They say it takes a village to rear a child. My 2nd great grandfather, John Alexander Dean, was sure in need of one when Mollie Boyce, his wife (and my 2nd great grandmother), died at the young age of 36 in 1906, leaving behind 5 children to raise.
The Deans lived up on a hill from Big Wheeling Creek in West Virginia. John was a blacksmith by trade who also took care of his own farm and raced horses on the side. Mollie was the homekeeper. In addition to raising 4 strapping young boys and 1 beautiful girl, the Deans had also given birth to a set of twins, 1 boy and 1 girl, Arthur and Mary.
Unfortunately, the twins took sick in infancy. The ailment they suffered from differs across sources from thrush to tuberculosis to measles, but whatever afflicted them turned fatal. Sadly, part of the reason may have been lack of medical attention, as they were not the only ones in dire straits.
Mollie, too, was dying. She had breast cancer. Rather than opting for surgery or treatment, she instructed their priest to give them all their last rites as practicing Irish Catholics. Her breast just rotted away, and she and the twins soon all passed away.
John was left a single parent. While the majority of the Dean kids were boys, and most probably old enough to be put to work on the farm, John was still a sudden widower in mourning. The change in family dynamics would have been extremely difficult, on all of them.
To help with the transition, Mollie's younger sister, Nora (Boyce) Murray, moved in as their housekeeper. Nora's husband had kept their family moving about over the years, seemingly chasing after jobs. At the time, he was working as a coal miner in Washington County, Pennsylvania. She had 5 children of her own. Most were lodged at a boarding school in Chartiers, Pennsylvania, and some may have been living with other relatives during this turbulent time. But at least they still had a living mother. Her nephews and niece in West Virginia no longer did, so she helped to fill that gap for them.
John remained a single father for another 6 years before remarrying. In 1912, he took a younger woman, Maggie Seaman, as his new wife. It was her first marriage, but she would need to assume the role of mother to John and Mollie's 5 kids instantaneously. It must have been a challenge she was up for, as the couple then grew their family much larger, adding 6 more children to the brood!
But the loss of John's first wife was not taken lightly. It left an imprint for many years to come. Even the family's religion changed due to Mollie and the twins' deaths. The Dean family went from being Catholic to Presbyterian, allegedly tied to two main reasons; one, that the priest seemingly did nothing to try and save the babies' lives but would only absolve them of their earthly sins, and two, that when Mollie's brother-in-law later died, the Catholic church refused to hold mass for him until Mollie's sister paid them a large sum of money because he was not a regular church-goer.
According to John and Mollie's granddaughter, Sheila (Dean) Pendleton, in a letter written on 10 April 2019, John's children, who had all been raised in the Catholic faith, denounced Catholicism from that moment on. The family burial patterns also changed from most taking place in Mt. Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Wheeling to later ones in Peninsula, Stone Church, or Sherrard cemeteries. Even John was not buried with his 1st wife Mollie at Mt. Calvary. His children opted for him to be at Peninsula instead.
The loss of Mollie and the twins really placed the Dean family through some hard times. The 6 years after his wife's death in which John remained single likely speaks to the amount of sorrow and grief that hit him and the children. It would have been a difficult period for all of them, as well as Mollie's sister Nora who stepped in to help, all of her children who had to sacrifice that time with their own mother, and of course Maggie Seaman who then took on the burden of an entire household when she became John's 2nd wife.
The Dean family's fortunes, while not completely turning around after Mollie's passing, at least evened out afterwards. And John's 2 families continued on as 1 throughout the years, all under the Dean banner. A century later, all of his living descendants (from both Mollie and Maggie's lines) were tracked down and informed we still all owned the mineral rights to the land that sat on Big Wheeling Creek.
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