A Place in Time

Mary Jane ("Dainty") Graham, My Great-Aunt

I know my friend John Wackman, who died suddenly January 8, is somewhere happily reveling in the message of Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb,” especially its inspirational ending,

John Wackman

 

When day comes we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid 

The new dawn blooms as we free it 

For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it 

If only we’re brave enough to be it 

John was inspirational to all he met, and those of us who cherished him are now emboldened to embrace what he did inspire, to continue with joy the work we know we must do and be brave enough to commit to our best selves. 

I knew him well enough to know what he wanted from me and what he appreciated about me and others. I still feel that mandate from him and will never forget it. When we talked, he encouraged me to express my impulses in writing, and with his encouragement I re-activated this blog, posting about the our mutual interest in movies of a certain kind. A pet project of mine was to start a blog of movie reviews by women. It was clear to both of us that women see totally different things in movies from those which male reviewers praise. He put me in touch with a site that would help promote such a blog, and he was confident it was a good idea. 

Trying to round up other female movie critics, I had come to an impasse, so I began posting on my blog—Feminist notions and reviews, as well as the biographies of many of the first-wave Feminist women from the 19th century. You can find the thumbnail sketches among the offbeat posts about movies on this blog by scrolling down. I had read many books dealing with these women, who were courageous and ahead of their time and wanted to change the lot of their gender for future generations. 

Back to John. Because I recently was given this photograph and have a nagging need to write something about it,  he would want me to create a post about my great-aunt Mary Jane Graham, whom I never even heard of until a few weeks ago. My grandfather, John Richard Graham, born in 1874, was living an intolerable life in poverty on a farm in Martinsville, Illinois, with three brothers, two sisters, a tyrannical, cruel father and a long-suffering mother. He ran away from home in his early 20s and built a life in a section of the country distant from his family of origin and never revealed to them where he was. He found his way to Mobile, Alabama, married my grandmother and never spoke of his harsh childhood or the family he left behind. 

Mary Jane was about 12 when her oldest brother John Richard left home. She and her sister and brothers saw him ride off on a horse he’d stolen from the barn, all of them waving goodbye to him from the fence. They all were thinking he’d come back in a day or so. But he never did, and they never knew what had happened to him. An incorrigible young man, his parents assumed John had met an early end. In time, each of his brothers also ran away from the farm. One of them named a son John, after his brother. 

I’ve since connected with a second cousin from that side of the family through a popular ancestry website. The cousin, Tony, was interested to learn what had happened to this long lost man, and my side of the family was overjoyed to meet John Richard Graham’s family of origin, although he died in 1950 and so had most of his brothers and sisters. My cousin sent me this photograph, among others, of Granddaddy’s baby sister, along with others. But it was Mary Jane who piqued my interest and set my imagination soaring. She was my great-aunt, and I never heard her name. The photo showed a look of self-confidence and directness that made her seem contemporary. What kind of a life did this beautiful young woman have? Was she as special as she looks in this picture? 

I considered how happy it would make me to learn that she was as intelligent as she looked, and that she was among those influenced by the 19th century women I admired. Born in 1881, Mary Jane, known in the family as “Dainty” because of her diminutive size among the brawny brothers, would have been of an age to have taken part in the Suffragist Movement and other projects of the day that mean so much to me. I wanted to create such a reality for her and turn her into a 19th century woman-hero. Just looking at that face and demeanor, so unlike the frozen, grim appearance of many of the photographs of people of her day, sent my mind to imagining a magnificent life for her. The mythology from my family, descendants of her older brother, was that our penchant for the theatrical and the performance arts came from the Graham side. Granddaddy was a card, and a great storyteller, and my mother and one of her brothers had participated in talent shows and Mardi Gras parades (to my friends in Mobile, her brother was one of the “Comic Cowboys”) in their youth—and my sister, brother and I all yearned for careers in the theatre at some point. Dainty’s looks would have made her a natural. You’ll notice she had a good face for the camera. 

Unfortunately Dainty’s reality did not jibe with my fantasy. In her early 20s she left the farm to marry a Kentucky farmer named John Calvin Walden in Versailles, Indiana. The story gets cloudy here. After one day she returned to the farm, telling her mother that she and John Calvin had fought violently and she was not going back to him. What was the fight about? That is lost to history. I can imagine many things, but I’ll leave it to you to fill in what might have transpired. The saddest part is that Mary Jane discovered she was pregnant and she went back to this husband and had the baby—and nine more babies in years to come. 

The story only reminds me that no matter how I might admire the women of the 19th century, I cannot fathom what their lives were like. They were assumed to be inferior to men and more often than not they bought into that thinking. There was no valid birth control, no sex education, and not even very much education of any kind, especially not for women. In most cases, their only way out of poverty was to marry out of it. Mary Jane was not so fortunate. 

She remained with Walden for the rest of her life. Apparently she adjusted pretty well after all, but what was in her heart was not known. She died in 1935 at the age of 59, and the obituary describes her in glowing terms, stating she was “jolly and bright” and that her principle interests were in her home. Tony asked one of her daughters what she was like and one of the things she revealed was, “She swore like a sailor.” That rings true to me—my granddaddy had a salty way with words and I’m sure her other brothers did too. 

I cannot piece together a picture of the real Dainty Graham, but the photo still invites me to think of her in terms of possibilities, and to wrestle with the few facts I have of her reality. I love knowing I had a foremother who looked like that, and to wish for a few moments of time travel so I could meet her and get at least some of my questions answered.