Lemira Orilla McClure Casey

What I've learned in thirty years of tracing family history is that facts, like births and deaths, are recorded in black and white in official records to be absorbed by family searchers.  But personalities, like someone being fat and sassy or a frowning pessimist, can ony be learned through letters and oral history.  I only wish we had more of that as letters are nearly obsolete.

My great grandmother, Lemira Orilla McClure Casey, died a few years before I was born (l860-1933) so I did hear stories of her all my life.  She was even-tempered, seldom made meals on time, and had her grandchildren do chores and errands for her.  What no one talked about though, were the deaths she had to face.  Her mom died when she was 15.  Two siblings died before she was born and three more while she was growing up.  And her father, Dexter McClure, was a medical doctor.

Lemira married Dr. Henry Casey and three of their ten children died.  Grandpa talked about his little sister, Lemira's daughter, Louise, who died when she was two.  Grandpa's youngest child's middle name was Louise as is his granddaughter's and great granddaughter's.

What many of us remember about Lemira is her house.  It was built in the mid nineteenth century as the Tull Hotel next to the new railroad through Austin, Indiana, and purchased by Lemira's father about 1875.  I was born there.  It had four rooms up and four rooms down plus a large attic which served not only as storage space but also as the playroom for a few generations.  The attic walls were like an autograph book (also now obsolete), signed by my grandpa's generation as well as my mom's and mine.  Cousin Wilma recently wrote me this:  when she and Harold became engaged, she took him to Lemira's attic to memorialize the wedding date on the attic wall.  Aunt Ethyl heard them and called up the stairway asking if Wilma had Harold up there.  Then she told them to come down that instant.  She wasn't going to have any hanky panky in her attic.

At one time, Lemira and her husband owned a plot of land between the Pennsylvania Railroad and Highway 31 in Austin. Then after Grandpa married, they gave him land by Highway 31 to build a house.  When I was growing up, there was a path through the garden between Lemira's house and Grandpa's house.  When the family congregated in Austin, we kids slept in the "big house," Lemira's house, almost close enough to reach out the window and touch the trains as they screamed by in the night.

Now, after a tornado one year and fire another, the house is a four room, one-story, cottage.  It broke my heart to see a photo of it taken about fifteen years ago.  But it is still there at Plum Street and the railroad.

My mom said her grandpa Henry would ask her, when she was small, "where's your grandma?  I haven't had my dinner yet.  See if she is in the outhouse reading the Sears catalog."  Cousin Wilma wrote that when they visited, she always hoped she would get an invitation to have dinner with Minnie and Ulric (Lemira's son down the garden) since Lemira's meals were always late.

I wonder if Lemira may have been a bit passive aggressive.  She must have been pretty mad that her mom left her motherless and with four little sisters and brothers to bring up, including a two-year old and five year old.  After two of the sisters had grown, married Milhouse brothers (cousins of President Nixon), and moved to California, Lemira took the train across the country to visit them.  She also visited her sister who lived on a farm in Scott County, and it must have been by horse and buggy as neither she, nor her daughter-in-law, Minnie, who visited with her, drove cars.

Grandma Lemira wrote great letters and thankfully, some of her sisters and daughters saved them.

Sue<Hilda Casey<Ulric Casey<Lemira McClure