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Surnames: Hutchison
Classification: Query
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/DRH.2ACIB/2432
Message Board Post:
I am seeking to make contact with any possible descendants or relatives of Nannie Dee
Caldwell. (She was the daughter of Della Dee Hutchison and E.F.Caldwell--the subjects of
the excerpt below.) It is believed that Nannie Dee wed a Frank Kennedy and lived in Lake
Worth, Florida. There is a family
tradition that she was an accomplished tennis player and that she was employed by an
agricultural magazine.
Anyone with information is asked to correspond with
Yours truly,
Edward Hutchison
Jackson, MS
Further info available at
http://ehutchison.homestead.com/hp.html
COPY: excerpt from my book, "Yesterday."
DELLA D. HUTCHISON was born near the hamlet of Newport in Attala County,
MS, in November, 1887. She was barely 18 when, on December 6, 1905, she
married Elkanah Fisher Caldwell. He was a native of Southern Pines, North
Carolina, and came to Attala County as either an itinerant photographer or
movie projectionist.
Surviving letters written by Dee late in life demonstrate that she was an
intelligent and witty person. She was well-educated by the standards of her
day, having completed training to be a grammar school teacher. She once wrote
an unpublished book about imaginary dreams and was a fairly accomplished
pianist. On at least one occasion Dee appeared as a black-faced comedienne in
a local minstrel show.
Dee's marriage to E. F. Caldwell had ended in divorce by July, 1910, for she
appears on the census of that date as unmarried. It is unclear where she
divorced, but she returned home with a daughter, Nannie Dee, born on September
27, 1907.
It is possible that Dee lived, and perhaps taught, briefly in Memphis
following her divorce. She spent most of this period however in Newport,
living with other family members. Her youngest brother Tab was, at the time,
unmarried and took an important part in helping to raise Nannie Dee. When
Nannie Dee was about 11, Dee and E.F. effected a reconciliation and they were
remarried in Richmond County, North Carolina, on March 23, 1919. Despite the
70 years that have intervened, several older residents of the area vividly
recall the sad scene when
Tab had to part with his little niece.
Unfortunately, the second marriage was also a brief one and about mid-
February, 1920, the couple again separated. This time Dee returned home
alone, honoring Nannie Dee's wish to remain with her father. From all
accounts E.F. had prospered and was able to send Nannie Dee to a large school
and to otherwise offer opportunities not available in Newport.
After returning home Dee filed for divorce on the basis of cruel and abusive
treatment. In the quaint judicial language of the day the papers filed on her
behalf claimed that she was married only briefly when she "learned to her
sorrow and regret that she had contracted a loathsome disease...that has
humiliated and disgraced her". The divorce was granted on December 12, 1922.
There was no known further contact with E. F. Caldwell and it is believed that
he died about 1950.
Dee was married a third time on August 5, 1928. This marriage, to C.E.
Hardy,
occurred in Holmes County, which is just west of Attala County. They may have
lived for a period in Dundee, Mississippi. It is possible that this marriage
resulted from a contact made through some sort of dating club. At any rate,
it lasted only briefly. There has been some speculation that Dee may have
married someone else, possibly living with him for only a day or two. I have
found no record however of a divorce from C.E. Hardy, and, on her death
certificate she is called Dee Hardy.
Dee's life without her daughter was a sad one. Sometime in the mid-thirties
she lived briefly in West, Mississippi, with the family of her niece Myrtle
Allen Browning. She was described then as being tall and thin, having long
black hair, and being very pretty. But the most vivid recollection of her
then was as a sad woman who pined for her daughter, spoke fondly of her, and
who would sit at the piano every evening playing "Alice Blue Gown"--a
melancholy waltz that was popular at the time. In later years Dee would live
from time-to-time with her daughter. Nannie Dee had, by that time, married
and was living with her husband,
possibly in North Carolina, or Florida, or perhaps Atlanta. These visits
always seemed to be brief, and most of Dee's life was spent living with
various family members in Attala County. She lived mostly with her widowed
sister Edie Edwards and her brother Tab Hutchison. They experienced hard
times financially and Dee would on occasion go door-to-door selling puddings
and flavorings to her neighbors.
In 1963, at the age of 75, Dee was living in a small house in Kosciusko with
Tab when she was diagnosed as suffering from psychotic episodes arising from
chronic brain syndrome associated with cerebral arteriosclerosis. She was
committed to the East Mississippi State Hospital in Meridian. In laymen's
terms she had become senile and was no longer able to take care of herself.
Nursing homes would today provide this kind of custodial care but they were
not commonly available then for indigents, and it was not unusual for the
elderly poor to be
committed to mental hospitals when there was no one to care for them. By
August, 1965, she had been admitted to the State Mental Hospital at Whitfield.
Her deteriorated mental condition gave rise to pneumonia which lasted five
days before she died there a few minutes before midnight on July 16, 1970.
She was buried next to her brother Tab in an unmarked grave at McLain Cemetery
with only a handful of people present.