sarah Pearl Leach in September 1917.  

At this time, Leona would have been in her late thirties with a daughter in her late teens.  Jennie Grace started attending the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in 1916, and it would seem that Leona moved with her. In the 1920 census, both Leona and Jennie are rooming with the family of Lillian Osborn in Champaign, Illinois. Leona is a saleslady in a dry goods store and lists herself as a widow even though Charles is alive and well with his new wife. Maybe he was just "dead to her." 😆 

Jennie Grace marries in 1922, and she and her husband move to Nutley, New Jersey.  And what of Leona?  Why, she moves to Brooklyn, New York, and becomes a corsetiere!  Various newspaper ads indicate she was in this business from roughly 1923-1928. She stays close to her daughter, however -  Nutley, New Jersey, is only around 20 miles away.  Solitude when she felt like it, and company when she didn't!

Although Leona and Charles had divorced, separated, considered one another dead...whatever, Leona still visited with her in-laws.  Here, in The Miami News, she is mentioned as one of her brother and sister-in-law's honored guests.  Also mentioned in this article are Leona's daughter, Jennie Lambert, and relatives of Jennie's soon-to-be second husband, Peter Amey. (Charles, by the way, was on his third wife by this time - seems he couldn't handle solitude.) 

 

Jennie marries Peter Amey in Florida in 1936, but the 1940 census finds them back up in Fine, New York.  Leona is with them, too, but as I envision it, Leona was a fashionable elderly woman who probably had her own rooms and occasionally joined her daughter and son-in-law for dinner on the veranda.  I have no way of knowing if this is accurate, but at 62 and having made a living as a single woman for the past 20+ years, I feel as if she wouldn't want to be beholden to anyone, even her own daughter.

In 1941, Jennie is at it again.  She divorces Peter Amey and marries Elmer Johnson. Like her father, she seems unable to find long-lasting relationships, but she insists on remarrying.  I wonder what Leona thought of it.  Did she advise her daughter, who was an extremely well-educated woman for the time, that there was no reason to depend on a man? Perhaps, but she must have at least gotten along with Jennie's husbands.  The 1945 Florida census indicates Leona was living with Elmer and Jennie.  Again, I like to think of her spending the day in her dressing gown, enjoying a good book and a cup of tea.  Maybe she even made an occasional dinner for the three of them.

As with Jennie, I have very little information about Leona after 1945. All I know is that Leona died in Oyster Bay, New York, the 24th of May 1955.  She was 78 years old and had lived more than half her life as a single woman.  But, in those 40 or so years, she saw so much more of the country than the Midwest view her husband had afforded her.  Maybe she hobnobbed with important clients during her time as a corsetiere. Maybe she enjoyed the salt breeze through her hair as she walked the beaches of Florida.  One thing is certain (to me, at least). Leona's solitude was not lonely, but it was most definitely on her own terms.