Edward A. McMurray adored his paternal grandmother, Lynette (Payne) McMurray. He always thought of her as a kind and very refined lady. (Just look at the beautiful coat and hat she was wearing!)
Lynette was lovingly called, “Ameno,” or “Amno” as Ed noted in the photo album he created in the late 1940s. He used both spellings, and he always admitted he was not very good at spelling. (As a pharmacist, however, he could spell the generic names of a host of medicines!) “Amino” was how other family members spelled her nickname, but it was always pronounced, “Am-en-oh.”
Lynette (Payne) McMurray, possibly at Cass Lake, maybe in the 1930s? From Edward A. McMurray, Jr.’s photo album.
Lynette (Payne) McMurray (1879-1968) was the daughter of Edward Biron Payne and his wife Nanie Maria Burnell. She married William Elmer McMurray and they lived in Newton, Iowa, for all of their married life.
Notes, Sources, and References:
Family treasure chests of photos, from Ed McMurray’s photo album put together in the late 1940s, probably before he married. Perhaps the album was a way to introduce his Iowa family to his fiancé, Mary T. Helbling who lived in St. Louis, Missouri.
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Three generations of McMurray Dads: Dr. Edward A. McMurray, Sr. on left, his mother Lynette (Payne) McMurray holding his son Edward A. McMurray, Jr., and her husband and Dr. McMurray’s father, Will McMurray, on right. circa 1924-5.
McMurray Family(Click for Family Tree)
Today, Father’s Day, is a great day to get sentimental about the dads in our family- we wouldn’t be US without them!
Notes, Sources, and References:
Family treasure chest of photos.
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Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted.Descendants and researchers MAY download images and posts to share with their families, and use the information on their family trees or in family history books with a small number of reprints. Please make sure to credit and cite the information properly.Please contact us if you have any questions about copyright or use of our blog material.
Our Congress really does get important things done… and they really can work together if they try. Think back to 1990 when, with overwhelming approval, both Congress and the House passed S.J. #366 to declare ‘National Doctor’s Day.’ The bill had just been introduced that year, and Pres. George H.W. Bush signed it in October- less than 10 months from start to finish! Public Law 101-473 thus took effect on March 30, 1991, proclaiming March 30 as a national day to celebrate the contributions of physicians throughout our history.
We do have at least two ancestors who were physicians, and one uncle.
Dr. Edward A. McMurray and his wife Elna Mae Kenner McMurray in the 1939 Newton, Iowa City Directory. His office was in the bank building at that time, and his home was on S 8th Ave. W. (Click to enlarge.)
Dr. Edward A. McMurray
Both of the sons born to William Elmer McMurray and Lynette (Payne) McMurray, Edward A. McMurray (1900-1992) and his brother Herbert C. McMurray (1911-1989), became doctors.
Herbert McMurray, Newton (Iowa) High School Yearbook, 1929. Herbert was one of only six young men at Newton High to be inducted into the National Athletic Honorary Society. The Society required high academic achievement as well as outstanding athletic work. (Click to enlarge.)
Within the family, Edward was lovingly called, “The Doctor.” He specialized in Ear, Eye, Nose, and Throat problems, after a residency in New York City around 1940. (His son Edward A. McMurray, Jr., remembered going to the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City with him one summer during that residency.) Back then, ‘The Doctor’s’ specialty was known as “EENT.” Now that specialty has split- we have opthamologists- doctors who specialize in eyes only, and other doctors called ‘otorhinolaryngologists’ or ENTs, who cover the ear, nose, and throat areas. But Dr. McMurray could do it all, and his out-of-state grandchildren got their annual eye (and ENT) check when visiting him in Iowa!
I have already written a detailed post about the medical career of Dr. E. A. McMurray (1900-1992) in Newton, Iowa- see “Workday Wednesday- Dr. Edward A. McMurray.” His brother Herbert C. McMurray (1911-1989) practiced in the Ballwin, Missouri area.
Dr. John H. O’Brien
If you are a descendant of Gerard William/William Gerard “G. W.” Helbling (1882-1971), then you are also descended from Dr. John H. O’Brien (1808-1887), who was G.W.’s maternal (mother’s) grandfather. Dr. O’Brien was born in Ireland and attended the University of Dublin. A letter to the University has not provided any specific information about him as a student, although there was a Dr. John O’Brien working there as the Librarian of the King and Queen’s College of Physicians in 1841. This cannot be the same Dr. John O’Brien, as our known ancestor had immigrated to America in 1831. (Perhaps it was his father or an uncle? O’Brien is a common name in Ireland though so the Librarian may not have been related at all.)
Dr. O’Brien immigrated in 1831, and was in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania by 1832. It was a tough time to be a doctor in western Pennsylvania- a cholera epidemic, spread by contaminated water, was taking place on the frontier.
The inscription on his headstone was very appropriate for a physician:
Blessed is he that understandeth concerning
the needy and the poor, the Lord will deliver
him in the evil day. -XL Psalm
Dr. John H. O’Brien- headstone detail (Click to enlarge.)
Dr. O’Brien and his wife Jane (Neel) O’Brien were early settlers of the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania suburbs, and he was a successful doctor in the Pittsburgh area. (He is often listed as “J. H. O’Brien” in directories.) A previous post tells a bit more about Dr. O’Brien and his family: “Tombstone Tuesday- Dr. John H. O’Brien.” We will tell more of the family story in upcoming posts.
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All of these doctors would be amazed at today’s healthcare. Dr. E. A. McMurray, who died in 1992 but had been retired for a number of years, saw the beginnings of this incredible age of medicine. Dr. O’Brien, however, may have been paid in farm products, especially in his early years in America and while on the frontier, where hard cash was hard to come by. (If memory serves, Dr. McMurray was sometimes paid with goods as well, especially in his early years as a general practitioner in a small town with surrounding rural areas.) The ‘germ theory of disease’ was not fully understood or accepted until at least the 1850s, and really into the 1880s. John Snow wrote his theory of the transmission of cholera in 1849, and mapped cholera epidemics in London in the early 1850s. Not fully accepted even when he stopped the epidemic, it was too late for our Dr. O’Brien to use this information to help stem the disease in Western Pennsylvania. Viruses were discovered in the 1890s, after Dr. O’Brien’s death and just 10 years before Dr. E. A. McMurray was born. Some arsenic-based synthetic antibacterials had been used after 1907 for some diseases, but Dr. McMurray was already through medical school when penicillin was described in 1928; antibiotics were not widely available, however, until after World War II.
From using genetics to determine treatment, to the incredibly complex machines we have available for diagnosis and treatment, to how medical care is paid for (and how insurance companies think they know more about appropriate patient care than a personal doctor), today’s medicine would be astounding to all these learned doctors!
Notes, Sources, and References:
“Dublin Almanac and General Register of Ireland for the Year of Our Lord 1841,” p. 151, Ancestry.com.
More mentions of these men can be found on our blog by searching for the names “McMurray” or “O’Brien.”
For our younger readers, a brief explanation of our title is probably warranted. In earlier times, if someone got sick in a theater or hotel, the cry, “Is there a doctor in the house??” would go through the audience and hallways in order to get fast medical assistance to the victim. (It became a great comedy routine, too.) There were no cell phones, and even no phones at all, of course, depending on how far back one goes. In fact, calling 9-1-1 for emergency assistance was not instituted in the United States until 1968, and many communities did not have this resource available for its citizens even into the 1980s. (Probably before you were born.)
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Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted.Descendants and researchers MAY download images and posts to share with their families, and use the information on their family trees or in family history books with a small number of reprints. Please make sure to credit and cite the information properly.Please contact us if you have any questions about copyright of our blog material.
from community happenings to the style of their house.
Thankfully most family historians have moved away from being collectors of names and dates, and now want to tell the stories of their ancestors lives. Without detailed daily diaries or bundles of old letters, how do we learn about their lives? Newspapers are a great way to learn what was happening in a community, and an ancestor might be mentioned in a story or obituary. Also, browsing the pages around where one finds an ancestor article can help us to fill in the blanks about the little things in their lives- or even the big things.
Politics can be messy, as we all have experienced these last two years of this what seems to be a never-ending election. (In Great Britain, they only have a certain number of WEEKS they are allowed to campaign- that seems much more sensible.) Elections in our country’s history have been just as bad, maybe even worse than this one, but learning about them will help us to understand our ancestors a bit more.
Edward B.Payne (1847-1923) and his wife, Nanie M. (Burnell) Payne (1847-1898), lived in Leominster, Massachusetts in 1888, the year of this article. Their only child, Lynette Payne (who later married William Elmer McMurray), was about to turn nine years old just eight days after this article was published. Rev. Payne was the pastor of the First Congregational Unitarian Church in Leominster. Further down this newspaper column about Leominster happenings was a report of the Porter-Davis wedding at which he officiated, but a few moments of browsing the paper turned up this nugget of context.
In 1888, the Democratic incumbent President, Grover Cleveland, desired a second term. The Republican nominee was Benjamin Harrison, and US tariffs were the biggest issue of the campaign. Tariffs are a tax on imported goods, paid by the importer, and until the Federal Income Tax began in 1913, tariffs were the main source of federal income- up to 95% of the total at times.
1888 Presidential Election- Tariff Reform poster for Grover Cleveland, via Wikipedia; public domain.
Since high tariffs, paid by foreign manufacturers and importers, provided income to our federal government, they reduced the need for taxes to be paid by our citizens. Sounds good- make the other country pay, right? Well, the bad part is that U.S. tariffs make the cost of imported goods higher to the consumer in this country- the cost just gets passed through to the buyer, of course.
Tariffs that are high make domestic products more affordable than imports, and thus more desirable. Therefore those in U.S. industries, including factory workers, preferred high tariffs so that their own production had a lower comparative cost, and they could sell more. Our own citizens would be in high demand as workers, too.
Since the country was prospering and there were no wars going on in 1888, tariffs became THE issue. Grover Cleveland was adamant that high U.S. tariffs were hurting the consumer. He knew that our citizens felt it every time that they bought an imported item, and it hurt their pocketbook. Cleveland thus proposed a large tariff reduction to Congress.
(But then would personal taxes go up? The money has to come from somewhere…)
Harrison, however, felt that high tariffs protected our workers and manufacturers.
Grover Cleveland-Benjamin Harrison presidential (1888) campaign poster about the trade policy of the two candidates. The map supports the work of the Harrison campaign. via Wikipedia, public domain.
Benjamin Harrison was a Republican from Indiana, and he gave speeches from his front porch in Indianapolis- our Springsteen ancestors, such as Jefferson Springsteen and his son Abram Furman Springsteen, may have been a part of those crowds. The Springsteens were Democrats, so may have been part of the hecklers, although they may have had divided loyalties. Their party’s man, President Cleveland, was against military pensions. Since Jeff had at least 2 sons who had served in the Civil War, one of which was Abram, the Springsteens may not have been so happy with Cleveland, either.
Back in Leominster, Massachusetts, where Edward B.Payne and family were living, the factory workers, as expected, were supporting Harrison with his views of keeping tariffs high. It is interesting that the shirt factory ladies were going to “unfurl one of the finest flags in town, bearing the names of Harrison and Morton.” (Morton was the V.P. nominee.) Since women in most states could not legally vote in a Presidential election until 32 years later, it was one small way they could voice their political opinions and help influence the outcome.
Rev. Payne was a Christian Socialist in his later years, and surely, with his devotion to the poor, he exemplified that philosophy even earlier in life. He most likely would have favored a candidate who had the middle and lower classes in mind. (Later in California, he registered as a Socialist; we have found no other documentation of his political leanings.) He worked quite a lot with factory workers though, so he too may have had a difficult time deciding between candidates when he was ready to cast his ballot in the Cleveland-Harrison contest. Although just 41 years old in 1888, he also was a Civil War veteran, thus probably liked the idea of a military pension in his future- after all, preachers really do not make very much income.
In 1888, America still was one of the biggest manufacturers in the world, and the costs for our products were among the lowest in the world. So the tariff issue may not have been of such importance after all, but it was the loudest of the campaign.
Harrison carried Indiana as well as Massachusetts, and received the majority of electoral votes. Cleveland, however, received the majority of the popular votes. It was a close election, but as one of only four elections when the popular vote did not match the Electoral College vote, the Republican Benjamin Harrison became the next President of the United States.
The context of our ancestor’s lives in 1888 included tariffs; today, ours include trade agreements, which can affect prices and demand in similar ways.
Our ancestors needed to educate themselves well before they voted, just as we need to do today.
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Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted.Descendants and researchers MAY download images and posts to share with their families, and use the information on their family trees or in family history books with a small number of reprints. Please make sure to credit and cite the information properly.Please contact us if you have any questions about copyright or use of our blog material.
Bicycles & Bloomers, likely from the Berkeley Gazette, 1895.
Granted, the word, “bloomers” itself is sort of a funny word, maybe especially for Baby Boomers who think of them as long baggy underwear worn by our grandmas and great-grandmas. At age 7 we giggled about them when mentioned or when they were seen hanging out on the laundry line, filling with air as they blew in the breeze.
When “bloomers” were used as an article of women’s outer clothing back in the 1800s, however, it was revolutionary.
Women on bicycles- possibly c1900. Unknown source.
As discussed in our earlier post this week, Madness Monday: Clothes Make the Man- er, Woman!, modest, fashionable styles of dress back in the 1800s were really harmful to the health of women. In fact, one physician cautioned his students to NOT use female cadavers to study ‘normal’ anatomy, since corsets to elongate the torso, minimize the waist, and accentuate the bust moved women’s internal organs to places that nature had not intended!
1850s bloomer dress, via Wikipedia, public domain.
Many of the health movements of the 1840s suggested that women should wear less restrictive dress, and some women adopted a variation of the “Turkish dress” that had a shorter skirt over baggy trousers. As the outfit became more popular, in 1851, there was a “Bloomer Craze.” Amelia Bloomer published a temperance (no alcohol) journal and lived in Seneca Falls, New York. (That place will be familiar to those who know their women’s history.) Amelia adopted the dress and it was so popular that her name started being used for it, and she included how to make it in one of her journals. The craze was on, and even included a special banquet for only the textile workers in Lowell Massachusetts who wore bloomers to work, as it increased job safety to not have long skirts among the complex machinery of a mill. There were “Bloomer picnics,” balls where women wore bloomers, and even dress reform societies and institutes were founded.
Of course, wearing bloomers became tied with the Women’s Rights movement of the mid-to late-1800s, especially when Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wore bloomers. Some of those in the crowds at their speeches came to see the women’s dress more than hear their words. A few years later, because they were worried about distracting from their primary message, the movement’s leaders uncomfortably returned to ‘conventional’ dress.
Others, however, felt the new style was a moral choice, as this poem illustrates:
“And now I’m dressed like a little girl, in a dress both loose and short,
Oh with what freedom I can sing, and walk all ‘round about!
And when I get a little strength, some work I think I can do,
‘Twill give me health and comfort, and make me useful too.”
— The Sibyl magazine, April 15, 1859
Of course, there were critics who felt the costume usurped male authority- and privilege.
1890s- Satirical cigar box lid that was supposed to be somewhat titillating (ankles! calves!) to men as well. Sex and ‘bad’ girls sell, but they would never have wanted their good and modest wife to wear such things… Via Wikipedia, public domain.
But the bloomer dress continued to be worn, and was very useful to women in the west- even on the Iowa prairie. Wonder if some of our ancestors wore them? And, could our own Lynette Payne and her good friend Charmian Kittredge (who later married Jack London, the author) have been among the ‘natty’ ladies in bloomers that the 1895 Berkeley newspaper mentions? They both were living in Berkeley that year, and Lynette was just 16.
During the Civil War, some of the nurses wore bloomers as well- it was very useful for working in the field as well as hospitals. We do have a Civil War nurse in the family, Helen (Merrill) [Burkett] Burnell, who married Kingsley Abner Burnell after his first wife- our ancestor- passed away. Perhaps Helen wore the new dress to avoid long skirts dragging through pools of blood and other bodily fluids while working in a hospital or in the field. (Of course, they did not understand the germ theory of disease back then, so the long conventional dresses were not seen as a bad thing.)
Overall though, the bloomer dress went out of fashion after the Civil War, but was revived in the late 1880s and during the 1890s when it was realized that women needed healthy exercise, plus the bicycle came into fashion.
Bicycling ca1887- big wheels and a lady with a long skirt. Library of Congress via Wikipedia, public domain.
There were probably many accidents with long skirts caught up in spokes and chains and gears… so the bloomer dress became useful and more acceptable again.
German image from 1886 of tandem bicycle with women wearing bloomers. Wikipedia, public domain.
Of course, bloomers were still scandalous…
1897- English ad for a liniment. The advance of bloomer styles made riding a bit safer for women. It was still scandalous, thus maybe not so safe for men who were busy watching them instead of the road! Image via Wikipedia, public domain.
Of course, some women could not bring themselves to adopt the new fashion. It must have been very challenging to ride a bicycle in a long dress.
There were versions of bloomers for athletics and different versions for cycling, and another to wear out in public for comfort. By about 1900, some versions of bloomers eliminated the overskirt, and bloomer pants became shorter in the late 1920s. In the 1930s, women were allowed to wear shorter and tighter pants, more like men’s styles.
Those of us ‘of an age’ will remember the baggy bloomer-type gym shorts/jumpsuits required for PE in the 50s, 60s, and even into the 70s. Also, girls/women were not allowed to wear pants to school, work, or church until the 1970s or 80s. (In the winter girls could wear pants under their dresses to get to school, but had to remove them for the rest of the day until returning home.) Even in the mid-1970s, women in the military did not have a dress uniform that included pants, and the short skirts of the day had to be worn on watch even in the coldest of duty stations. Frost-bite, anyone?
“You’ve come a long way, baby!” was a promotional campaign for Virginia Slims cigarettes, marketed to women in the 1970s. One ad’s copy went on to say, “Virginia Slims – Slimmer than the fat cigarettes men smoke.”
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Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted.Descendants and researchers MAY download images and posts to share with their families, and use the information on their family trees or in family history books with a small number of reprints. Please make sure to credit and cite the information properly.Please contact us if you have any questions about copyright of our blog material.
