Meet The Fam
To understand my journey, we must look back to the years before my birth. In the small village of Scottdale, Pennsylvania, sits a Presbyterian Church. John H. Moorehead, my father, was made pastor of the United Presbyterian Church at the corner of Mulberry and Grant Streets in Scottdale, Pennsylvania, from January 1896 to November 1898. Mother was a young girl when she attended that church. When Father took over United Presbyterian, Mother was a church member and sang in the choir. The real story of the acquaintance of these two people is a vast departure from the often
repeated story of a chance meeting in Cincinnati when Mother was twenty years old and
Papa twenty-seven. This would be the “Official” story for all the coming years, but it is fiction.
Mama and Papa did not meet in Cincinnati or Xenia; they met in Scottdale, where
Father was the United Presbyterian Church pastor. When they first met,
Mother was just five months past turning 14, and Father was 26 going on 27.
Mama sang in the choir, though Mother’s voice would be likened to an angel's.
There was Mama, petite, pretty, and with an operatic soprano voice that
sounded just as an angel might have.
However, the Ohio version given in Charles Tranberg's biography is pure fiction.
Mother was the center of a controversy involving a 14-year-old girl having a romantic
relationship with a 26-year-old church pastor. Father may have been transferred to
Massachusetts due to this indiscretion. However, it is well documented that he was
pastor of the Scottdale church for two years before he went to Boston.
On January 1, 1899, Papa took up a post at First United Presbyterian Church in
Clinton, Massachusetts. A mere seven months later, Father would marry Mother, who
turned 16 the day before their marriage in Kentucky after giving her age 21 and
Papa gave his as 27. It was a marriage based on a lie from the very first day. One year and eleven months, five days after the marriage, their first child was born, and my name is Agnes, as I’m sure you recall.
My Sister Peggy
The Innocent Waif/Vamp
My sister Margaret Ann Moorehead was born in Hamilton, Ohio, on April 15, 1906.
She is the second daughter of John, Molly, and my sister.
She was the rebel in our family. She loved bohemian ideals.
Pegg danced ballet but is costumed in the manner of Isadora Duncan. Pegg's world is built
around the men she is intimate with. Outside of them, my sister felt like she didn’t exist.
As I watched my sister become a young woman, it was apparent that Pegg was mentally frail but a nonconformist nonetheless. Peggy and Mother both pushed Pegg to be accomplished.
Pegg played the violin beautifully and went from wanting to be in the first
seat and first chair to “school” in Aurora, Illinois. Although I can obtain no explanations
from my parents, I believe that this whole situation was a result of Peggy becoming pregnant.
I refer to it as her little self-disgrace.
Pegg was docile and compliant when she returned to us in 1924. Pegg was
expected to be an artist, singing and dancing, and was the first chair violinist
in an orchestra. Peggy retreated from all of it in 1924; by 1928, she had become a nurse.
Like me, my sister Peggy is the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. She would not be tied down and did as she pleased until Mother took away that option in 1923. Pegg spoke from a place of moral repression. Mother’s constant demands on her abilities push her to the edge, and
she is or will become mentally unbalanced. This I know.
I told Pegg that earning vamp awards during your first year of high school marks you.
Oh yes, it’s all done in fun, but not truly. I know that people around Peggy
must have said, “She’s “boy crazy.” She is a show-off. She is stuck up because
she’s a preacher's kid. She’s a stick in the mud. She isn’t as bright as she thinks
she is. She doesn’t listen to good advice. She is a sullied woman.
She was none of these things! She was my sister.
Pegg dances beautifully en pointe. Graceful and delicate, Pegg embodied all
the ideals of feminine beauty established by the Victorians. Pegg was outgoing, friendly, bohemian, intelligent, accomplished, and a social butterfly;
people enjoyed her. I’m awkward, shy, timid, and intelligent, and I terrify most folks just by looking at them.
I am the anti-Peggy.
My sister Peggy had a cherub-like face that she used to her advantage. Once I was in
college, Pegg was forced to handle things independently and had no idea what she
was getting into. We were close, but that changed when I left home.
Pegg never worried about what people would think. She used to joke
that I was trying to take Aunt Cam’s place as the family “old maid.”
In our time, you had to wear a uniform for school, and Pegg was always neat.
When the weather was fine when she got home, she would dance in the backyard
wrapped in gauze, ala Duncan. Mother was mortified, and that conversation did not go well.
Pegg was clingy with her boyfriends. She hung on them like a towel. Mother always
says Pegg would very nearly run when she walked. That drove Mama to distraction.
Pegg couldn’t get out of a chair without jumping up, and it drove Mother up the wall as well,
but she always sat like a lady. Peggy was a soprano. Her voice was soft and high.
So melodic. I guess today, you’d say my sister suffered from anxiety and often got very sad.
Pegg never could handle trouble well. For a short time before her death, she even
questioned her mind.
While we were more privileged than many, we had to live under a microscope.
Peggy's behavior after becoming a teenager was contrary, and her mother hated that.
Peg played the violin, danced en pointe, and was exceptional at public speaking.
My dear, sweet sister was far more fragile than we had known. Deciding to commit
suicide is rarely provoked by one thing. Mother has always insisted it was Frank
who caused Peggy to kill herself, but the fact remains Pegg killed herself.
If there is anyone to blame for her situation, it’s our parents. Father
was wrapped up in his church, and Mother lived vicariously through Peggy
while being a good, stern Presbyterian minister's wife with my baby sister.
There is no apparent reason because nobody has ever given me one on why Peg
was forcibly removed from high school in Reedsburg and sent to Aurora, Illinois.
Did she have a breakdown over Marden? Did she have a breakdown
over the pressure of school?
She returned in April of 1924 and did not return to Reedsburg High School—
none of the above. Peg likely came up pregnant by one Mr. Washauer and went to
“school” to give birth. Mother and Father never entrusted me with that secret.
Peg was a miniature of our mother. She spent most of her life pushing the envelope,
so to speak. I disapproved of my sister’s behavior, but she was still my sister, but
I loved her. I argued with Peggy about her many “affairs,” I had never seen
my sister get that angry. Pegg insisted that I had never loved a man like her.
It wasn’t true, and I reminded her that my life is my business, just like hers.
Behind the Curtain: An Observation By the Author
Between August 1924 and 1926, Pegg and Agnes traveled to their grandparents together,
but that didn't happen again after the summer of 1926. Was this the beginning of a division
between the sisters? Why did Peggy’s death destroy John, and why did Molly seem
bewildered by it? Molly does not let Peggy’s death break her, while John allows
her death to hurt him deeply.
Peggy and Agnes are not a part of any news articles during the 1900s.
Not one single mention of either, even once they move to the relative
metropolis of St. Louis. You read about John doing everything from
Sunday preaching to addressing young girls working in a shoe factory.
He campaigned for prohibition, gave sermons, was the chaplain for the YMCA, attended
prestigious religious conferences, and thrived in the highly populated
environment of St. Louis.
Molly became a well-known singer in St. Louis, giving recitals and singing at church.
Molly joined every beneficial women's group she could. Molly lived for attention, and
St. Louis served up to her on a platter.
Father
My father, John Henderson Moorehead, was born in Muskingum, Ohio, on April 22, 1869.
My grandfather, Robert, was 30, and my grandmother, Hannah, was 27. On
August 31, 1899, Father married Mary Molly McCauley in Newport, Kentucky.
There were only two children, Peggy and I. Papa died on May 22, 1938, in Dayton, Ohio
at the age of 69 and is buried there.
Father was a Presbyterian minister. He was to have been well-loved by his parishioners
in every church where he held the pastorate. Papa was compassionate, understanding,
peaceful, dedicated to God, and much more complex than your average minister.
Papa was born on my grandparent's farm in Ohio in 1869. Growing up on a farm
taught him many things, such as the value of hard work, the fickle nature of life, an
attachment to and appreciation of the land, and how to work with others.
Papa was intelligent; that is a given. If you have read anything he wrote,
you know that immediately. My uncles stayed on the farm, but Papa did attend college
. He attended the same college as I attended. Muskingum was a Moorehead
family ritual; by all logic, it should be. Our family was instrumental in the
establishment of the school.
Papa attended Xenia Theological Seminary, which, like Muskingum, was
a Moorehead school as well. When Papa was there, Uncle William Gilogly Moorehead
was the college president and held that position for twenty-two years. Papa
attended Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, to earn his advanced degree.
Monmouth, like Muskingum and Xenia, is a Presbyterian institution.
If Papa was anything, he was foremost a Presbyte. It has often been said
that Presbyterians tend to be stern in their faith and will rebuke others
for not having the same zeal. I’ve never witnessed this. Mind you, Papa was not
a bible pounding zealot. Instead, he was more of a shepherd gently leading his flock.
My father was fantastic, and I loved him more than anything.
Mother
My mother, Mary Molly McCauley, was born in Leechburg, Pennsylvania,
on August 25, 1883. My grandfather, Terence, was 18, and my grandmother,
Margaret was 22. On August 31, 1899, Mama married Papa in Newport,
Kentucky. Mother died on June 8, 1990, in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, at the age of 1
06 and was buried in Dayton, Ohio.
Mother was a petite, delicate little velvet-covered sledgehammer. She was sweet
and demure in appearance, but she had the internal fire of a woman determined to
control her destiny and the destiny of everyone who mattered to her. If willpower made
you turn purple, Mama would be the brightest purple you ever saw. Mother was a
highly complex woman. She was the choir director and Sunday school teacher
but thought little about how she twisted the truth herself. She was loud, opinionated,
and had a flair for the dramatic. It runs in the family. She was often said to be the only
person who could upstage me. he was described by a gentleman who knew her in
Reedsburg as "an imposing lady with strong opinions and who is very outspoken.” I greatly
admire my mother and hold her in high esteem. However, like many fundamentalists,
Mama could demonstrate a lack of sensitivity and love for others.
Despite some deep flaws, her life, for the most part, was lived for the glory of God
Papa was the shy and retiring one unless he was in his pulpit.
Mother was his polar opposite. He punished me by making me read and
Mama punished me by smacking me. Ma’s tiny hand could be brilliant when she smacked you.
Mother used words as weapons and once told me that "the wrong daughter died."
I cried for days over that. Additionally, Pegg and I spent just about every summer with our grandparents. Pegg got shipped off at 8 to spend the summer with family and friends when
we lived in Hamilton, Ohio. I lived an entire year with my Aunt and uncle
in Denver because I got a whooping cough.
Mother’s family consisted of blue-collar working class, tough folk.
My grandparents were Irish immigrants who worked in the steel mills of Pittsburgh.
Working in the mills was not for the faint of heart. It was a job that had you working around open flames in an environment where the noise level was guaranteed to deafen
you eventually, provided the mill didn’t kill you first. Safety equipment was non-existent.
The only protective gear a mill worker had was the two layers of woolen long
johns they wore under their clothes. Yes, I said wool, and remember that the
material, be it iron or steel, was molten, meaning the metal's temperature
was between 2500 and 2900 degrees Fahrenheit. When you add that heat to a summer
day, you look at men working inside in temperatures over 100 degrees in two layers of
wool and your clothing. The work was brutal at best and fatal at its worst. This is
what my mother's grandfather and her father dealt with day after day. You'd not
come home jolly after a day, a twelve-hour day, in a steel mill.
You also had to figure out how to live on a salary of about $400.00 yearly.
This is the life that Mother and Aunt Agnes were born into.
Grandmother McCauley was left to raise their mother and her sister Agnes primarily alone. Grandma spent most of her married life not living with Grandpa. She had
total control of Mother and Aunt Agnes, a responsibility that was likely overwhelming
and not appreciated nor desired by either of them. Mother married five days
after her 15th birthday, and Aunt Agnes was married with a child by age 14.
I’ve read psychology books that are terribly useful; they usually
occur when life at home is overwrought, stressful, or abusive. Grandmother’s
family was Irish Catholic, and if they were like every traditional Irish family, the
idea of sparing the rod and spoiling the child was ingrained in them by the church.
The harshness of Mother’s childhood, shaped by her mother's strict Irish Catholic
upbringing of her mother and the absence of her father, is a testament to
her resilience and determination.
My mother was a woman who was concerned with appearances. It makes sense that
when you come from a very blue-collar family and marry into a family who,
while they are farmers, are educated and well-spoken, you would be sensitive to
appearances. One thing she could not hide was her accent.
It is peculiar to southwestern Pennsylvania, where Mama was born.
Today, I believe they call it “Pittsburghese.” Fortunately, the area Papa’s family lived in
was not a stranger to it, but blue-collar folk in the area she grew up in had a hefty
version thick as mud.
Church was a respite from all the stress and strain of life for Mama,
and it’s not surprising that she married a preacher like Papa. T
hey loved each other; he rescued her from a life of pure, unrelenting drudgery.
Mother was a fighter, born to fighters and raised to fight. When she had an opportunity to
escape, she went without ever looking back, and her mother followed her almost
immediately. Much to her dismay, I imagine. Aunt Agnes fled Scottdale in 1911
after divorcing her first husband and immediately marrying her second
husband, Arthur Scott, in New Kensington, Pennsylvania. Arthur died in 1916.
By 1920, Aunt Agnes was in Canton, Ohio, with her grandmother. It seemed that
neither could escape the confines of grandmother's personality for long.
The tragedy was that as mother aged, she became her mother.
Domineering, overbearing, and often self-important while attempting to
have the music career that she had always dreamed of, and acting
as choir director and music director for the churches that Papa went on to minister at.
Grandma McCauley
The Wicked Grandmother
When Grandma McCauley was born on April 29, 1861, in Armstrong, Pennsylvania,
Her father, Patrick, was 43, and her mother, Mary, was 38. Between 1883 and 1885,
she had two daughters with Grandpa McCauley: my mother, Mother, and her sister,
Aunt Agnes. Grandma died on February 16, 1953, at the age of 91, in Canton, Ohio,
and was buried there.
I never spent much time with Grandmother McCauley, but I know she was
stern, hard to live with, controlling, invisible, and mobile because she moved
a lot when we were young. She was relentless and a gypsy. Grandmother
McCauley was complex and unforgiving with everyone, including Mama.
I rarely, if ever, talk about her, but I loved Grandpa and talked about him
all the time. Grandmother was accustomed to being in charge.
She was the daughter of an Irish blue-collar worker and was comfortable with
that lifestyle enough to move from place to place without income. Grandmother
McCauley never worked, and she left school in the fifth grade.
Author Observation: Margaret Doyle McCauley
Margaret Doyle, a single mother with two children and no visible means of support, left
a lasting impact on her descendants. Her children, Molly and Agnes, married
young to escape her stern and controlling presence. Molly, at 16, and
Agnes, at 12, had a child by 13, a testament to their harsh and hardscrabble life.
Despite the challenges, Margaret's influence on her family's history is undeniable.
Margaret was a survivor. She ruled with an iron fist. Her children will take care
of her whether they want to or not. Teddy left Margaret in Dayton in 1915
and moved about 90 miles away To Trumbull, Ohio. Although she was doubtless
irritated that Teddy did not live with her, she seemed happy without him.
Seven children were in the Doyle household, so she came up the hard way
in a house with seven siblings. Two brothers and five sisters. They didn’t have much.
We assume that Teddy and Margaret are married, but no record exists. She may
not be married after all. Her sister’s will, dated October 30, 1887, gives her
name as Margaret Doyle, but by this point, she had allegedly married
Terrence McCauley had two children with him.
Grandpa McCauley
The Invisible Man
When Grandpa McCauley was born on May 26, 1865, in
Manchester, Lancashire, England, was a dirty and dangerous place.
His father, Thomas, was 31, and his mother, Anne, was 34.
Grandpa married Grandma Doyle in around1880.
He died on July 30, 1927, in Warren, Ohio, at 62, in a mill accident and
was buried in Massillon, Ohio.
He and his family had tough lives in Manchester and Pennsylvania. Manchester was
choked with industry and people. It was a dirty, hard life. Grandpa had three siblings.
A brother who died as a child and two sisters, both of whom went to America
before Teddy, as he was known. He arrived on Ellis Island in 1873. His elder
sister was already in America and living in Leechburg, Pennsylvania.
He went to Pittsburgh for work, ultimately starting at a rolling mill.
Conditions there would have been equal to the mills he went to
work in as time went on.
Grandpa Moorehead
Civil War Veteran
Grandpa Moorehead was born in Ohio on October 29, 1838. His father, David, was 39, and his mother, Margaret, was 36. In 1868, he married my grandmother, Hannah Mariah
Humphrey. They had four children during their marriage. In January of 1929, Grandpa
had a nasty spill on some ice while he was in town. Being who he was, he insisted
he was fine and would have the doctor come when he got home. Grandpa had broken
his hip and was forced into bed. He died on April 30, 1929, at 90, in Muskingum, Ohio,
and was buried there.
Grandma Moorehead
House Keeper
My grandma, Hannah Mariah Humphrey, was born in Ohio on October 12, 1841. Her father, Marcus, was 30, and her mother, Amanda, was 32. She married Grandpa on November 8,1867. Grandma Moorehead was my favorite. She was sweet as sugar and so very good to Pegg and me. Grandma taught me how to make a feather bed, cook, and clean, all of which I would need to catch a good husband who would care for me.
Papa’s First Church
Papa received the informal call to his first pastorate in September 1895.
The call came from Westmoreland Presbyterian Church in Ligonier, Pennsylvania.
Ligonier is a borough of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.
Ligonier was founded in 1760. It has remained a small, quiet place. The population was
just over a thousand people. When I was a child, my parents took me
to Idelewid, Ligonier’s claim to fame since 1878: a pleasure park called Idlewild.
It is a prime example of the word bucolic. Papa arrived in 1895 to shepherd a tiny
church in that setting. The very first thing father did was contract a severe
case of typhoid, from which he did not wholly recover until December of 1896.
Authors Observation: Ligonier, Pennsylvania
Twenty-six miles from Ligonier is the borough of Scottdale, a slightly less
rustic place founded in 1872. At the turn of the century, Scottdale was a town
of industry. It was home to steel mills, iron and silver foundries, a casket factory,
a milk pasteurization plant, and numerous machine shops. By January 1896, Papa
was the pastor of the United Presbyterian Church in Scottdale, situated on the
corner of Mulberry and Grant. Father remained at this church until November 1898.
Outside the quaint borough of Scottdale lived a family whose last name was McCauley.
The family had four members: Terrence, the breadwinner; Margaret, the housewife;
and their two daughters, Molly and Cecelia Agnes. This family was like
any other working-class family. They appear to have been upright
and god-fearing. Please note that I use the words ‘appear to have been.” 1896, when
John Moorehead came to Scottdale, Molly McCauley was thirteen, and her sister
Cecelia Agnes was eleven. By November of 1898, when John left Scottdale,
Molly was 15 and Cecilia 13. What makes any of these things pertinent is
that nine months after John left Scottdale, he married Molly McCauley o
n August 31, 1899, in Newport, Kentucky.
John had received the call to go to Boston in April of 1899 and had no plan
to go there alone. John, the minister, and Molly, his 16-year-old and five-day-old
child bride lied about their respective ages on the marriage license. John, the
permit says, was twenty-six and Molly twenty-one. They began their married lives
in Boston with a lie. A pattern that would repeat itself several times in the
forty-nine years to follow.
In other biographies, we are told that Agnes performed for the first time in the
church in Clinton, Massachusetts, and that moment was when the entertainer
inside of her came to life. We have also been told that Agnes’ forays into storytelling
also began here. She would listen to the stories told to her by her mother and father
and then perform them. She inhabited the likes of “The Little Match Girl,” a tale Molly
would repeat constantly for the next seventy years.
In 1905, when Agnes was four years old, the church relocated
John to Hamilton, Ohio. Thus began Agnes’ love for Ohio. She was here with her
parents for eight years. Hamilton started to change Agnes into the person we
would all come to know. The family remained in Hamilton until May 1912, when
John accepted a new pastorate at First United Presbyterian church at Morgan
and Newstead Avenue. A new family member, Margaret Ann Moorehead, has
joined the family and was named after her mother. This relocation would begin
a rollercoaster ride that would last the next 17 years and take the whole family on a
ride with incredible highs and even greater lows.
On May 19, 1912, John preached his first sermon at First United Presbyterian in
St. Louis, initiating the family's long and often troubling tenure there.
By December 12, 1915, Molly had settled into her position in John’s
church and joined several women’s clubs. For Molly, the various clubs allowed her
to sing to an audience often several times a month. Molly was content with that.
Aggie and Peggy went off to their respective educational institutions.
John happily worked in a big church with a large congregation that offered
many different types of counseling and preaching individually to people seeking
his counsel. In June of 1915, John would give the invocation for the Jubilee Celebration
honoring seventy-five years of existence for First United Presbyterian. The next seven
years would be some of the most outwardly and inwardly peaceful years this
family would ever know. It was during this period that John became a full-fledged
prohibitionist. He even served as President of the Evangelical Alliance.
There was peace in the valley, and the family was buried waist-deep in that.
Even Molly had begun doing things that would later be considered odd. On a
beautiful day in May, Molly Moorehead dressed herself as a clown during a
performance for the Morning Choral Club. Molly sang comic songs.
I know it made me shiver, too, so don’t feel bad.
Aunt Agnes
She Escaped Early
My Aunt Agnes Cecelia McCauley Spang Scott, a woman of mystery, had her
first and only child at the age of twelve, just a month before her thirteenth birthday. Her
education was abruptly cut short in the seventh grade despite her claim of eight
years of learning. My cousin Doyle was born in Pennsylvania, and Aunt Agnes
faced the heart-wrenching enigma of divorce at 26 in August 1911, leaving her
with a 13-year-old son and no visible means of support. I was just
heartbroken for her. Mother offered help, but Aunt Agnes refused.
Aunt Cam
She Didn’t Need To Escape
Camilla Urso Moorehead, Aunt Cam to me, was born on March 15, 1877, in
Rich Hill, Muskingum, Ohio. My Aunt Cam was a force of nature.
Aunt Cam was the only girl in the family subject to the whims of her three brothers.
Aunt Cam had an unequaled training in anticipating her brother's pranks. She became
a skilled observer by watching her brother's every move to prepare herself for whatever
tomfoolery they had cooked up. Aunt Cam played the piano beautifully.
She could cook, sew, and keep a house exceeding the standards
Grandma Moorehead set. Aunt Cam was my hero. I wanted to be just like her,
but Peg was scared to death of her.
Aunt Cam was an educated woman. She attended Muskingum as well.
She graduated with a degree in Music in June of 1897. For years, Aunt Cam
was the local music teacher. Aunt Cam was the pianist for the Presbyterian
Church in New Concord. She was also a member of the “The Rich Hill Farmers Institute executive committee.” Aunt Cam was everywhere all the time. Aunt Cam did
marry, much to the sorrow of her brothers, in 1912 Harold Webster Bay. Like me, Aunt
Cam put up with nearly twenty years of a man who was cruel and neglected her in
the extreme. Aunt Cam divorced him in 1931 in Ohio. I felt awful for her and knew
what she was enduring in his hands.
Authors Observation: Camilla Urso Moorehead
Those who have heard the recording "The Lavender Lady" know of "Aunt Cam."
In a loving reference to her father's sister, Camilla Moorehead, Agnes speaks of
her by relating anecdotes about her. First, the peculiar nature of her speaking voice,
and second, her concern about her niece's desire to become an actress.
"John, she'll get her name in the paper."
Truthfully, I had not considered "Aunt Cam" to greatly influence Agnes.
She spent much time around her but never spoke about her
other than her one-woman show. I was surprised when I returned to
the family tree to finish things I had started ages ago.
I had always been told that "Aunt Cam" was a spinster, but not so much.
Not only was "Aunt Cam" not a spinster, but there are creepy similarities
between her and her famous niece. I must call them creepy because they
are practically identical, save one or two small things.
Camilla Urso Moorehead married Harold Webster Bay in Muskingum on May 17, 1912.
County, Ohio. It's not unusual to be married, but no, sir, it isn't. What makes this
remarkable is the age of the groom and the date they chose to be married.
You see, May 17, 1912, was Harold's twenty-first birthday. Camilla was
14 years older than her groom. She was thirty-five.
Okay, it's creepy on two, no, three levels.
Level One: Agnes married her first husband on his birthday. True, although she was
not two years older than him...but still, his birthday, really....was she following
her Aunt's lead? I think so.
Level Two: Agnes began divorce proceedings against Jack Lee two weeks after
their nineteenth wedding anniversary. "Aunt Cam" divorced Harold Bay, and she
did it after exactly nineteen years of marriage. By December of 1931, Harold
had remarried.
Level Three: Hello, is it a coincidence that "Aunt Cam" married a man 14 years
her junior, and her niece's second husband was 17 years her junior, or if you
choose to believe Agnes' assumed birth year of 1906, 11 years her junior.
There are no coincidences here.
It is more than typical for one generation to follow the example of another.
Sometimes, we rely on the older generation to point the way. Agnes spent a whole
lot of time around her Aunt. I am sure that none of the similarities are accidental.
She relived what she had witnessed, bad endings and all. Neither woman should have married.
Both of them did it for the very same reasons. It was expected of them.
Both women were the only daughters of their respective parents.
Both women were substantially older than the norm when they married
and could not establish a marriage that lasted their whole lives.
I cannot say whether "Aunt Cam" had romantic friendships with any
female companions because she was spoken of very little, and her
life is remarkably free of documentation.
I have found no letters or books to indicate how she felt about anything.
She had no children, and her niece had no children. This is odd, considering
their reasons for marrying. They were the only girls, and they had to.
You would think they might feel compelled to have at least one biological
child, but no. John Moorehead was the
only one of Robert and Hannah Moorehead's children who had biological offspring.
Of his two girls, one survived and never had children. There are no clear direct
descendants of Robert and Hannah Moorehead.
The line stopped with Agnes, right, or did it?
Authors Observation: Being McCauley
One is immediately drawn into a web of intrigue when delving into Margaret
McCauley's household. One must ask what the dynamic was like and what the
unspoken tensions and unexpressed emotions that shaped their lives were.
1. Why did her husband leave and go to work 60 miles away in Warren, Ohio, at
Trumbull Steele? At the time of his death in 1927, he had been in Warren at
his wife’s admittance for twelve years—he would have left in 1915.
2. When one delves into Molly's life, one is left to ponder: What drove her to elope
to Kentucky with a man fourteen years her senior? And why did she, like John, falsify
her age on the marriage license when she was of legal age in Kentucky?
3. Why did Cecelia Agnes become pregnant at 12 and marry by 13?
What was so wrong in that house that she did this to herself? She was divorced
at 26 with a 13-year-old son without visible means of support or
observable skill. She had a seventh-grade education.
4. Cecelia Agnes Spang divorced William Ernest Spang for desertion on
Friday, August 25, 1911. By November 10, 1911, she and Arthur Putnam
Scott, who was Canadian, had obtained a marriage license in Pittsburgh.
5. Arthur Putnam Scott was an engineer. He was a well-known Canadian
engineer who came to America to work for steel and electric furnace companies.
While working, he died of pneumonia in 1916 in Montreal, Canada.
Authors Observation: Family Dynamics
When Agnes did her little dance on the lawn at Central High School, she lived in a
peaceful, thoughtful, and caring environment that nurtured her desire to be seen.
Take the story of the St. Louis Municipal Opera and how Aggie skipped class to audition.
Although she claimed she just went with a friend to be of support, I will never believe
she went there with any other intentions but to win that spot. I never cut class
just to help out a friend, and I doubt Agnes would, either. Fearing the worst, she
told her father and was greeted with the missive that they would have to get tickets
to see their daughter perform. That might have scared Agnes more than
cutting school. Molly envisioned herself as an entertainer and as blunt as a hammer.
Agnes must have been overwhelmed with fear that her mother would
pick her performance and her rehearsals apart. The one stipulation Agnes
received was that she had to be chaperoned by an adult. The adult would likely be
her mother. So Agnes had something to prove to both herself and her mother.
She worked, worked, and ultimately topped off the opening night of “Aida.”
by kicking so hard and high that her shoe came off and sailed through the
audience until it landed in a gentleman’s lap. Agnes ran off the stage mortified
but was told that her histrionics should have her up front with
the actors and singers, not in the dance chorus. The advice dispenser was correct.
The rest is history.
Families are complex, no matter the circumstances. The concerns are desires,
wishes, irritation, anger, and an enormous helping of confusion.
The Moorehead family was no different from any other: a father, a mother,
grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and children. Family is the foundation on which
the house of our lives is built. Minute by minute, day by day, and year by year, for
our entire existence on this tiny blue planet, we grow, learn, and move on.
But our foundation is always our family, from the one that made us to
the ones we will make ourselves.
Being Moorehead
The Moorehead family was the polar opposite of the McCauley-Doyle clan.
John was born in Ohio to farmer Robert Moorehead and his wife,
Hannah Humphrey. While the McCauley-Doyle clan was working in
the steel and tin mills that populated western Pennsylvania and all of
Ohio, the Mooreheads were peacefully farming in the lush greenery
of Eastern Ohio. Robert Henderson Moorehead was born in Ohio in 1838
to David Moorehead and his wife, Margaret Henderson. David and his wife
had four sons, including Robert. David and Margaret married in 1822 in
Muskingum County, Ohio. Their eldest son was Dr William G.
Moorehead Reverand, and important in his own right. Robert was the second son,
and Alfred and Hugh brought up the rear. Both David and Margaret were
born and raised in Western Pennsylvania. They moved to Ohio around the
same time and married shortly afterward.
Being Moorehead meant you were a solid, grounded individual with determination
and strength. You worked hard and were involved in your community's hilt. The Moorehead name is everywhere in Eastern Ohio. No person
there will look at you sideways when you say the name. Relatives and close cousins
still live there today. It was and still is a small, close-knit, quiet community filled with
pride in itself and duly so. It was more critical to Agnes than anywhere she had ever
lived. Her memories were deeply bound to the place itself. It was her soul's home.
Victorian children
Agnes once called herself the “despair of her mother.” She continued to say
that she was a tomboy. When she could go out of doors to play in her usually
light-colored summer dresses, she most often returned home having muddied,
grass-stained, or a combination of the two, her crisp, freshly ironed dress and hence
became her mother’s despair. Agnes had many Victorian values instilled in her,
but she was rebellious, you see, and was never wholly reined in by those values
as a child. Her senior years would see those values rigid and unforgiving, firmly
ensconced in her belief system.
Agnes’ family came right out of the Victorian Era. She even referred to her mother
as a “tiny Victorian lady.” Like so many born into this very regimented, tightly
controlled, heavily managed environment came children who were to be seen,
not heard. Victorian children were often subjected to extreme, at least by
today’s standards, levels of discipline. Sparing the rod and spoiling the
child was the catchphrase of Victorian parents. Mothers were saddled with
household management tasks, child-rearing, cleaning, food preparation, laundry,
ironing, shopping, entertaining, and other household chores that required their
attention. As a Victorian wife, your husband was free to support the family, and a
Victorian wife was free to ensure that’s all he had to be concerned with.
This world is the world into which both Agnes and her parents were born.
Agnes was the product of her great-grandparents' 19th-century child-rearing
practices, layered with Victorian ideals and peccadillos frosted in the absolute
decadence of the “Gay Nineties.” All of this was sprinkled liberally with the morality
of a Presbyterian minister and his child bride. John was born firmly in the middle
of the Victorian era, and Molly was raised toward the end, but both were raised with
Victorian ideals on how to live and who you should be. They may have watered down their
control of the children when they were small, although Agnes once said that Molly’s
tiny hand hurt when it hit. Some corporal punishment was meted out, but Molly
handled it, not John. John Moorehead was too gentle a man to raise his hand
to either of his daughters. Molly was reared in a chaotic environment, which more than
likely dealt out corporal punishment like lollipops. The two people, John and Molly,
were opposed in their child-rearing habits. As Agnes tells us, John would make
his children memorize psalms while sitting upon a stack of hard books,
and the punishment ended when they had memorized and recited the psalm
they were assigned, as punishment goes not bad at all. He was teaching them the
bible and teaching them how to memorize. The only real punishment was sitting on
a stack of books while doing it. This worked for Agnes, but whether or not it worked for
Peggy remains a matter for debate. With the memorization as “punishment,”
John unknowingly gave Aggie a skill that would serve her beautifully for the
rest of her life. As a result of it, she was never unprepared.
The McCauley-Doyle Conundrum
Agnes’ family mostly adhered to the mores of the time except when they didn’t.
I say that because there couldn’t be two more different families than the
Mooreheads and the McCauleys. These two groups of people were a little like a
Rorschach test. What you saw depended entirely on which part of the family you
were looking at, the day of the week, the time of the year, and whether they got
up on the right side of the bed. On the one hand, you had a solid farming family like
the Mooreheads of Ohio. They were hard-working, salt-of-the-earth folks
living in a rustic rural environment. The Moorehead family was religious, practical,
and well-off enough to live a good life. Their only blemish was Aunt Cam's
divorce, which happened post-1920.
Conversely, you had a mish-mash of uninterpretable blotches representing the
McCauleys and the Doyles of Leechburg, Pennsylvania. John Mooehead's family
was a bastion of stability compared to Molly's. Molly’s family was loud, pushy,
rough around the edges, and lived more like a pack than a family. Her parents were
dysfunctional on an epic level, in fact, a symphony of dysfunction.
Molly and her sister did their best to escape them by marrying extremely young.
Molly's mother, Margaret, was the family engineer. Dominant to a fault.
While her father, Teddy, comes across as a man forced into a marriage and would
never be happy with it. Molly married immediately after she turned sixteen to a man
much older than she, and Cecelia was married with a young child by age fifteen.
Molly's father did his best to stay out of the house as much as possible by living
separately from his wife most of the time. Molly's life before marrying John was a
roller coaster driven by an overbearing mother who bridled her daughters
and micromanaged their lives.
Terrence McCauley, Aggie’s grandfather, hailed from Manchester, England.
Teddy’s father was Thomas McCauley. Thomas was a tailor, and his wife,
Anne Phillips was a weaver. His elder sister, Mary Jane, was also a
weaver at the young age of fifteen. Teddy had a brother who died very young and
two sisters who also came to America and settled in Leechburg, Pennsylvania.
Terrence was given the nickname "Teddy." It is more than likely his middle name
was Edward. At 19, Teddy was working in a rolling mill. He would do This type of
work for the rest of his life. Teddy was solidly in the steel industry in
Pennsylvania and continued working in a mill in Ohio until he died.
But the most important thing that the McAuley family passed on was a
tendency toward suicide.
Agnes’ tremendous Aunt Mary Jane McCauley died in 1904, but on June 27, 1911,
four years later, her daughter Lucy committed suicide. Lucy, like Peggy, chose
the most painful way to die possible: carbolic acid. According to Dr. Francis
Fronzak, carbolic acid is “one of the swiftest of the deadly poisons,” and he says
that the only way to survive it, not guaranteed, is to have assistance immediately.
Oddly enough, it can be overridden with simple alcohol, but it has to happen
immediately after consumption. Lucy Coles Logan died at home, and no time of death
is listed on her death certificate. Lucy was only thirty-five years old.
She was married, but clearly, either the marriage was troubled or Lucy
had a mental illness. Honestly, it could be both. She died alone in her home.
The McCauley family also had a serial marriage to cope with, as did the
great-aunt mentioned above, Mary Jane McCauley. Mary Jane was married four times.
Her last marriage was to Michael DeMarco in the city of Chicago.
Mary Jane died there in 1904 and was survived by two husbands and seven children.
The McCauleys, like every other family, had issues, and while we can only
focus on one or two here, being a fly on the wall in any of their homes would
have been incredibly interesting. Teddy and his sister Kitty lived the most ordinary
lives of the three. Blue-collar workers in England were a rough and ready bunch.
Manchester was no walk in the park to live in, and you had to fight and scrap to
get anywhere. These things were ingrained in all of the McCauley children.
They certainly lived up to the idea of it.
Meanwhile, life was just as intense and turmoil-ridden in the Doyle family.
Molly’s mother was Margaret Doyle. The Doyle family worked in the mills.
If you were a male resident of Pennsylvania in the late nineteenth and twentieth
century, the chances are a mill of some type employed you. Margaret Doyle had two
brothers and four sisters. Margaret was a force of nature. Most Irish women are
Irish, and she was one hundred percent Irish. Her eldest brother was born in
Ireland and the rest of the children were born in America. The family emigrated
at the beginning of the potato famine in Ireland. Irish families are incredibly
unique in the way they deal with one another. You can have fistfights between
family members, but Heaven can help anybody who is not family if they try to break it up
. Put a hand on either of the two, scrapping they’ll forget what they were fighting
over and turn their ire on the person or persons who interfered with their
row. Oddly enough, Margaret’s family was not of the Presbyterian ilk. No, indeed,
they were Catholics, not Presbytes, and honestly, I cannot imagine a worse
combination than Terrence and Margaret. One Irish Catholic and one
English Protestant. Seriously, what could go wrong?
The Doyle family had one son who made a good name for himself.
He was the oldest, and his name was Moses J Doyle. While she was on the radio
doing “Joyce Jordan Girl Intern,” Agnes was discussed in the papers as she has
many family members in the medical field. She, as usual, exaggerated and
upped the number and type of family members in the medical profession. Aggie
had two cousins, sons of Moses Doyle, who were doctors. Their names were
Dr. Franklin Moore Doyle and Dr. Paul Boyton Doyle. Frank died in 1911, and his
Brother Paul in 1922. While she certainly knew them or knew of them, they were
cousins about thirty years her senior, and neither of them was living when the
the article was written in the 1930s as newspaper propaganda for “Joyce Jordan.”
Molly was a sweet woman, primarily, but more than one person has described
her as driven, a bit of a zealot, and extraordinarily opinionated. Molly never
allowed anyone to forget that John was a Presbyterian minister. She took to
Presbyterianism with impressive enthusiasm. John would be what we described
as “the quiet one.” He was the polar opposite of his wife. John was peaceful,
compassionate, god-fearing, and a genuinely lovely fellow. Ironically, the combination
of the qualities of her parents would be two of the things that would lift Aggie
and put her in a very public spotlight. These qualities made Agnes who she was.
That was one of the most recognizable faces and voices of radio, Hollywood,
and television during the golden ages. Without their influence on Agnes,
she may have remained a schoolteacher for the rest of her life. Instead, she
embraced it and used it. We should all be very grateful for this combination
of Moorehead harmony with the outrageous nature of the McCauley
family; after all, it gave us Aggie.
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