Another child of whose existence I was unaware before a cemetery visit is Virginia Schumacher, a first cousin twice removed. The ninth child of John H. and Kathryn N. (Swing) Schumacher, she was born (April 27) and died in 1934. Kathryn’s older brother, Albert Carl Swing, was my great-grandfather.
I never met Aunt Katie myself, but my mother and grandmother, her great-niece and niece, stopped to see her in an assisted living home in Eureka, Illinois, in 1985. After dinner that evening Aunt Katie recited from memory a 10-minute poem she had learned in the fourth grade. She was 91 years old at the time and would live another decade. She was then laid to rest in the Apostolic Christian Cemetery in Roanoke, Illinois, near where her daughter had been buried six decades earlier.
The weekend got away from me! I’ll try giving you a call tomorrow.
Came across your writings online RE Kathryn Swing Schumacher & Virginia Schumacher (my mother and sister). I’d like to get in touch with you. I live in Peoria, IL. Phone: 309.693.6844
Hi Shirley – I’d love to connect with you – I’ll give you a call this weekend, or my email address is pruesarn@gmail.com if you want to contact me that way. You and my mom are first cousins once removed; I’ll have to get her to refresh my memory on her stories of “Aunt Katie.”