Catherine Elizabeth Fegtly Tucker 1846-1913

FEGTLY, TUCKER, RANDALL, SMITH, KUHN, WELLS, CLARK, BRYANT, MATTINGLY, COLEY

Posted By: Fred Rucker (email)
Date: 5/20/2006 at 09:39:32

A personal letter on the life and times of Catherine Elizabeth Fegtly Tucker; written by her niece, Mary Randall Smith, in 1958; to her grandniece, Olive Randall Coley.

"Dear Olive - since I want to give you this dish which was an old one of Aunt Kate's I am writing this memory of her life to tell you more about her. I am said to look like her in some photos. The dish was inherited by Alethea Wells (Alethea Lilburn Randall Wells) and she sent it to us at our golden wedding. It is not genuine amber and I don't know its history.

Catherine Elizabeth Fegtly Tucker was the oldest child of John and Martha Fegtly (John Wesley and Martha Kuhn Fegtly) as the family records show. She was a serious student, and religious from childhood. She began teaching school in early life in country schools in Van Buren Co., Iowa where their farm home was near Utica. At some later time she studied at Howe's Academy in Mt. Pleasant and briefly at I.W.C. When I was a student in college I met a few residents who had known her at that period of her life.

When I was a child of three to five years old she taught in Utica school and lived in our home. All my life I've been told how I followed her with book in hand saying, "What's this word, Aunt Kate?" Soon as she entered the house. I became her shadow, and adored her. Always patient she answered my questions and I learned to read at very early age. I began at three years and at five years I read many books, and remember her reading the Bible for family prayers at that age of four yrs. Due to Aunt Kate's patient teaching.

At this period of American History strenuous efforts were being made to settle the far west. The railroads had just reached beyond the mountains and were running Emigrant Trains when they could get them filled with passengers who would go west to become permanent settlers. Aunt Kate seriously considered going as a Home Missionary. She decided to go as a teacher instead of missionary. It was a journey of three weeks - Bentonsport Iowa to Butte Montana which was her destination. Now requires so few hours!! One day en route to Butte she was busy sewing all day when a fellow traveler said to her, "Miss Fegtly I'm surprised to see you sew all day on the Sabbath day when you were a possible missionary. Horrified at what she had done, sewing was quickly put away and she told the family about it as a joke on herself from not keeping track of the days as they traveled.

Butte at that time was a wild silver mining town, mostly saloons, gambling joints, prostitution flourishing, with a sprinkle of refined people and men with families. Uncle Joe (Joseph Mitchell Fegtly) soon followed her and went to Butte. I have a picture of their two-story house. It was built on a foothill of the mountains and from the upstairs one could step from a door right out to the ground, it was so steep. There was not a tree in Butte, no soil in which it could grow, just rocks full of silver!

The president of the mining company was Wm. A. Clark, accumulating his millions, who had known the Fegltys in Bentonsport, Iowa as friends. I've always wondered why he didn't induce them to put their savings into his mining stock.

Aunt Kate taught until her marriage to a handsome Englishman James A. Tucker, a carpenter. Before this time Yellowstone Park had been discovered and acquired by the government. Among the very early tourists Aunt Kate one of the group who went camping in a big wagon and visited the Park one summer.

Four months before their baby was born Uncle James Tucker died of pneumonia. My father (Albert Erastus Smith) immediately wrote Aunt Kate, "Come to us. Our home will be your home as long as you wish to live with us." I can't remember now, but I think Grandma Fegtly (Martha Kuhn Fegtly) must have gone to live with her in that tragic situation until she could resume her teaching. She didn't come to us until her son James, always called "Jamie" was two years old. Her son was a very beautiful child; and very spoiled, so attached to his mother he couldn't let another person do anything for him, even give him a drink of water. I was used to caring for my little brothers and sister but he would have none of me!

Aunt Kate loved Iowa's lovely trees, gathered leaves and had us children gather pretty leaves by the hundreds which she pressed and took back to Butte to show to her pupils and teach them what trees were and what the leaves looked like. She took us children on long walks in Huffman's Grove near Birmingham giving us talks on the beauty of nature and collecting leaves to press.

She later decided that Jamie was being robbed of something valuable to his life by living without trees, so she left Butte and moved to California.

She taught for years in Calif. I said previously she had a very religious nature, but she lost interest in M.E. church and took up Christian Science with held her interest several years.

Jamie was rather a delicate child, never had the rough and tumble play experiences I think which would develop a boy. He loved to read, was very bright and studious. As he was growing up Grandma Fegtly spent some years in Calif., would divide a year between Aunt Kate in Pasadena and Aunt Lou (Lucy Ann Fegtly Bryant) on a ranch near Santa Rosa. She was out west when Jamie was near his teens and she observed that he had a cough but no medication as this was the C.S. period of Aunt Kate's life. He was thin, closely attached to his mother.

He became an adolescent, they were back for visits I think and then as a studious adolescent he enrolled as a student at Calif. Institute of Technology; very interested in Botany and sciences. He died of quick consumption while in college there.

Left alone and heart broken, Aunt Kate took up spiritualism. She attended séances, thought she received spirit written letters from Jamie, heard his voice through a medium, saw tables rise from the floor lifted by spirit hands and so forth. This faith held her interest for some years. She had married rather later in life and her sorrows had aged her. When she had to quit teaching life was pretty bleak.

The millionaire friends the Clark's brought her east in their private car and she visited us in Austin, Chicago, Ill. when our Alethea (Alethea Elizabeth Smith Mattingly) was about two years old. Sweet as always she was an inspiration. I never saw her again after that visit. When quite old and shabby still living in her little house in Pasadena our Alethea called on her once. My mother (Sarah Olive Fegtly Randall) had spent several periods with her, living together and sharing expenses. She sometimes had tenants in part of her house and she lived in other parts. Sometimes she went out as a house keeper and companion to some woman who loved her services. When Uncle Tom Randall (Thomas Newton Randall) was a divorced man he boarded with her for a long time but she was too old then to make such service satisfactory.

Before this time she had left Spiritualism and had taken up Unity that seemed to satisfy her soul's search for Truth. She was always an inspiration. Her letters often contained inspirational phrases from Unity teachings, always sweet and loving. She wrote us "Practice the Presence of God in your life. Always beside you. A loving presence."

She loved her little home and its flowers. At 87 years of age she was on a stepladder trimming her climbing rose when she fell, some on picked her up unconscious and somebody notified Jason A. Randall. I could look up the obituary which is in a box of heirlooms in scrapbook and may give minor details I don't remember. Whether she fainted or had a stroke, or whether she hi her head on a stone when she fell I don't know. She lived until the next day. Anyhow Jase was administrator. In spite of her hard years she was always independent, and after all bills were paid she left a small bequest to my mother and Uncle Newton, her sister and brother. Jase sent some of her personal things here to Mamma. If Mamma had been younger and able to go down it might have been better.

Uncle Jase had a Unity funeral service which I'm sure she would have preferred. Everyone loved her. Strangers would have called her shabby and a bit queer. But she made a fine contribution to many lives and was always an inspiration. The last papers she wrote were quotations from Plato found on her desk.

Written by her niece Mary Randall Smith, August 9, 1958. 5730 16th Ave. NE. Seattle 5, Wash. With a miserable pen.

P.S. Grandma Fegtly was subject to intestinal attacks, had a fatal one at Aunt Kate's and was brought to Iowa for burial. Dividing her possessions, both Aunt Kate and Aunt Lou wanted the old handmade coverlet and neither would yield her claims so they cut it in two! The pieces were both sent to me after both aunts died. I sewed them together after a fashion. A name is woven into it but I've never been able to identify the person, a probable early relative."

Mary Randall Smith, the author, was 86 when she wrote this letter.