Next year I’ll try to intersperse some more cheerful events in with all the dark ones. This one is about as grim as they come (and on Easter Sunday, no less). Margaret Lowry (or Marguerite Lowrey, or Margaret Lowery; sources differ), my sixth cousin three times removed, was born 11 January 1903 in Manito, Illinois, and died 99 years ago today in Spring Lake, Illinois. She is one of my paternal Illinois relatives, for the record; I have them on both sides. She was the daughter of John Clayton and Josephine West (Golden) Lowry. One of at least 8 children, Margaret’s was only one of several tragedies that befell the Lowry family. Her eldest sister Bessie died in 1919 at age 31; I haven’t been able to determine her cause of death. Then her brother George W. died in 1921 at age 29; his story would make its own blog post, as he and his wife (or possibly not his wife) died in a double suicide (or possibly a murder-suicide) when the house was filled with gas as one or both of them slept.
Margaret herself first appears in the 1910 census in Manito. Her father’s occupation is listed as cranesman on a dredge boat. He is 43 years old. Her mother appears as “Josie,” 38, married for 22 years and with 8 children, all of whom at that time were still living. Several of the older children had left home already; the remainder of the household consisted of Addie, 11; Marguerite, 7; and Blakesley, 2.
By 1920 the family had moved to Spring Lake, Illinois, and the household occupants had shifted again. John is now an electrical engineer at a pumping station; his wife is listed by her full name of Josephine; and living with them are sons George W., 27; Walter J., 24; Margaret H., 17; Blakesley G., 12; and a granddaughter, Mable J. Dwyer, 5.
Within a couple of years of this census enumeration, it appears that Margaret’s health took a turn for the worse. The newspaper articles telling of her death note that she had been in ill health “for several years” prior to 1925, and that she had been a patient at the Oak Knoll sanatorium near Mackinaw for a year. Interestingly, this is the same institution where William Jay Claton’s widow Magdalena would later find employment as a cook.
A few months before her death Margaret came home from the sanatorium but was still unwell; I wish I had more specific details about her illness. Whatever it was, it must have been too much for Margaret, as her ill health was determined to be the cause of what came next, according to an article that appeared in the Bloomington, Illinois Pantagraph on 1 April 1925. The day before, Margaret’s mother, along with three of her sisters and a brother all left home to travel to the Pekin Hospital to visit a sick grandchild there. Margaret’s father John also left home at 1:00 for his responsibilities at the pumping station where he was still employed. When he came home at 5:00 he found Margaret dead in the bedroom from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A coroner’s inquest was held, which is, presumably, where the official cause of Margaret’s despondency was determined to be her ill health. Two days later Margaret was buried in the Spring Lake Township Cemetery; she was 22.
I am, as always, struck by the thought of how hard it must have been for Margaret’s parents to go on after losing a third child. Josephine would die in 1932 and John in 1934; their daughter Addie outlived them but herself died at age 48. Most of the remaining Lowry children lived relatively long lives, mercifully: Jesse died at 81, Walter at 79, and “Blakesley,” or Blake Golden Lowry, at least made it to 62, though his wife died at 39 when the car in which she was riding crashed into a gasoline truck.
That is a lot of sorrow for one family. I have no words of my own to make any of it make sense. But it is Easter Sunday, and while that does not take away the pain the Lowry family endured, it can at least give consolation and hope in the face of tragedy.
