Laughables
Senior Registered
I believe I have posted before about some of the lives I have snippets of memory from. For the purpose of this post, I have been trying to research my life as Rachel, a domestic servant/nanny turned seamstress around the turn of the century. In that life, Rachel was blamed for one of the children under her care running into the street and being run over and killed by a carriage. The guilt and shame from that experience has carried with me through a life from the 40s-60s and my present life, and I struggle to this day with depression, anxiety, and a general exhaustion for life.
For some reason, this particular life has been on my mind a lot lately. The accident occurred in 1907 or 1908, and for weeks I have been trying to get my hands on anything I can find remotely Edwardian. I know that life took place in and around Philadelphia, at least during the time of these events, and have been looking at old pictures of Philadelphia from that time period, hoping something might look familiar enough to spark my memories. The truth is, despite all of the negativity that has carried with me, I remember very little about the life itself. I know about the accident, but I don't remember the child in particular - just a blur. I know what my role was, but I don't remember what the house looked like; I'll get brief flashes of a lamp, a bit of wallpaper, a staircase. I know that after the accident, Rachel could no longer work in domestic care and became a seamstress, but I have no idea what ultimately became of her. I have a memory of sitting in an old-fashioned looking room, a woman of about forty, listening to some type of jazz or swing on the radio and pinning up her hair, but the reflection in the mirror is blank. I often try meditating on this life, but find myself coming up empty.
I feel like I need to know more about this life in order to help me come to terms with all the negativity surrounding it. In researching, the closest link I could find was a woman named Rachel Ingram, working as a seamstress and living as a lodger with an older couple on the 1910 Philadelphia census. The age is right, name is right, the occupation is right, but this woman doesn't appear on any further censuses, or any prior ones. It's possible she married, but I don't think so - somehow, I just know that she wouldn't have, although I don't have any memories to be convinced of that. I found a few newspaper articles from the time documenting children who died by getting run over by carriages, but none of the articles mention a nanny or anything. I feel like the family I worked for had to have had some considerable wealth, if they employed a household staff, but the closest possibility for a match that I found for a family that lost their child, the father was a grocer and the house where they lived seems pretty average and almost kind of run-down (after finding the article which names the family, I searched the family on the census records, found their address in Philadelphia, and looked at the house via Google Maps - the internet is a wonderful thing!).
I'm not sure what I hope to accomplish with this post, except - does anyone have any advice or tips on furthering my research to find out if this person and these events really existed? I have this almost unbearable need for verification, almost as if I'm obsessed with it. I have exhausted ancestry.com (and my free trial has run out) and newspaper archives, census records, birth records, death records, etc. All I can find is that one name on the 1910 census. Anyone in the Philadelphia area - are there local records for things that happened in the past? Any message boards to question if local people remember hearing stories from their ancestors? Any suggestions at all?
For some reason, this particular life has been on my mind a lot lately. The accident occurred in 1907 or 1908, and for weeks I have been trying to get my hands on anything I can find remotely Edwardian. I know that life took place in and around Philadelphia, at least during the time of these events, and have been looking at old pictures of Philadelphia from that time period, hoping something might look familiar enough to spark my memories. The truth is, despite all of the negativity that has carried with me, I remember very little about the life itself. I know about the accident, but I don't remember the child in particular - just a blur. I know what my role was, but I don't remember what the house looked like; I'll get brief flashes of a lamp, a bit of wallpaper, a staircase. I know that after the accident, Rachel could no longer work in domestic care and became a seamstress, but I have no idea what ultimately became of her. I have a memory of sitting in an old-fashioned looking room, a woman of about forty, listening to some type of jazz or swing on the radio and pinning up her hair, but the reflection in the mirror is blank. I often try meditating on this life, but find myself coming up empty.
I feel like I need to know more about this life in order to help me come to terms with all the negativity surrounding it. In researching, the closest link I could find was a woman named Rachel Ingram, working as a seamstress and living as a lodger with an older couple on the 1910 Philadelphia census. The age is right, name is right, the occupation is right, but this woman doesn't appear on any further censuses, or any prior ones. It's possible she married, but I don't think so - somehow, I just know that she wouldn't have, although I don't have any memories to be convinced of that. I found a few newspaper articles from the time documenting children who died by getting run over by carriages, but none of the articles mention a nanny or anything. I feel like the family I worked for had to have had some considerable wealth, if they employed a household staff, but the closest possibility for a match that I found for a family that lost their child, the father was a grocer and the house where they lived seems pretty average and almost kind of run-down (after finding the article which names the family, I searched the family on the census records, found their address in Philadelphia, and looked at the house via Google Maps - the internet is a wonderful thing!).
I'm not sure what I hope to accomplish with this post, except - does anyone have any advice or tips on furthering my research to find out if this person and these events really existed? I have this almost unbearable need for verification, almost as if I'm obsessed with it. I have exhausted ancestry.com (and my free trial has run out) and newspaper archives, census records, birth records, death records, etc. All I can find is that one name on the 1910 census. Anyone in the Philadelphia area - are there local records for things that happened in the past? Any message boards to question if local people remember hearing stories from their ancestors? Any suggestions at all?
