Ida Susan
Alwes and Charles Elbridge Wilkes
On
the 12th day of August 1879, the marriage of Charles Elbridge Wilkes and Ida Susan Alwes took place in Athens County, Ohio. Ida, who was under the age of
consent at age 17, required the permission of her mother to marry. Charles was
her former schoolteacher who had first met her 7 years earlier. Their wedding
portrait shown above, captured the couple as they embarked on a life together.
There life together would include coping with the challenges of an accident
that occurred shortly after their marriage that left Ida partially paralyzed
for the rest of her life. Despite this accident and its lingering effects,
Charles and Ida raised six children in the rolling farmlands and coal fields
outside of Athens, Ohio. After spending a few years in the Kansas territory,
their home was in a small mining area known as Luhrig. There they would attend
the Christian Church of Luhrig, which no longer stands, and later the Salem
Community Church. Both small country churches were within walking distances
from their farm. Today Luhrig is nothing more than a crossroads surrounded by
small farms in the rolling hills outside of Athens, Ohio. Evidence of the
Wilkes family can still be found in the area today.
The wedding had the blessing of both families. Charles’s father, Joseph, signed the marriage license and Ida’s mother filed the necessary underage consent letter. In addition to giving the needed consent, her parents gave them a chest of drawers as a wedding gift. As can be seen in the picture, the dresser is very plain by today’s standards but was a very useful item as they lived in a one-room house as they started their life together. The dresser has survived many years of use and today is owned by Charles and Ida’s Granddaughter Ruth McAdon.
After their marriage, Charles continued to teach and taught in the same school district where Ida's mother lived. Charles and Ida would spend the week with Ida's mother and over the weekend went by horseback to his parents’ home, a few miles away. In the winter the clay roads were frozen and deeply rutted. Expecting their first child, Ida and Charles were returning to Athens on one of these weekend trips when her horse stumbled. The accident not only caused Ida to lose the child but she also suffered injuries that paralyzed her on her right side. This accident resulted in her laying helpless for a year. Eventually, Ida would be taught how to talk and walk again and she would go on to overcome her disability and raise 6 children. One of their daughters, Faith, would write of the incident: “During this time, Ida's mother Elizabeth Alwes seemed to resent Charles. Ida had been the baby of her family. Ida's father, Henry Alwes, left Ida's mother with a son and 2 other daughters when he marched off with the Ohio regiment from Zanesville, Ohio to meet Grant at Memphis, Tenn. and his last words had been, “Take care of the baby.” Ida definitely was “spoiled “ and the year of illness was really a tragedy. The fall caused her to have a miscarriage, too. In other words, there was a mother-in-law problem!”
Charles and Ida would go to the Fort Scott area of the
Kansas territory where their first two children, Mabel and Fred, were born.
Charles went out to the territory first telling Ida 
that
if she loved him she would come too. Ida decided to follow Charles and went by
train to St. Louis where she had to change trains. Her speech was hesitant and
she wore a card telling where she was going. She arrived in the Fort Scott area
of the Kansas territory where they spent a few hard years starting their
family. After the birth of their first two children, they returned to Ohio.
They spoke of “the damps” that seemed to be a health hazard. Faith presumed
that it was a form of malaria, found on undrained land.
Faith wrote in one of her letters to the children of Fred; "There is much to be written about their stay there as they often spoke of it in later years. Recently I found Pearl Buck’s book, “The Townsman” which she wrote after much research about these times and this area. I read it with great interest as it is exactly as told to me by my mother and if you will read it and picture a little tow-headed boy and a sister about 3 years older with a young mother living in a sod house alone all week while the father was gone to a teacherage, you will know how your father started out life and why there was no official birth record for the first two children in the family."
Charles
and Ida had 6 children who were separated in age by almost 19 years. The
children were:
Mabel Wilhlmina Wilkes born December 04, 1882 in Fort Scott area of Kansas Territory
Frederick Arnold Wilkes born January 20, 1885 in Parsons Kansas which was in the Fort Scott area of Kansas Territory
Lula Constance Wilkes born April 25, 1888 in Athens Co. Ohio
Marie Carsona Wilkes born July 20, 1894 in Athens Co. Ohio
Faith Wilkes born March 21, 1898 in Athens Co. Ohio
Charles Alwes Wilkes born September 11, 1901 in Athens Co. Ohio
Faith's
letter indicates that they were a happy family while the children were growing
up. She wrote; "We were in those days a happy family--very poor by today’s
standard, but not by the standards of that time and place-but happy with good
books, regular church attendance, older ones coming and going. Anything that
would make most people angry, we treated as a joke. We had no swimming pool,
but it certainly is cooling to be sleeping under a shade tree during a noon
rest and suddenly have a bucket of cold water thrown on one by two young scamps
(Charlie and I) who had climbed up a tree to get in just the right spot to
throw the water. Fred caught us both and held us under the well pump and doused
us both. Mother interfered and she got a cooling off, too. Another time, he
chased us with baby Donald’s diapers which he scooped out of the rinse water by
the well.
We had cousins, aunts and uncles within a few miles of us. Somehow we were always proud to be one of “Charlie’s children” and time has proven that mother and father’s ways were right."
Mildred Wilkes wrote of her grandparents;
”When we were children a new, smaller house was built for our Wilkes grandparents. It was in the country-outside Athens with a farm.
Cars were quite a new thing then and
our grandmother was very afraid of riding in ours. (Probably about 1928)
She was very deaf & used a sort of “hearing aid” consisting of a long hollow tube with a mouthpiece for the speaker to use and a part that fitted into her ear. As young children, we were afraid to speak into it & our grandma felt very sad that she couldn’t hear us.
Grandma wore shoes only to ‘dress up.’
She was such a lovely woman & housekeeper in spite of her paralysis of the arm.
In later years, I remember after grandfather became quite obsessed with religion. He wrote many pages, often sending for money to help publish his writings on religion. I doubt that my dad ever encouraged this activity.”
The
house Mildred spoke of is located on Salem Rd. Just down from the Salem
Community church. It can be reached by taking county road 22 out of Athens. At
Salem Rd. take a right. It will be about 1 mile from the intersection on the
right.
It appears that Charles always thought that education was important. I guess this comes from his being a teacher (as was his son, grandson and two granddaughters, and several of his great-great grandsons). The children were at times sent to school, in Athens, to insure that they were receiving a proper education. Several of his children received degrees at universities and/or were part of highly educated families. Even today the respect for education runs in the family as several of their great grandchildren have received Ph.D.s and/or are teachers at the University level.
Ida died in 1934 just shy of her 73rd birthday in Athens Co. Ohio. Faith described her funeral in a letter she wrote a few days after the funeral to Mabel. “We had Jager’s Undertaking Firm from Athens. They were very good. They took her in here and brought her back Tuesday P.M. She looked just beautiful. My, but she did. She looked like she did when young. I don’t think she weighed more than 100 pounds. One could hardly believe that she could fall away so. Her hair looked quite white and they had curled it nicely and she was so white. She wore her black silk dress with some soft lace around the neck and a pretty cameo of Lula’s. The casket was lined with cream and was a sort of gray and orchid cast to it. There were beautiful flowers. The neighbors, Salem Sunday School, Inez and Dr. Pedigo, The Business women’s club, Lula’s S.S. Class, County nurses, Julia, The Athens Flooring Company (where I work) sent a gorgeous spray of snapdragons, and roses, the cousins from Columbus, Marie’s yellow Chrysanthemums, Sadie and her mother, and others that I don’t remember at all.
The funeral was at the Salem Church and Rev. Downs had charge. It was short and simple, but impressive. It really was pathetic how all the neighbors felt so badly. As Julia said they had lived there so long and been superior of the neighborhood so long that they had become almost an institution. They buried her here in Athens. The pallbearers were men from here and Mr. Huseman. Mr. Holdren for one, and George Coe, and I don’t know the others. Lena Koons and Rosalie Beckley and some others from here were at the cemetery. The Business Girls Club sextet sang “Lead Kindly Light” and Nettie Wilkes sang “Going down the river one by one” I think. The sextet sang another very old song, too I forget the name. We went back out home. Father felt badly of course, but he certainly was one to be proud of. And the house looked lovely. We had gone out last weekend, Lula and I, and with the help of the neighbors had gotten every thing in shape, and with it all so clean and fresh, the weather was cold but beautiful and there was absolutely nothing about the whole thing that anyone could feel any other way, but proud. Dr. Porter’s wife (Faith’s professor wife) came out and she spoke to Julia about what a beautiful place it was. The fireplaces were pretty and yard so nice.”
Ida and Charles are buried next to each other in the
West Union Street Cemetery in Athens, Ohio. The location of their gravesites
can be found by going to the caretaker’s house at the top of the hill. From the
steps of the house, go straight out parallel to Shafer Street. The site is
located in the middle of the section that is circled by the access road. Look
for the monument for Alwes as their site is next to that.
