JOHN D. WITHROW was born July 31, 1896 in the now almost completely vanished section of Grant Township, MI called Rescue. (All that's left as of 2017 is Rescue Road.) On June 23, 1917, JOHN married ELLA ACRE and found work as a purchasing agent at Motor Wheel Corporation in Lansing. ELLA had worked as a teacher in Ypsilanti, MI before she was married and a bookkeeper after that. The couple had two children -- a daughter, MARJORIE, in 1918 and a son, CARL, in 1921.
At the time of Marjorie's birth, the Withrows lived at 511 S. Hosner in Lansing. By 1922 they had moved to 812 Johnson Avenue in Lansing.
CARL died only eight days after his birth in 1921 due to an underdeveloped cranium. His birth and death as John's "defective" male heir sparked John to leave Ella and seek a different mate.
The "official" reason, as put down in court records, was because Ella became "very jealous in nature" and "verbally and physically abused him" (due to his wandering ways). She was officially "adjudged insane" and on August 15, 1922 an order was issued for her commitment within the Michigan State Hospital for the Insane at Kalamazoo, Michigan. Thirteen months later, on September 17, 1923, Ella was declared "of restored soundness of mind."
Ella admitted striking John when "deliberately or unreasonably provoked" but denied being jealous or making her husband's life miserable because of the "attentions of other women." She claimed counter cruelty and extreme abuse by John. According to Ella, John had a violent temper and "forced her down on sharp objects."
Mabelle Person of Lansing was appointed Ella's guardian.
During the divorce proceedings, it was claimed that Ella had been "adjudged insane" on December 6, 1913 and sent to the psychopathic ward at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. Ella denied ever being adjudged insane, explaining that she'd been sent to Ann Arbor for treatment of spinal meningitis and had been released fully recovered.
Separation was granted on November 29, 1921 and the divorce granted on April 28, 1922. Ella won custody of Marjorie and of John's estate. However, in 1924, John sued for custody of Marjorie and won it. At the time, his salary was $140 per month. On Thanksgiving Day, 1925, John married Athol Beadle. As for Marjorie, he placed her in a foster home -- a farm, actually -- outside of Lansing run by a couple known as the Harts (first names unknown). Marjorie apparently remained there until she entered college. John and Athol produced a son, Jack.
In 1927 Ella entered the Michigan Asylum for the Insane, which was part of Kalamazoo State Hospital on Oakland Drive in Kalamazoo, MI. She stayed there for 12 years, two months and two days -- until her death of "acute cardiac failure and aspiration pneumonia (10 hours)" with a "contributing catatonic stupor (10 hours)" on September 9, 1939. But was that true? Reportedly, the autopsy reveled feathers stuck in Ella's throat. Had she been suffocated with a pillow? No follow-up investigation took place -- so we'll never know if Ella Acre Withrow was murdered at the age of 45.
As of 1929, John was working as a purchasing agent for the Ideal Engine Company. He and his second wife spent their married life in a perpetually neat and tidy home in East Lansing, MI, where he was employed at Motor Wheel, a firm which suppiled parts to General Motors. John's son Jack eventually became an executive at General Motors. After John's death in 1978, Athol moved into an assisted living facility until her passing in 1990.
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More than anything else, the very self-important John D. Withrow Sr. wanted a son to carry on his name. He was not at all happy when his firstborn child turned out to be a girl and blamed his wife -- even though it the male parent who actually determines an offspring's gender. Not long after, John was both embarrased and even angrier when his second child with Ella was a son but, due to a fatal birth defect, a "defective heir." Rather than comfort his griefstricken wife, John chose to punish Ella by deserting her and his daughter, Marjorie, and seek a new wife with whom he might have better luck. As was customary at the time, custody of young Marjorie was given to her mother after the Withrows divorced -- but the vengeful John was still not satisfied. He succeeded in first ending not only his marriage to Ella but all her dreams of a happy home with childen and John as a loving husband. Then, to complete Ella's destruction, John won custody of the daughter Ella adored -- not that John wanted Marjorie, but simply to hurt his exp-wife as much as possible. John then managed to get the clearly NOT insane Ella locked away in an insane asylum for the rest of her life -- unable to see or even know the fate of the daughter she adored. And what was the fate of little Marjorie?
After filling the little girl's head full of lies about her mother, John sent Marjorie away to live with a foster couple. This was at the direction odf his new wife, Athrol, who wanted a "fresh start" without any baggage around from her new husband's first marriage. And a little girl who was the spitting image of her mother was the last thing Athol wanted around.
in November 1926 -- not knowing that the next year John would completely destroy any chance of future happens for Ella by having her falsely locked away for life -- the young mother wrote a letter to her daughter -- a letter which was never delivered. In fact, the letter was lost until finally rediscovered in 2017. Was the clearly sane Ella crazy in any way? If you count the emotional toll of having her marriage, child, reputation and future ripped away. yes, I guess that might craze anyone.
But as this never before published letter underscores, Ella Withrow was a deeply Christian, loving mother propelled through no fault of her own into a hellish existance for the "crime" of giving birth to a baby who only lived a few days.
My Dear Darling Daughter,
Not knowing where you are or in whose care you are, I take this way of sending you a message of love for this Thanksgiving and Christmas season. A time, I know, when your poor childish heart is torn with grief because of our separation and broken up home.
Your vehment assertion, one year ago, that you hated God because he had sent you to a mama and daddy like he did has rung in my memory ever since. You said, "God is for little girls to love, who have a momma and a daddy who stayed home to love and care for each other and their babies."
My beloved, you will never coimprehend the grief it brings me to recall your sobbing voice as it wailed, "God does not love me. He only loves little girls who live with their mamas, who are nice women that eveyone is proud to know and that they can be proud of -- instead of being ashamed of ther mama like I have to be of you, mama. You are a naughty, bad woman. Everyone says you are. If you are not, why does the judge not let me live with you? So there. I want a mama I can be proud of and can live with but I just hate to have such a nasty woman as you are for my mama."
Now my darling, I hope that this year has taught you many truths and by now you realize that many of those things that brought you so much grief are false.and that now you realize that you do not have to bow your head because of anything that you own mama has ever done.
To prove the above statement, I hereby challenge any man, woman or child to answer through the columns of this paper with any charges if they have such against me. I mean personal knowledge and not hearsay, if you please. Come on, you Black Guards, and answer this Yuletide challenge. You have so viley poisoned a little child's mind against the pure woman who gave her birth. She who went (if ever woman did) down to the very shadows in her hours of travail.
My child, you were very indignant last year when I tried to explain things to you. I told you that your daddy did not love your own mama and intended to give you a stepmother. You said that that could not be true but the very next week he married her.
My child, I want you to know and remember always that that calamity would never have been possible if the judge had granted mama's plea for separate maintenance instead of forcing an absolute decree upon her. I have always thought it criminal for parents who are so profoundly and finally alienated as your daddy and I were to bestow life on any new being. That was the sole reason why I asked for separate maintenance when your daddy deserted you and I for the other two young things he was then chasing -- one of which is the one you now call "Mama."
Sweetheart, remember this always. God is not to blame because your daddy has been taught to look upon marriage as he does a suit of clothes which he can discard at any time for a new one. But God's word does give us the promise that sometime. somewhere, in eternity, God will punish him severely for acting as he has. In the Bible, God very clearly defines the duties of men and women who enter the bonds of marriage, thereby accepting the duties of parenthood.
Your silver-haired grandma taught me those verses in the Bible and, as God is my witness, I have lived up to them. Let me assure you that a good home awaits you with me any time you are allowed to come to me. Always remember, little girl, that while mother lives, you have one true parent on earth who loves you above all else on the face of the Earth.
It has been six months since you and I visited yoiur silver-haired grandma as she laid on her last bed of suffering and pain. Darling, you mama is so thankful that God made it possible for you to see her before she left earth for her home with God where her wonderful parents, your own baby brother and the auntie you never remember awaited her.
You and I ought to be very thankful to God for her and all that she taught me -- she in whose veins flowed the blood of the proudest, most intelligent Christian families of the British Isles. It was from those fine people she received her training.
Ask your teacher to find you the poem "The Landing of the Pilgrims" by Felicia Hemans. Then read it and lift up your head and thank God that you are a descendant of those wonderful people. I'm positive that those who harrass you with tales against me and your Grandma's ancestry are not blessed with any finer ancestrors than we. Therefore, remember my words and do not let their lies grieve you as in the past.
Ask your teacher to tell you the story of Willliam Penn and the Quakers. Then you will know more about silver-haired grandma's ancestors and someday you will be proud to meet your realatives and happy indeed to be welcomed by them.
Grandma had so many times longed to see you during the four years your daddy has kept you from us. Darling, you and I will never comprehend the sorrow and the grief she endured since you were so cruelly and unjustly taken from my care and custody. Science tells us that nothing will so quickly break down anyone's health so completely as despair and grief over something that they consider past hope. That was true not only of your silver-haired grandma but also true of another wonderful silver-haired old lady who was made my godmother when (as a baby) I was christened in the M.E. church. That fine lady only lived six months after you were so cruelly taken from my care and custody by Ruth Bowen's vile lies. Grandma found out the truth before she passed on but the other lady never learned the truth about the case.
Darling, you and I have the Saviour's promise of life eternal for our loved ones and punishment for those who so willfully wronged them and us. Jesus says in Matthew 18 6-7 "He who shall cause one of these little ones who believe on Me to stumble; it is profitable for him that a great millstone shall be hanged around his neck and that he be sunk in the depths of the sea Woe unto the world because of occasional stumbling: for it needs to be that the occasions occur: but woe to that man or women through who the occasions cometh."
My child, ask your teacher to find you the above passage in the Bible so you know I've quoted it correctly. Not all Bibles are printed from the same translation so it may be that you do not find those identical words but the thought will be the same.
I do hope that Mrs. Beaubier and Mrs. Curran and Miss Wells of the YWCA secretaries will also get out their Bibles so the next time they hear that passage quoted they won';t display so much ignorance over it as they did last June.
I'm so grateful to the Mackey Cab driver who made it possible for you and I to make that visit to dear Grandma's bedside -- for the following Friday she lay so quiet in her last sleep, having gone into eternal rest.
I hope, dear child, that you will treasure those twenty minutes.with your silver-haired grandma as much as I do. It was so sweet to hear her whisper that she loved you dearly and would love you forever and ever, little girl. I'm so thankful that you were privileged to hear those beautiful words as your dying Grandma gave you her blessing.
I know, dear daughter, that she did love you and always will love us both dearly because she loved you years before you were born. That was when she taught me to sew, bake and cook so that I would know how to make a good home when God would send you to me. She used to talk about the babies God would sometime give me long before you were as old as you are now.
She taught me that our bodies are a house that God gives our souls to live in while we live on this Earth. Long before I was your age of nine years, inside my body was an organ which we did not learn about in school but in which you would live within for nine months after God sent you to be with me. She said that it was a very delicate organ and that I must be very careful to keep my feet warm and dry by wearing rubbers -- and that I must never, ever jump over fences because I might injure your first home -- which she called "The Sacred Temple" within my body.
She raught me that the books I've read, the stories I heard and everything I did when I was a tiny girl would influence the lives of you and your brothers and your sisters for either good or evil. My child, it is imposible for me to tell you all the beautiul thoughts she taught me when I was a very small girl. Sweetheart, the fact that you have been robbed of your God-given priviledge of hearing and learning these things from her is the biggest cross I have been called upon to bear. Sometime you may read of the fine things that Frances E. Willard has endorsed and also written for young girls. Grandma was a distant relative and her thoughts were the same beautiful pure ones which that wonderful woman has given to the world.
Grandma suffered much because she taught me those things -- as Grandpa wanted your mama to be an old maid schoolteacher and never, ever marry,. He was always very unkind to dear silver-haired Grandma because of their difference in opinion. As for Grandma, she did not want me to think about marrying until I was 24 or 25. She said that I would not be a normal perfect woman if I did not, by that time, possess the desire for a cozy home with two or three babies of my very own to love and care for. My darling, when I was 22 I met your Daddy and in that year married him. You will never know how Grandma wept as I pleaded with her to giver her consent to my marriage. She said she could not bear to see me marry before I was 24.
My dear, I disobeyed her and in the summer I was 23, I married, much to her sorrow. But now I'm so sorry I did and wonder if God will ever forgive me for that one disobedience. I thought that he was as pure and high-minded as i had been taught to be, but I had not been his wife 24 hours before I learnd that he was not what I had thought him to be. My one disobedieince had brought grief to not only myself but to the two dearest and nearest to me: yourself and my own dear mother. Since you have ben taken from me,.Grandpa has abused poor Grandma unmercifully, claiming she was to blame for it all.
Sweetheart, I wish that you would join me in asking God to richly bless her for all she suffered on Earth for our sake. It was sweet of you to tell her how you loved her and would have liked to visit her often if Daddy had only let you. I'm very sure that you made her very happy in her last hours on Earth.
I wa never allowed to see your Grandma again until she was passing into life eternal -- evre though I went daily to the hospital;. When she was almost gone, they sent for me to come to her. Someday you will know just how much your poor mama was forced to suffer during the following days. Finally God in his mercy showed me a path that led me away from those who, out of jealousy and narrow-mindedness, were seeking to harm me,.
God showed me the same path in 1922 when you were taken from me -- but in those days I had faith in Michigan;s courts, etc. even as you do now. Therefore I did not take the path God had so plainly shown me to take. But eleven months behind the bar showed me how true wee the wrds of the poet. :
Truth forever on tbe scaffold
Wrong forever on the throne
Yet the scafford sways the future
And beyond the dim unknown.
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch among his own.
Elven months behind the bars in 1922 and one month last June proved to me beyond all doubt that there is only one court where truth rules -- and that is the court of God in the realms of Heaven.
So last June I constantly prayed, "Great good merciful God, show me the same path again and I''ll not hesitate to go where you direcct me.". At last God answered my prayer and I resolutely placed my hand in God's and said, "Lead me on, O Heavenly Father -- and please, oh please, look after my child,"
It was hard to leave you without seeing you and without my clothes, except what I had on my back. Sweetheart, if was so difficult to quiet the mother cry in my heart.for you, not knowing if ever on Earth I'd see you again. But, in those last few hours, God gave me the firm conviction that sometime he would reunite us and put our enemies in their rightful place.-- for he says, very plainly, , "Vengence is mine. I will repay." So sayeth the Lord God of Hosts. And with that song in my heart, I left you. "The clouds cannot hide His blessed face. I'm satisfied to know that with Jesus here below, I can conquer every foe and not fear." It was that song that gave me the courage to take the step that I did -- and darling mine, Jesus has been with me every step of the way and I pray that He has been very close to you.
I'm very sorry indeed if you were ever punished because you went with me that night when the Mackey cab driver and I took you to see your dying Grandma at the hospital. The old maids at the YWCA had no legitimate right to forbid you from going -- nor to interfere in any way as they did, when I tried to teach you during our brief hour together. It is well the national organization does not know about if all or those two would be hunting for new jobs. I happen to know what a wonderful organization the YWCA really is and that its national leaders are ideal types of womanhood.
Sometime, my dear, you will understand why I wanted to hold you in my arms during these few precious moments together -- and why I used to cry when it came time for you to go. Sixty minutes ws a mighty short time for me to teach you all the things a modern mother is supposed to teach her child. We really scarcely got acquainted in so short a time, especially when we were interrupted every ten or fifteen minutes by those horrid women.
I'm so sorry that you believed them instead of me when I taught you the words of that wonderful poem which is consdered, by those qualified to judge, to be one of the masterpieces of modern literature. And to think that they were allowed to teach you that vile lie instead of the beautiful truths about the mysteries of your birth. I was trying so patiently to overcome all obstacles to teach you, as my mother had me, and as all true mothers should. I was very anxious to teach you those beautiful truths because many sad things happen to little girls and boys who are allowed to grow up in ignorance.
I hope that your teacher sees this and will sometime soon give you a private physiology lesson to explain to you this poem which I now copy for her benefit as well as to refresh your memory:
How did you come to me, my sweet?
From the land that no man knows?
Did Mr. Stork bring you here on his wings?
Were you born in the heart of a rose?
Did an angel fly down with you from the sky?
Were you found in a gooseberry patch?
Did a fairy bring you from Fairyland
To my door that was left on the latch?
No! My darling was born of a wonderful love
A love that was Daddy's and mine
A love that was human but deep and profound
A love that was almost divine.
Do you remember, sweetheart, when we went to the zoo?
And we saw that big bear with a grouch?
And the lions and tigers and tall kangaroo
That carried her babies in a pouch?
Do you remember I told you she kept them there safe
From the cold and the wind 'til they grew
Big enough to take care of themselves?
Well, dear heart, that is how I cared for you.
I carried you under my heart, my sweet
And I sheltered you safe from alarms
'Til one wonderful day the dear God looked down
And I cuddled you tight in my arms.
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My dear child, i hope that by now you understand that you have many things to be thankful for and chief among them is the fact that you knew the care of a kind, intelligent, trained mother for the first four and one-half years of your life. Also, not all little girls have a blessing such a you had in your silver-haired grandma, who has left us for her heavenly home.
Each morning when I awaken -- each evening when I go to rest -- I pray to the Lord to guard you as you go through all the hours of your life. And again I kneel in memory as I did when you were twelve days old. Daddy had so cruelly lied about me and was taking you from me for what turned out to be one long terrible month. You weighed six pounds when I left and only four and one half when I was allowed to return. Again I repeat the prayers i uttered that day. "Into thine care and thine alone, dear Lord, do I surrender the charge thou hast given me in this, the birth of my daughter. They are sending me away -- but O God, in your tender mercy,.do not let them keep me from her. If you see fit to call me home, plese grant, O God, that your guardian angels watch over her by night and day to lead her in the paths of righteousness. This is my prayer -- but thy will, O God, not mine, be done."
Don't be downhearted, sweetheart. Someday God will again make it so that you can live with your own true mama. Until that day, my child, remember that nowhere can you find a love to equal the love of your mama. Never another so tender and true to you. No one will ever sacrifice and work with such joy for you as your mama now is -- and will, in saving your college money or helping you always. Nowhere, no time will you find a friendship like your mother's, which will remain unbroken 'til death calls and life's work is over. Remember that wherever you go, whatever you do, your mama's loving thoughts and tenderest prayers will follow you forever.
My chief desire is now and always has been to place you among children and grown-ups where you will not be exposed to such shame and reproach as you are now. A child of so sensitive a nature as yours can not be allowed to suffer such untold misery living under the conditions you have been forced into since they took you away from my care.
You were always a very sensitive child and my heart aches for you with an unnamable grief -- as we are taught that "Out of the heart are the issues of life." I greatly fear that your spiritual happiness and contentment throughout your entire life is now being jeopardized.
You were intensely interested and memorized Bible stories so quickly when you were only two or three years old. I know that it was very natural for you to turn to and believe in God the Father, the maker of Heaven and Earth, and Jesus Christ as his only begotten Son, born to the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem in Judea. Enclosed with this I'm sending you a copy of "Bible Stories," which is an exact copy of the book your silver-haired Grandma gave me when I was six years old. I read it and knew it from memory long before I was as old as you are now. I hope you will read it and enjoy it as much as I did my copy.
This letter is written, dear child, with your mother's most profound prayer that, when December 25 arrives this year, some true Christian soul will have taken an interest in you and read this, my Christmas message to you. Hopefully that person will explain things to you so you will be able to keep henceforth keep that first and greatest commandment of them all -- which is "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart, all thy soul and and with all thy mind." That is my Christmas prayer.
First, last and forever your loving mother,
Ella
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Notes:
The "silver-haired grandma" was Grace Acre (1863-1926), Ella's mother. John and Athol Withrow matied on Thanksgviing Day, 1925. "The auntie you never remember" (because Marjorie was then only an infant) was Ella's sister Ivah Acre (1897-1918). "The Landing of the Pilgrims" is a poem by Felicia Hemans (1793-1935). Frances E. Willard (1839-1898) was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. The first poem, "Truth Forever On the Scaffold,"was written by James Russell Lowell (1813-1891). The second poem is actually titled "To A Child Who Inquires" and was written by British-American actress anf writer Olga Petrovs (1884-1977): . . . . .
The middle photo on this page show John with Ella; the lower photo shows him with Athol.
At the time of Marjorie's birth, the Withrows lived at 511 S. Hosner in Lansing. By 1922 they had moved to 812 Johnson Avenue in Lansing.
CARL died only eight days after his birth in 1921 due to an underdeveloped cranium. His birth and death as John's "defective" male heir sparked John to leave Ella and seek a different mate.
The "official" reason, as put down in court records, was because Ella became "very jealous in nature" and "verbally and physically abused him" (due to his wandering ways). She was officially "adjudged insane" and on August 15, 1922 an order was issued for her commitment within the Michigan State Hospital for the Insane at Kalamazoo, Michigan. Thirteen months later, on September 17, 1923, Ella was declared "of restored soundness of mind."
Ella admitted striking John when "deliberately or unreasonably provoked" but denied being jealous or making her husband's life miserable because of the "attentions of other women." She claimed counter cruelty and extreme abuse by John. According to Ella, John had a violent temper and "forced her down on sharp objects."
Mabelle Person of Lansing was appointed Ella's guardian.
During the divorce proceedings, it was claimed that Ella had been "adjudged insane" on December 6, 1913 and sent to the psychopathic ward at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. Ella denied ever being adjudged insane, explaining that she'd been sent to Ann Arbor for treatment of spinal meningitis and had been released fully recovered.
Separation was granted on November 29, 1921 and the divorce granted on April 28, 1922. Ella won custody of Marjorie and of John's estate. However, in 1924, John sued for custody of Marjorie and won it. At the time, his salary was $140 per month. On Thanksgiving Day, 1925, John married Athol Beadle. As for Marjorie, he placed her in a foster home -- a farm, actually -- outside of Lansing run by a couple known as the Harts (first names unknown). Marjorie apparently remained there until she entered college. John and Athol produced a son, Jack.
In 1927 Ella entered the Michigan Asylum for the Insane, which was part of Kalamazoo State Hospital on Oakland Drive in Kalamazoo, MI. She stayed there for 12 years, two months and two days -- until her death of "acute cardiac failure and aspiration pneumonia (10 hours)" with a "contributing catatonic stupor (10 hours)" on September 9, 1939. But was that true? Reportedly, the autopsy reveled feathers stuck in Ella's throat. Had she been suffocated with a pillow? No follow-up investigation took place -- so we'll never know if Ella Acre Withrow was murdered at the age of 45.
As of 1929, John was working as a purchasing agent for the Ideal Engine Company. He and his second wife spent their married life in a perpetually neat and tidy home in East Lansing, MI, where he was employed at Motor Wheel, a firm which suppiled parts to General Motors. John's son Jack eventually became an executive at General Motors. After John's death in 1978, Athol moved into an assisted living facility until her passing in 1990.
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More than anything else, the very self-important John D. Withrow Sr. wanted a son to carry on his name. He was not at all happy when his firstborn child turned out to be a girl and blamed his wife -- even though it the male parent who actually determines an offspring's gender. Not long after, John was both embarrased and even angrier when his second child with Ella was a son but, due to a fatal birth defect, a "defective heir." Rather than comfort his griefstricken wife, John chose to punish Ella by deserting her and his daughter, Marjorie, and seek a new wife with whom he might have better luck. As was customary at the time, custody of young Marjorie was given to her mother after the Withrows divorced -- but the vengeful John was still not satisfied. He succeeded in first ending not only his marriage to Ella but all her dreams of a happy home with childen and John as a loving husband. Then, to complete Ella's destruction, John won custody of the daughter Ella adored -- not that John wanted Marjorie, but simply to hurt his exp-wife as much as possible. John then managed to get the clearly NOT insane Ella locked away in an insane asylum for the rest of her life -- unable to see or even know the fate of the daughter she adored. And what was the fate of little Marjorie?
After filling the little girl's head full of lies about her mother, John sent Marjorie away to live with a foster couple. This was at the direction odf his new wife, Athrol, who wanted a "fresh start" without any baggage around from her new husband's first marriage. And a little girl who was the spitting image of her mother was the last thing Athol wanted around.
in November 1926 -- not knowing that the next year John would completely destroy any chance of future happens for Ella by having her falsely locked away for life -- the young mother wrote a letter to her daughter -- a letter which was never delivered. In fact, the letter was lost until finally rediscovered in 2017. Was the clearly sane Ella crazy in any way? If you count the emotional toll of having her marriage, child, reputation and future ripped away. yes, I guess that might craze anyone.
But as this never before published letter underscores, Ella Withrow was a deeply Christian, loving mother propelled through no fault of her own into a hellish existance for the "crime" of giving birth to a baby who only lived a few days.
My Dear Darling Daughter,
Not knowing where you are or in whose care you are, I take this way of sending you a message of love for this Thanksgiving and Christmas season. A time, I know, when your poor childish heart is torn with grief because of our separation and broken up home.
Your vehment assertion, one year ago, that you hated God because he had sent you to a mama and daddy like he did has rung in my memory ever since. You said, "God is for little girls to love, who have a momma and a daddy who stayed home to love and care for each other and their babies."
My beloved, you will never coimprehend the grief it brings me to recall your sobbing voice as it wailed, "God does not love me. He only loves little girls who live with their mamas, who are nice women that eveyone is proud to know and that they can be proud of -- instead of being ashamed of ther mama like I have to be of you, mama. You are a naughty, bad woman. Everyone says you are. If you are not, why does the judge not let me live with you? So there. I want a mama I can be proud of and can live with but I just hate to have such a nasty woman as you are for my mama."
Now my darling, I hope that this year has taught you many truths and by now you realize that many of those things that brought you so much grief are false.and that now you realize that you do not have to bow your head because of anything that you own mama has ever done.
To prove the above statement, I hereby challenge any man, woman or child to answer through the columns of this paper with any charges if they have such against me. I mean personal knowledge and not hearsay, if you please. Come on, you Black Guards, and answer this Yuletide challenge. You have so viley poisoned a little child's mind against the pure woman who gave her birth. She who went (if ever woman did) down to the very shadows in her hours of travail.
My child, you were very indignant last year when I tried to explain things to you. I told you that your daddy did not love your own mama and intended to give you a stepmother. You said that that could not be true but the very next week he married her.
My child, I want you to know and remember always that that calamity would never have been possible if the judge had granted mama's plea for separate maintenance instead of forcing an absolute decree upon her. I have always thought it criminal for parents who are so profoundly and finally alienated as your daddy and I were to bestow life on any new being. That was the sole reason why I asked for separate maintenance when your daddy deserted you and I for the other two young things he was then chasing -- one of which is the one you now call "Mama."
Sweetheart, remember this always. God is not to blame because your daddy has been taught to look upon marriage as he does a suit of clothes which he can discard at any time for a new one. But God's word does give us the promise that sometime. somewhere, in eternity, God will punish him severely for acting as he has. In the Bible, God very clearly defines the duties of men and women who enter the bonds of marriage, thereby accepting the duties of parenthood.
Your silver-haired grandma taught me those verses in the Bible and, as God is my witness, I have lived up to them. Let me assure you that a good home awaits you with me any time you are allowed to come to me. Always remember, little girl, that while mother lives, you have one true parent on earth who loves you above all else on the face of the Earth.
It has been six months since you and I visited yoiur silver-haired grandma as she laid on her last bed of suffering and pain. Darling, you mama is so thankful that God made it possible for you to see her before she left earth for her home with God where her wonderful parents, your own baby brother and the auntie you never remember awaited her.
You and I ought to be very thankful to God for her and all that she taught me -- she in whose veins flowed the blood of the proudest, most intelligent Christian families of the British Isles. It was from those fine people she received her training.
Ask your teacher to find you the poem "The Landing of the Pilgrims" by Felicia Hemans. Then read it and lift up your head and thank God that you are a descendant of those wonderful people. I'm positive that those who harrass you with tales against me and your Grandma's ancestry are not blessed with any finer ancestrors than we. Therefore, remember my words and do not let their lies grieve you as in the past.
Ask your teacher to tell you the story of Willliam Penn and the Quakers. Then you will know more about silver-haired grandma's ancestors and someday you will be proud to meet your realatives and happy indeed to be welcomed by them.
Grandma had so many times longed to see you during the four years your daddy has kept you from us. Darling, you and I will never comprehend the sorrow and the grief she endured since you were so cruelly and unjustly taken from my care and custody. Science tells us that nothing will so quickly break down anyone's health so completely as despair and grief over something that they consider past hope. That was true not only of your silver-haired grandma but also true of another wonderful silver-haired old lady who was made my godmother when (as a baby) I was christened in the M.E. church. That fine lady only lived six months after you were so cruelly taken from my care and custody by Ruth Bowen's vile lies. Grandma found out the truth before she passed on but the other lady never learned the truth about the case.
Darling, you and I have the Saviour's promise of life eternal for our loved ones and punishment for those who so willfully wronged them and us. Jesus says in Matthew 18 6-7 "He who shall cause one of these little ones who believe on Me to stumble; it is profitable for him that a great millstone shall be hanged around his neck and that he be sunk in the depths of the sea Woe unto the world because of occasional stumbling: for it needs to be that the occasions occur: but woe to that man or women through who the occasions cometh."
My child, ask your teacher to find you the above passage in the Bible so you know I've quoted it correctly. Not all Bibles are printed from the same translation so it may be that you do not find those identical words but the thought will be the same.
I do hope that Mrs. Beaubier and Mrs. Curran and Miss Wells of the YWCA secretaries will also get out their Bibles so the next time they hear that passage quoted they won';t display so much ignorance over it as they did last June.
I'm so grateful to the Mackey Cab driver who made it possible for you and I to make that visit to dear Grandma's bedside -- for the following Friday she lay so quiet in her last sleep, having gone into eternal rest.
I hope, dear child, that you will treasure those twenty minutes.with your silver-haired grandma as much as I do. It was so sweet to hear her whisper that she loved you dearly and would love you forever and ever, little girl. I'm so thankful that you were privileged to hear those beautiful words as your dying Grandma gave you her blessing.
I know, dear daughter, that she did love you and always will love us both dearly because she loved you years before you were born. That was when she taught me to sew, bake and cook so that I would know how to make a good home when God would send you to me. She used to talk about the babies God would sometime give me long before you were as old as you are now.
She taught me that our bodies are a house that God gives our souls to live in while we live on this Earth. Long before I was your age of nine years, inside my body was an organ which we did not learn about in school but in which you would live within for nine months after God sent you to be with me. She said that it was a very delicate organ and that I must be very careful to keep my feet warm and dry by wearing rubbers -- and that I must never, ever jump over fences because I might injure your first home -- which she called "The Sacred Temple" within my body.
She raught me that the books I've read, the stories I heard and everything I did when I was a tiny girl would influence the lives of you and your brothers and your sisters for either good or evil. My child, it is imposible for me to tell you all the beautiul thoughts she taught me when I was a very small girl. Sweetheart, the fact that you have been robbed of your God-given priviledge of hearing and learning these things from her is the biggest cross I have been called upon to bear. Sometime you may read of the fine things that Frances E. Willard has endorsed and also written for young girls. Grandma was a distant relative and her thoughts were the same beautiful pure ones which that wonderful woman has given to the world.
Grandma suffered much because she taught me those things -- as Grandpa wanted your mama to be an old maid schoolteacher and never, ever marry,. He was always very unkind to dear silver-haired Grandma because of their difference in opinion. As for Grandma, she did not want me to think about marrying until I was 24 or 25. She said that I would not be a normal perfect woman if I did not, by that time, possess the desire for a cozy home with two or three babies of my very own to love and care for. My darling, when I was 22 I met your Daddy and in that year married him. You will never know how Grandma wept as I pleaded with her to giver her consent to my marriage. She said she could not bear to see me marry before I was 24.
My dear, I disobeyed her and in the summer I was 23, I married, much to her sorrow. But now I'm so sorry I did and wonder if God will ever forgive me for that one disobedience. I thought that he was as pure and high-minded as i had been taught to be, but I had not been his wife 24 hours before I learnd that he was not what I had thought him to be. My one disobedieince had brought grief to not only myself but to the two dearest and nearest to me: yourself and my own dear mother. Since you have ben taken from me,.Grandpa has abused poor Grandma unmercifully, claiming she was to blame for it all.
Sweetheart, I wish that you would join me in asking God to richly bless her for all she suffered on Earth for our sake. It was sweet of you to tell her how you loved her and would have liked to visit her often if Daddy had only let you. I'm very sure that you made her very happy in her last hours on Earth.
I wa never allowed to see your Grandma again until she was passing into life eternal -- evre though I went daily to the hospital;. When she was almost gone, they sent for me to come to her. Someday you will know just how much your poor mama was forced to suffer during the following days. Finally God in his mercy showed me a path that led me away from those who, out of jealousy and narrow-mindedness, were seeking to harm me,.
God showed me the same path in 1922 when you were taken from me -- but in those days I had faith in Michigan;s courts, etc. even as you do now. Therefore I did not take the path God had so plainly shown me to take. But eleven months behind the bar showed me how true wee the wrds of the poet. :
Truth forever on tbe scaffold
Wrong forever on the throne
Yet the scafford sways the future
And beyond the dim unknown.
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch among his own.
Elven months behind the bars in 1922 and one month last June proved to me beyond all doubt that there is only one court where truth rules -- and that is the court of God in the realms of Heaven.
So last June I constantly prayed, "Great good merciful God, show me the same path again and I''ll not hesitate to go where you direcct me.". At last God answered my prayer and I resolutely placed my hand in God's and said, "Lead me on, O Heavenly Father -- and please, oh please, look after my child,"
It was hard to leave you without seeing you and without my clothes, except what I had on my back. Sweetheart, if was so difficult to quiet the mother cry in my heart.for you, not knowing if ever on Earth I'd see you again. But, in those last few hours, God gave me the firm conviction that sometime he would reunite us and put our enemies in their rightful place.-- for he says, very plainly, , "Vengence is mine. I will repay." So sayeth the Lord God of Hosts. And with that song in my heart, I left you. "The clouds cannot hide His blessed face. I'm satisfied to know that with Jesus here below, I can conquer every foe and not fear." It was that song that gave me the courage to take the step that I did -- and darling mine, Jesus has been with me every step of the way and I pray that He has been very close to you.
I'm very sorry indeed if you were ever punished because you went with me that night when the Mackey cab driver and I took you to see your dying Grandma at the hospital. The old maids at the YWCA had no legitimate right to forbid you from going -- nor to interfere in any way as they did, when I tried to teach you during our brief hour together. It is well the national organization does not know about if all or those two would be hunting for new jobs. I happen to know what a wonderful organization the YWCA really is and that its national leaders are ideal types of womanhood.
Sometime, my dear, you will understand why I wanted to hold you in my arms during these few precious moments together -- and why I used to cry when it came time for you to go. Sixty minutes ws a mighty short time for me to teach you all the things a modern mother is supposed to teach her child. We really scarcely got acquainted in so short a time, especially when we were interrupted every ten or fifteen minutes by those horrid women.
I'm so sorry that you believed them instead of me when I taught you the words of that wonderful poem which is consdered, by those qualified to judge, to be one of the masterpieces of modern literature. And to think that they were allowed to teach you that vile lie instead of the beautiful truths about the mysteries of your birth. I was trying so patiently to overcome all obstacles to teach you, as my mother had me, and as all true mothers should. I was very anxious to teach you those beautiful truths because many sad things happen to little girls and boys who are allowed to grow up in ignorance.
I hope that your teacher sees this and will sometime soon give you a private physiology lesson to explain to you this poem which I now copy for her benefit as well as to refresh your memory:
How did you come to me, my sweet?
From the land that no man knows?
Did Mr. Stork bring you here on his wings?
Were you born in the heart of a rose?
Did an angel fly down with you from the sky?
Were you found in a gooseberry patch?
Did a fairy bring you from Fairyland
To my door that was left on the latch?
No! My darling was born of a wonderful love
A love that was Daddy's and mine
A love that was human but deep and profound
A love that was almost divine.
Do you remember, sweetheart, when we went to the zoo?
And we saw that big bear with a grouch?
And the lions and tigers and tall kangaroo
That carried her babies in a pouch?
Do you remember I told you she kept them there safe
From the cold and the wind 'til they grew
Big enough to take care of themselves?
Well, dear heart, that is how I cared for you.
I carried you under my heart, my sweet
And I sheltered you safe from alarms
'Til one wonderful day the dear God looked down
And I cuddled you tight in my arms.
.
My dear child, i hope that by now you understand that you have many things to be thankful for and chief among them is the fact that you knew the care of a kind, intelligent, trained mother for the first four and one-half years of your life. Also, not all little girls have a blessing such a you had in your silver-haired grandma, who has left us for her heavenly home.
Each morning when I awaken -- each evening when I go to rest -- I pray to the Lord to guard you as you go through all the hours of your life. And again I kneel in memory as I did when you were twelve days old. Daddy had so cruelly lied about me and was taking you from me for what turned out to be one long terrible month. You weighed six pounds when I left and only four and one half when I was allowed to return. Again I repeat the prayers i uttered that day. "Into thine care and thine alone, dear Lord, do I surrender the charge thou hast given me in this, the birth of my daughter. They are sending me away -- but O God, in your tender mercy,.do not let them keep me from her. If you see fit to call me home, plese grant, O God, that your guardian angels watch over her by night and day to lead her in the paths of righteousness. This is my prayer -- but thy will, O God, not mine, be done."
Don't be downhearted, sweetheart. Someday God will again make it so that you can live with your own true mama. Until that day, my child, remember that nowhere can you find a love to equal the love of your mama. Never another so tender and true to you. No one will ever sacrifice and work with such joy for you as your mama now is -- and will, in saving your college money or helping you always. Nowhere, no time will you find a friendship like your mother's, which will remain unbroken 'til death calls and life's work is over. Remember that wherever you go, whatever you do, your mama's loving thoughts and tenderest prayers will follow you forever.
My chief desire is now and always has been to place you among children and grown-ups where you will not be exposed to such shame and reproach as you are now. A child of so sensitive a nature as yours can not be allowed to suffer such untold misery living under the conditions you have been forced into since they took you away from my care.
You were always a very sensitive child and my heart aches for you with an unnamable grief -- as we are taught that "Out of the heart are the issues of life." I greatly fear that your spiritual happiness and contentment throughout your entire life is now being jeopardized.
You were intensely interested and memorized Bible stories so quickly when you were only two or three years old. I know that it was very natural for you to turn to and believe in God the Father, the maker of Heaven and Earth, and Jesus Christ as his only begotten Son, born to the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem in Judea. Enclosed with this I'm sending you a copy of "Bible Stories," which is an exact copy of the book your silver-haired Grandma gave me when I was six years old. I read it and knew it from memory long before I was as old as you are now. I hope you will read it and enjoy it as much as I did my copy.
This letter is written, dear child, with your mother's most profound prayer that, when December 25 arrives this year, some true Christian soul will have taken an interest in you and read this, my Christmas message to you. Hopefully that person will explain things to you so you will be able to keep henceforth keep that first and greatest commandment of them all -- which is "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart, all thy soul and and with all thy mind." That is my Christmas prayer.
First, last and forever your loving mother,
Ella
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Notes:
The "silver-haired grandma" was Grace Acre (1863-1926), Ella's mother. John and Athol Withrow matied on Thanksgviing Day, 1925. "The auntie you never remember" (because Marjorie was then only an infant) was Ella's sister Ivah Acre (1897-1918). "The Landing of the Pilgrims" is a poem by Felicia Hemans (1793-1935). Frances E. Willard (1839-1898) was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. The first poem, "Truth Forever On the Scaffold,"was written by James Russell Lowell (1813-1891). The second poem is actually titled "To A Child Who Inquires" and was written by British-American actress anf writer Olga Petrovs (1884-1977): . . . . .
The middle photo on this page show John with Ella; the lower photo shows him with Athol.
JOHN D. WITHROW was born July 31, 1896 in the now almost completely vanished section of Grant Township, MI called Rescue. (All that's left as of 2017 is Rescue Road.) On June 23, 1917, JOHN married ELLA ACRE and found work as a purchasing agent at Motor Wheel Corporation in Lansing. ELLA had worked as a teacher in Ypsilanti, MI before she was married and a bookkeeper after that. The couple had two children -- a daughter, MARJORIE, in 1918 and a son, CARL, in 1921.
At the time of Marjorie's birth, the Withrows lived at 511 S. Hosner in Lansing. By 1922 they had moved to 812 Johnson Avenue in Lansing.
CARL died only eight days after his birth in 1921 due to an underdeveloped cranium. His birth and death as John's "defective" male heir sparked John to leave Ella and seek a different mate.
The "official" reason, as put down in court records, was because Ella became "very jealous in nature" and "verbally and physically abused him" (due to his wandering ways). She was officially "adjudged insane" and on August 15, 1922 an order was issued for her commitment within the Michigan State Hospital for the Insane at Kalamazoo, Michigan. Thirteen months later, on September 17, 1923, Ella was declared "of restored soundness of mind."
Ella admitted striking John when "deliberately or unreasonably provoked" but denied being jealous or making her husband's life miserable because of the "attentions of other women." She claimed counter cruelty and extreme abuse by John. According to Ella, John had a violent temper and "forced her down on sharp objects."
Mabelle Person of Lansing was appointed Ella's guardian.
During the divorce proceedings, it was claimed that Ella had been "adjudged insane" on December 6, 1913 and sent to the psychopathic ward at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. Ella denied ever being adjudged insane, explaining that she'd been sent to Ann Arbor for treatment of spinal meningitis and had been released fully recovered.
Separation was granted on November 29, 1921 and the divorce granted on April 28, 1922. Ella won custody of Marjorie and of John's estate. However, in 1924, John sued for custody of Marjorie and won it. At the time, his salary was $140 per month. On Thanksgiving Day, 1925, John married Athol Beadle. As for Marjorie, he placed her in a foster home -- a farm, actually -- outside of Lansing run by a couple known as the Harts (first names unknown). Marjorie apparently remained there until she entered college. John and Athol produced a son, Jack.
In 1927 Ella entered the Michigan Asylum for the Insane, which was part of Kalamazoo State Hospital on Oakland Drive in Kalamazoo, MI. She stayed there for 12 years, two months and two days -- until her death of "acute cardiac failure and aspiration pneumonia (10 hours)" with a "contributing catatonic stupor (10 hours)" on September 9, 1939. But was that true? Reportedly, the autopsy reveled feathers stuck in Ella's throat. Had she been suffocated with a pillow? No follow-up investigation took place -- so we'll never know if Ella Acre Withrow was murdered at the age of 45.
As of 1929, John was working as a purchasing agent for the Ideal Engine Company. He and his second wife spent their married life in a perpetually neat and tidy home in East Lansing, MI, where he was employed at Motor Wheel, a firm which suppiled parts to General Motors. John's son Jack eventually became an executive at General Motors. After John's death in 1978, Athol moved into an assisted living facility until her passing in 1990.
--
More than anything else, the very self-important John D. Withrow Sr. wanted a son to carry on his name. He was not at all happy when his firstborn child turned out to be a girl and blamed his wife -- even though it the male parent who actually determines an offspring's gender. Not long after, John was both embarrased and even angrier when his second child with Ella was a son but, due to a fatal birth defect, a "defective heir." Rather than comfort his griefstricken wife, John chose to punish Ella by deserting her and his daughter, Marjorie, and seek a new wife with whom he might have better luck. As was customary at the time, custody of young Marjorie was given to her mother after the Withrows divorced -- but the vengeful John was still not satisfied. He succeeded in first ending not only his marriage to Ella but all her dreams of a happy home with childen and John as a loving husband. Then, to complete Ella's destruction, John won custody of the daughter Ella adored -- not that John wanted Marjorie, but simply to hurt his exp-wife as much as possible. John then managed to get the clearly NOT insane Ella locked away in an insane asylum for the rest of her life -- unable to see or even know the fate of the daughter she adored. And what was the fate of little Marjorie?
After filling the little girl's head full of lies about her mother, John sent Marjorie away to live with a foster couple. This was at the direction odf his new wife, Athrol, who wanted a "fresh start" without any baggage around from her new husband's first marriage. And a little girl who was the spitting image of her mother was the last thing Athol wanted around.
in November 1926 -- not knowing that the next year John would completely destroy any chance of future happens for Ella by having her falsely locked away for life -- the young mother wrote a letter to her daughter -- a letter which was never delivered. In fact, the letter was lost until finally rediscovered in 2017. Was the clearly sane Ella crazy in any way? If you count the emotional toll of having her marriage, child, reputation and future ripped away. yes, I guess that might craze anyone.
But as this never before published letter underscores, Ella Withrow was a deeply Christian, loving mother propelled through no fault of her own into a hellish existance for the "crime" of giving birth to a baby who only lived a few days.
My Dear Darling Daughter,
Not knowing where you are or in whose care you are, I take this way of sending you a message of love for this Thanksgiving and Christmas season. A time, I know, when your poor childish heart is torn with grief because of our separation and broken up home.
Your vehment assertion, one year ago, that you hated God because he had sent you to a mama and daddy like he did has rung in my memory ever since. You said, "God is for little girls to love, who have a momma and a daddy who stayed home to love and care for each other and their babies."
My beloved, you will never coimprehend the grief it brings me to recall your sobbing voice as it wailed, "God does not love me. He only loves little girls who live with their mamas, who are nice women that eveyone is proud to know and that they can be proud of -- instead of being ashamed of ther mama like I have to be of you, mama. You are a naughty, bad woman. Everyone says you are. If you are not, why does the judge not let me live with you? So there. I want a mama I can be proud of and can live with but I just hate to have such a nasty woman as you are for my mama."
Now my darling, I hope that this year has taught you many truths and by now you realize that many of those things that brought you so much grief are false.and that now you realize that you do not have to bow your head because of anything that you own mama has ever done.
To prove the above statement, I hereby challenge any man, woman or child to answer through the columns of this paper with any charges if they have such against me. I mean personal knowledge and not hearsay, if you please. Come on, you Black Guards, and answer this Yuletide challenge. You have so viley poisoned a little child's mind against the pure woman who gave her birth. She who went (if ever woman did) down to the very shadows in her hours of travail.
My child, you were very indignant last year when I tried to explain things to you. I told you that your daddy did not love your own mama and intended to give you a stepmother. You said that that could not be true but the very next week he married her.
My child, I want you to know and remember always that that calamity would never have been possible if the judge had granted mama's plea for separate maintenance instead of forcing an absolute decree upon her. I have always thought it criminal for parents who are so profoundly and finally alienated as your daddy and I were to bestow life on any new being. That was the sole reason why I asked for separate maintenance when your daddy deserted you and I for the other two young things he was then chasing -- one of which is the one you now call "Mama."
Sweetheart, remember this always. God is not to blame because your daddy has been taught to look upon marriage as he does a suit of clothes which he can discard at any time for a new one. But God's word does give us the promise that sometime. somewhere, in eternity, God will punish him severely for acting as he has. In the Bible, God very clearly defines the duties of men and women who enter the bonds of marriage, thereby accepting the duties of parenthood.
Your silver-haired grandma taught me those verses in the Bible and, as God is my witness, I have lived up to them. Let me assure you that a good home awaits you with me any time you are allowed to come to me. Always remember, little girl, that while mother lives, you have one true parent on earth who loves you above all else on the face of the Earth.
It has been six months since you and I visited yoiur silver-haired grandma as she laid on her last bed of suffering and pain. Darling, you mama is so thankful that God made it possible for you to see her before she left earth for her home with God where her wonderful parents, your own baby brother and the auntie you never remember awaited her.
You and I ought to be very thankful to God for her and all that she taught me -- she in whose veins flowed the blood of the proudest, most intelligent Christian families of the British Isles. It was from those fine people she received her training.
Ask your teacher to find you the poem "The Landing of the Pilgrims" by Felicia Hemans. Then read it and lift up your head and thank God that you are a descendant of those wonderful people. I'm positive that those who harrass you with tales against me and your Grandma's ancestry are not blessed with any finer ancestrors than we. Therefore, remember my words and do not let their lies grieve you as in the past.
Ask your teacher to tell you the story of Willliam Penn and the Quakers. Then you will know more about silver-haired grandma's ancestors and someday you will be proud to meet your realatives and happy indeed to be welcomed by them.
Grandma had so many times longed to see you during the four years your daddy has kept you from us. Darling, you and I will never comprehend the sorrow and the grief she endured since you were so cruelly and unjustly taken from my care and custody. Science tells us that nothing will so quickly break down anyone's health so completely as despair and grief over something that they consider past hope. That was true not only of your silver-haired grandma but also true of another wonderful silver-haired old lady who was made my godmother when (as a baby) I was christened in the M.E. church. That fine lady only lived six months after you were so cruelly taken from my care and custody by Ruth Bowen's vile lies. Grandma found out the truth before she passed on but the other lady never learned the truth about the case.
Darling, you and I have the Saviour's promise of life eternal for our loved ones and punishment for those who so willfully wronged them and us. Jesus says in Matthew 18 6-7 "He who shall cause one of these little ones who believe on Me to stumble; it is profitable for him that a great millstone shall be hanged around his neck and that he be sunk in the depths of the sea Woe unto the world because of occasional stumbling: for it needs to be that the occasions occur: but woe to that man or women through who the occasions cometh."
My child, ask your teacher to find you the above passage in the Bible so you know I've quoted it correctly. Not all Bibles are printed from the same translation so it may be that you do not find those identical words but the thought will be the same.
I do hope that Mrs. Beaubier and Mrs. Curran and Miss Wells of the YWCA secretaries will also get out their Bibles so the next time they hear that passage quoted they won';t display so much ignorance over it as they did last June.
I'm so grateful to the Mackey Cab driver who made it possible for you and I to make that visit to dear Grandma's bedside -- for the following Friday she lay so quiet in her last sleep, having gone into eternal rest.
I hope, dear child, that you will treasure those twenty minutes.with your silver-haired grandma as much as I do. It was so sweet to hear her whisper that she loved you dearly and would love you forever and ever, little girl. I'm so thankful that you were privileged to hear those beautiful words as your dying Grandma gave you her blessing.
I know, dear daughter, that she did love you and always will love us both dearly because she loved you years before you were born. That was when she taught me to sew, bake and cook so that I would know how to make a good home when God would send you to me. She used to talk about the babies God would sometime give me long before you were as old as you are now.
She taught me that our bodies are a house that God gives our souls to live in while we live on this Earth. Long before I was your age of nine years, inside my body was an organ which we did not learn about in school but in which you would live within for nine months after God sent you to be with me. She said that it was a very delicate organ and that I must be very careful to keep my feet warm and dry by wearing rubbers -- and that I must never, ever jump over fences because I might injure your first home -- which she called "The Sacred Temple" within my body.
She raught me that the books I've read, the stories I heard and everything I did when I was a tiny girl would influence the lives of you and your brothers and your sisters for either good or evil. My child, it is imposible for me to tell you all the beautiul thoughts she taught me when I was a very small girl. Sweetheart, the fact that you have been robbed of your God-given priviledge of hearing and learning these things from her is the biggest cross I have been called upon to bear. Sometime you may read of the fine things that Frances E. Willard has endorsed and also written for young girls. Grandma was a distant relative and her thoughts were the same beautiful pure ones which that wonderful woman has given to the world.
Grandma suffered much because she taught me those things -- as Grandpa wanted your mama to be an old maid schoolteacher and never, ever marry,. He was always very unkind to dear silver-haired Grandma because of their difference in opinion. As for Grandma, she did not want me to think about marrying until I was 24 or 25. She said that I would not be a normal perfect woman if I did not, by that time, possess the desire for a cozy home with two or three babies of my very own to love and care for. My darling, when I was 22 I met your Daddy and in that year married him. You will never know how Grandma wept as I pleaded with her to giver her consent to my marriage. She said she could not bear to see me marry before I was 24.
My dear, I disobeyed her and in the summer I was 23, I married, much to her sorrow. But now I'm so sorry I did and wonder if God will ever forgive me for that one disobedience. I thought that he was as pure and high-minded as i had been taught to be, but I had not been his wife 24 hours before I learnd that he was not what I had thought him to be. My one disobedieince had brought grief to not only myself but to the two dearest and nearest to me: yourself and my own dear mother. Since you have ben taken from me,.Grandpa has abused poor Grandma unmercifully, claiming she was to blame for it all.
Sweetheart, I wish that you would join me in asking God to richly bless her for all she suffered on Earth for our sake. It was sweet of you to tell her how you loved her and would have liked to visit her often if Daddy had only let you. I'm very sure that you made her very happy in her last hours on Earth.
I wa never allowed to see your Grandma again until she was passing into life eternal -- evre though I went daily to the hospital;. When she was almost gone, they sent for me to come to her. Someday you will know just how much your poor mama was forced to suffer during the following days. Finally God in his mercy showed me a path that led me away from those who, out of jealousy and narrow-mindedness, were seeking to harm me,.
God showed me the same path in 1922 when you were taken from me -- but in those days I had faith in Michigan;s courts, etc. even as you do now. Therefore I did not take the path God had so plainly shown me to take. But eleven months behind the bar showed me how true wee the wrds of the poet. :
Truth forever on tbe scaffold
Wrong forever on the throne
Yet the scafford sways the future
And beyond the dim unknown.
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch among his own.
Elven months behind the bars in 1922 and one month last June proved to me beyond all doubt that there is only one court where truth rules -- and that is the court of God in the realms of Heaven.
So last June I constantly prayed, "Great good merciful God, show me the same path again and I''ll not hesitate to go where you direcct me.". At last God answered my prayer and I resolutely placed my hand in God's and said, "Lead me on, O Heavenly Father -- and please, oh please, look after my child,"
It was hard to leave you without seeing you and without my clothes, except what I had on my back. Sweetheart, if was so difficult to quiet the mother cry in my heart.for you, not knowing if ever on Earth I'd see you again. But, in those last few hours, God gave me the firm conviction that sometime he would reunite us and put our enemies in their rightful place.-- for he says, very plainly, , "Vengence is mine. I will repay." So sayeth the Lord God of Hosts. And with that song in my heart, I left you. "The clouds cannot hide His blessed face. I'm satisfied to know that with Jesus here below, I can conquer every foe and not fear." It was that song that gave me the courage to take the step that I did -- and darling mine, Jesus has been with me every step of the way and I pray that He has been very close to you.
I'm very sorry indeed if you were ever punished because you went with me that night when the Mackey cab driver and I took you to see your dying Grandma at the hospital. The old maids at the YWCA had no legitimate right to forbid you from going -- nor to interfere in any way as they did, when I tried to teach you during our brief hour together. It is well the national organization does not know about if all or those two would be hunting for new jobs. I happen to know what a wonderful organization the YWCA really is and that its national leaders are ideal types of womanhood.
Sometime, my dear, you will understand why I wanted to hold you in my arms during these few precious moments together -- and why I used to cry when it came time for you to go. Sixty minutes ws a mighty short time for me to teach you all the things a modern mother is supposed to teach her child. We really scarcely got acquainted in so short a time, especially when we were interrupted every ten or fifteen minutes by those horrid women.
I'm so sorry that you believed them instead of me when I taught you the words of that wonderful poem which is consdered, by those qualified to judge, to be one of the masterpieces of modern literature. And to think that they were allowed to teach you that vile lie instead of the beautiful truths about the mysteries of your birth. I was trying so patiently to overcome all obstacles to teach you, as my mother had me, and as all true mothers should. I was very anxious to teach you those beautiful truths because many sad things happen to little girls and boys who are allowed to grow up in ignorance.
I hope that your teacher sees this and will sometime soon give you a private physiology lesson to explain to you this poem which I now copy for her benefit as well as to refresh your memory:
How did you come to me, my sweet?
From the land that no man knows?
Did Mr. Stork bring you here on his wings?
Were you born in the heart of a rose?
Did an angel fly down with you from the sky?
Were you found in a gooseberry patch?
Did a fairy bring you from Fairyland
To my door that was left on the latch?
No! My darling was born of a wonderful love
A love that was Daddy's and mine
A love that was human but deep and profound
A love that was almost divine.
Do you remember, sweetheart, when we went to the zoo?
And we saw that big bear with a grouch?
And the lions and tigers and tall kangaroo
That carried her babies in a pouch?
Do you remember I told you she kept them there safe
From the cold and the wind 'til they grew
Big enough to take care of themselves?
Well, dear heart, that is how I cared for you.
I carried you under my heart, my sweet
And I sheltered you safe from alarms
'Til one wonderful day the dear God looked down
And I cuddled you tight in my arms.
.
My dear child, i hope that by now you understand that you have many things to be thankful for and chief among them is the fact that you knew the care of a kind, intelligent, trained mother for the first four and one-half years of your life. Also, not all little girls have a blessing such a you had in your silver-haired grandma, who has left us for her heavenly home.
Each morning when I awaken -- each evening when I go to rest -- I pray to the Lord to guard you as you go through all the hours of your life. And again I kneel in memory as I did when you were twelve days old. Daddy had so cruelly lied about me and was taking you from me for what turned out to be one long terrible month. You weighed six pounds when I left and only four and one half when I was allowed to return. Again I repeat the prayers i uttered that day. "Into thine care and thine alone, dear Lord, do I surrender the charge thou hast given me in this, the birth of my daughter. They are sending me away -- but O God, in your tender mercy,.do not let them keep me from her. If you see fit to call me home, plese grant, O God, that your guardian angels watch over her by night and day to lead her in the paths of righteousness. This is my prayer -- but thy will, O God, not mine, be done."
Don't be downhearted, sweetheart. Someday God will again make it so that you can live with your own true mama. Until that day, my child, remember that nowhere can you find a love to equal the love of your mama. Never another so tender and true to you. No one will ever sacrifice and work with such joy for you as your mama now is -- and will, in saving your college money or helping you always. Nowhere, no time will you find a friendship like your mother's, which will remain unbroken 'til death calls and life's work is over. Remember that wherever you go, whatever you do, your mama's loving thoughts and tenderest prayers will follow you forever.
My chief desire is now and always has been to place you among children and grown-ups where you will not be exposed to such shame and reproach as you are now. A child of so sensitive a nature as yours can not be allowed to suffer such untold misery living under the conditions you have been forced into since they took you away from my care.
You were always a very sensitive child and my heart aches for you with an unnamable grief -- as we are taught that "Out of the heart are the issues of life." I greatly fear that your spiritual happiness and contentment throughout your entire life is now being jeopardized.
You were intensely interested and memorized Bible stories so quickly when you were only two or three years old. I know that it was very natural for you to turn to and believe in God the Father, the maker of Heaven and Earth, and Jesus Christ as his only begotten Son, born to the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem in Judea. Enclosed with this I'm sending you a copy of "Bible Stories," which is an exact copy of the book your silver-haired Grandma gave me when I was six years old. I read it and knew it from memory long before I was as old as you are now. I hope you will read it and enjoy it as much as I did my copy.
This letter is written, dear child, with your mother's most profound prayer that, when December 25 arrives this year, some true Christian soul will have taken an interest in you and read this, my Christmas message to you. Hopefully that person will explain things to you so you will be able to keep henceforth keep that first and greatest commandment of them all -- which is "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart, all thy soul and and with all thy mind." That is my Christmas prayer.
First, last and forever your loving mother,
Ella
---
Notes:
The "silver-haired grandma" was Grace Acre (1863-1926), Ella's mother. John and Athol Withrow matied on Thanksgviing Day, 1925. "The auntie you never remember" (because Marjorie was then only an infant) was Ella's sister Ivah Acre (1897-1918). "The Landing of the Pilgrims" is a poem by Felicia Hemans (1793-1935). Frances E. Willard (1839-1898) was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. The first poem, "Truth Forever On the Scaffold,"was written by James Russell Lowell (1813-1891). The second poem is actually titled "To A Child Who Inquires" and was written by British-American actress anf writer Olga Petrovs (1884-1977): . . . . .
The middle photo on this page show John with Ella; the lower photo shows him with Athol.
At the time of Marjorie's birth, the Withrows lived at 511 S. Hosner in Lansing. By 1922 they had moved to 812 Johnson Avenue in Lansing.
CARL died only eight days after his birth in 1921 due to an underdeveloped cranium. His birth and death as John's "defective" male heir sparked John to leave Ella and seek a different mate.
The "official" reason, as put down in court records, was because Ella became "very jealous in nature" and "verbally and physically abused him" (due to his wandering ways). She was officially "adjudged insane" and on August 15, 1922 an order was issued for her commitment within the Michigan State Hospital for the Insane at Kalamazoo, Michigan. Thirteen months later, on September 17, 1923, Ella was declared "of restored soundness of mind."
Ella admitted striking John when "deliberately or unreasonably provoked" but denied being jealous or making her husband's life miserable because of the "attentions of other women." She claimed counter cruelty and extreme abuse by John. According to Ella, John had a violent temper and "forced her down on sharp objects."
Mabelle Person of Lansing was appointed Ella's guardian.
During the divorce proceedings, it was claimed that Ella had been "adjudged insane" on December 6, 1913 and sent to the psychopathic ward at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. Ella denied ever being adjudged insane, explaining that she'd been sent to Ann Arbor for treatment of spinal meningitis and had been released fully recovered.
Separation was granted on November 29, 1921 and the divorce granted on April 28, 1922. Ella won custody of Marjorie and of John's estate. However, in 1924, John sued for custody of Marjorie and won it. At the time, his salary was $140 per month. On Thanksgiving Day, 1925, John married Athol Beadle. As for Marjorie, he placed her in a foster home -- a farm, actually -- outside of Lansing run by a couple known as the Harts (first names unknown). Marjorie apparently remained there until she entered college. John and Athol produced a son, Jack.
In 1927 Ella entered the Michigan Asylum for the Insane, which was part of Kalamazoo State Hospital on Oakland Drive in Kalamazoo, MI. She stayed there for 12 years, two months and two days -- until her death of "acute cardiac failure and aspiration pneumonia (10 hours)" with a "contributing catatonic stupor (10 hours)" on September 9, 1939. But was that true? Reportedly, the autopsy reveled feathers stuck in Ella's throat. Had she been suffocated with a pillow? No follow-up investigation took place -- so we'll never know if Ella Acre Withrow was murdered at the age of 45.
As of 1929, John was working as a purchasing agent for the Ideal Engine Company. He and his second wife spent their married life in a perpetually neat and tidy home in East Lansing, MI, where he was employed at Motor Wheel, a firm which suppiled parts to General Motors. John's son Jack eventually became an executive at General Motors. After John's death in 1978, Athol moved into an assisted living facility until her passing in 1990.
--
More than anything else, the very self-important John D. Withrow Sr. wanted a son to carry on his name. He was not at all happy when his firstborn child turned out to be a girl and blamed his wife -- even though it the male parent who actually determines an offspring's gender. Not long after, John was both embarrased and even angrier when his second child with Ella was a son but, due to a fatal birth defect, a "defective heir." Rather than comfort his griefstricken wife, John chose to punish Ella by deserting her and his daughter, Marjorie, and seek a new wife with whom he might have better luck. As was customary at the time, custody of young Marjorie was given to her mother after the Withrows divorced -- but the vengeful John was still not satisfied. He succeeded in first ending not only his marriage to Ella but all her dreams of a happy home with childen and John as a loving husband. Then, to complete Ella's destruction, John won custody of the daughter Ella adored -- not that John wanted Marjorie, but simply to hurt his exp-wife as much as possible. John then managed to get the clearly NOT insane Ella locked away in an insane asylum for the rest of her life -- unable to see or even know the fate of the daughter she adored. And what was the fate of little Marjorie?
After filling the little girl's head full of lies about her mother, John sent Marjorie away to live with a foster couple. This was at the direction odf his new wife, Athrol, who wanted a "fresh start" without any baggage around from her new husband's first marriage. And a little girl who was the spitting image of her mother was the last thing Athol wanted around.
in November 1926 -- not knowing that the next year John would completely destroy any chance of future happens for Ella by having her falsely locked away for life -- the young mother wrote a letter to her daughter -- a letter which was never delivered. In fact, the letter was lost until finally rediscovered in 2017. Was the clearly sane Ella crazy in any way? If you count the emotional toll of having her marriage, child, reputation and future ripped away. yes, I guess that might craze anyone.
But as this never before published letter underscores, Ella Withrow was a deeply Christian, loving mother propelled through no fault of her own into a hellish existance for the "crime" of giving birth to a baby who only lived a few days.
My Dear Darling Daughter,
Not knowing where you are or in whose care you are, I take this way of sending you a message of love for this Thanksgiving and Christmas season. A time, I know, when your poor childish heart is torn with grief because of our separation and broken up home.
Your vehment assertion, one year ago, that you hated God because he had sent you to a mama and daddy like he did has rung in my memory ever since. You said, "God is for little girls to love, who have a momma and a daddy who stayed home to love and care for each other and their babies."
My beloved, you will never coimprehend the grief it brings me to recall your sobbing voice as it wailed, "God does not love me. He only loves little girls who live with their mamas, who are nice women that eveyone is proud to know and that they can be proud of -- instead of being ashamed of ther mama like I have to be of you, mama. You are a naughty, bad woman. Everyone says you are. If you are not, why does the judge not let me live with you? So there. I want a mama I can be proud of and can live with but I just hate to have such a nasty woman as you are for my mama."
Now my darling, I hope that this year has taught you many truths and by now you realize that many of those things that brought you so much grief are false.and that now you realize that you do not have to bow your head because of anything that you own mama has ever done.
To prove the above statement, I hereby challenge any man, woman or child to answer through the columns of this paper with any charges if they have such against me. I mean personal knowledge and not hearsay, if you please. Come on, you Black Guards, and answer this Yuletide challenge. You have so viley poisoned a little child's mind against the pure woman who gave her birth. She who went (if ever woman did) down to the very shadows in her hours of travail.
My child, you were very indignant last year when I tried to explain things to you. I told you that your daddy did not love your own mama and intended to give you a stepmother. You said that that could not be true but the very next week he married her.
My child, I want you to know and remember always that that calamity would never have been possible if the judge had granted mama's plea for separate maintenance instead of forcing an absolute decree upon her. I have always thought it criminal for parents who are so profoundly and finally alienated as your daddy and I were to bestow life on any new being. That was the sole reason why I asked for separate maintenance when your daddy deserted you and I for the other two young things he was then chasing -- one of which is the one you now call "Mama."
Sweetheart, remember this always. God is not to blame because your daddy has been taught to look upon marriage as he does a suit of clothes which he can discard at any time for a new one. But God's word does give us the promise that sometime. somewhere, in eternity, God will punish him severely for acting as he has. In the Bible, God very clearly defines the duties of men and women who enter the bonds of marriage, thereby accepting the duties of parenthood.
Your silver-haired grandma taught me those verses in the Bible and, as God is my witness, I have lived up to them. Let me assure you that a good home awaits you with me any time you are allowed to come to me. Always remember, little girl, that while mother lives, you have one true parent on earth who loves you above all else on the face of the Earth.
It has been six months since you and I visited yoiur silver-haired grandma as she laid on her last bed of suffering and pain. Darling, you mama is so thankful that God made it possible for you to see her before she left earth for her home with God where her wonderful parents, your own baby brother and the auntie you never remember awaited her.
You and I ought to be very thankful to God for her and all that she taught me -- she in whose veins flowed the blood of the proudest, most intelligent Christian families of the British Isles. It was from those fine people she received her training.
Ask your teacher to find you the poem "The Landing of the Pilgrims" by Felicia Hemans. Then read it and lift up your head and thank God that you are a descendant of those wonderful people. I'm positive that those who harrass you with tales against me and your Grandma's ancestry are not blessed with any finer ancestrors than we. Therefore, remember my words and do not let their lies grieve you as in the past.
Ask your teacher to tell you the story of Willliam Penn and the Quakers. Then you will know more about silver-haired grandma's ancestors and someday you will be proud to meet your realatives and happy indeed to be welcomed by them.
Grandma had so many times longed to see you during the four years your daddy has kept you from us. Darling, you and I will never comprehend the sorrow and the grief she endured since you were so cruelly and unjustly taken from my care and custody. Science tells us that nothing will so quickly break down anyone's health so completely as despair and grief over something that they consider past hope. That was true not only of your silver-haired grandma but also true of another wonderful silver-haired old lady who was made my godmother when (as a baby) I was christened in the M.E. church. That fine lady only lived six months after you were so cruelly taken from my care and custody by Ruth Bowen's vile lies. Grandma found out the truth before she passed on but the other lady never learned the truth about the case.
Darling, you and I have the Saviour's promise of life eternal for our loved ones and punishment for those who so willfully wronged them and us. Jesus says in Matthew 18 6-7 "He who shall cause one of these little ones who believe on Me to stumble; it is profitable for him that a great millstone shall be hanged around his neck and that he be sunk in the depths of the sea Woe unto the world because of occasional stumbling: for it needs to be that the occasions occur: but woe to that man or women through who the occasions cometh."
My child, ask your teacher to find you the above passage in the Bible so you know I've quoted it correctly. Not all Bibles are printed from the same translation so it may be that you do not find those identical words but the thought will be the same.
I do hope that Mrs. Beaubier and Mrs. Curran and Miss Wells of the YWCA secretaries will also get out their Bibles so the next time they hear that passage quoted they won';t display so much ignorance over it as they did last June.
I'm so grateful to the Mackey Cab driver who made it possible for you and I to make that visit to dear Grandma's bedside -- for the following Friday she lay so quiet in her last sleep, having gone into eternal rest.
I hope, dear child, that you will treasure those twenty minutes.with your silver-haired grandma as much as I do. It was so sweet to hear her whisper that she loved you dearly and would love you forever and ever, little girl. I'm so thankful that you were privileged to hear those beautiful words as your dying Grandma gave you her blessing.
I know, dear daughter, that she did love you and always will love us both dearly because she loved you years before you were born. That was when she taught me to sew, bake and cook so that I would know how to make a good home when God would send you to me. She used to talk about the babies God would sometime give me long before you were as old as you are now.
She taught me that our bodies are a house that God gives our souls to live in while we live on this Earth. Long before I was your age of nine years, inside my body was an organ which we did not learn about in school but in which you would live within for nine months after God sent you to be with me. She said that it was a very delicate organ and that I must be very careful to keep my feet warm and dry by wearing rubbers -- and that I must never, ever jump over fences because I might injure your first home -- which she called "The Sacred Temple" within my body.
She raught me that the books I've read, the stories I heard and everything I did when I was a tiny girl would influence the lives of you and your brothers and your sisters for either good or evil. My child, it is imposible for me to tell you all the beautiul thoughts she taught me when I was a very small girl. Sweetheart, the fact that you have been robbed of your God-given priviledge of hearing and learning these things from her is the biggest cross I have been called upon to bear. Sometime you may read of the fine things that Frances E. Willard has endorsed and also written for young girls. Grandma was a distant relative and her thoughts were the same beautiful pure ones which that wonderful woman has given to the world.
Grandma suffered much because she taught me those things -- as Grandpa wanted your mama to be an old maid schoolteacher and never, ever marry,. He was always very unkind to dear silver-haired Grandma because of their difference in opinion. As for Grandma, she did not want me to think about marrying until I was 24 or 25. She said that I would not be a normal perfect woman if I did not, by that time, possess the desire for a cozy home with two or three babies of my very own to love and care for. My darling, when I was 22 I met your Daddy and in that year married him. You will never know how Grandma wept as I pleaded with her to giver her consent to my marriage. She said she could not bear to see me marry before I was 24.
My dear, I disobeyed her and in the summer I was 23, I married, much to her sorrow. But now I'm so sorry I did and wonder if God will ever forgive me for that one disobedience. I thought that he was as pure and high-minded as i had been taught to be, but I had not been his wife 24 hours before I learnd that he was not what I had thought him to be. My one disobedieince had brought grief to not only myself but to the two dearest and nearest to me: yourself and my own dear mother. Since you have ben taken from me,.Grandpa has abused poor Grandma unmercifully, claiming she was to blame for it all.
Sweetheart, I wish that you would join me in asking God to richly bless her for all she suffered on Earth for our sake. It was sweet of you to tell her how you loved her and would have liked to visit her often if Daddy had only let you. I'm very sure that you made her very happy in her last hours on Earth.
I wa never allowed to see your Grandma again until she was passing into life eternal -- evre though I went daily to the hospital;. When she was almost gone, they sent for me to come to her. Someday you will know just how much your poor mama was forced to suffer during the following days. Finally God in his mercy showed me a path that led me away from those who, out of jealousy and narrow-mindedness, were seeking to harm me,.
God showed me the same path in 1922 when you were taken from me -- but in those days I had faith in Michigan;s courts, etc. even as you do now. Therefore I did not take the path God had so plainly shown me to take. But eleven months behind the bar showed me how true wee the wrds of the poet. :
Truth forever on tbe scaffold
Wrong forever on the throne
Yet the scafford sways the future
And beyond the dim unknown.
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch among his own.
Elven months behind the bars in 1922 and one month last June proved to me beyond all doubt that there is only one court where truth rules -- and that is the court of God in the realms of Heaven.
So last June I constantly prayed, "Great good merciful God, show me the same path again and I''ll not hesitate to go where you direcct me.". At last God answered my prayer and I resolutely placed my hand in God's and said, "Lead me on, O Heavenly Father -- and please, oh please, look after my child,"
It was hard to leave you without seeing you and without my clothes, except what I had on my back. Sweetheart, if was so difficult to quiet the mother cry in my heart.for you, not knowing if ever on Earth I'd see you again. But, in those last few hours, God gave me the firm conviction that sometime he would reunite us and put our enemies in their rightful place.-- for he says, very plainly, , "Vengence is mine. I will repay." So sayeth the Lord God of Hosts. And with that song in my heart, I left you. "The clouds cannot hide His blessed face. I'm satisfied to know that with Jesus here below, I can conquer every foe and not fear." It was that song that gave me the courage to take the step that I did -- and darling mine, Jesus has been with me every step of the way and I pray that He has been very close to you.
I'm very sorry indeed if you were ever punished because you went with me that night when the Mackey cab driver and I took you to see your dying Grandma at the hospital. The old maids at the YWCA had no legitimate right to forbid you from going -- nor to interfere in any way as they did, when I tried to teach you during our brief hour together. It is well the national organization does not know about if all or those two would be hunting for new jobs. I happen to know what a wonderful organization the YWCA really is and that its national leaders are ideal types of womanhood.
Sometime, my dear, you will understand why I wanted to hold you in my arms during these few precious moments together -- and why I used to cry when it came time for you to go. Sixty minutes ws a mighty short time for me to teach you all the things a modern mother is supposed to teach her child. We really scarcely got acquainted in so short a time, especially when we were interrupted every ten or fifteen minutes by those horrid women.
I'm so sorry that you believed them instead of me when I taught you the words of that wonderful poem which is consdered, by those qualified to judge, to be one of the masterpieces of modern literature. And to think that they were allowed to teach you that vile lie instead of the beautiful truths about the mysteries of your birth. I was trying so patiently to overcome all obstacles to teach you, as my mother had me, and as all true mothers should. I was very anxious to teach you those beautiful truths because many sad things happen to little girls and boys who are allowed to grow up in ignorance.
I hope that your teacher sees this and will sometime soon give you a private physiology lesson to explain to you this poem which I now copy for her benefit as well as to refresh your memory:
How did you come to me, my sweet?
From the land that no man knows?
Did Mr. Stork bring you here on his wings?
Were you born in the heart of a rose?
Did an angel fly down with you from the sky?
Were you found in a gooseberry patch?
Did a fairy bring you from Fairyland
To my door that was left on the latch?
No! My darling was born of a wonderful love
A love that was Daddy's and mine
A love that was human but deep and profound
A love that was almost divine.
Do you remember, sweetheart, when we went to the zoo?
And we saw that big bear with a grouch?
And the lions and tigers and tall kangaroo
That carried her babies in a pouch?
Do you remember I told you she kept them there safe
From the cold and the wind 'til they grew
Big enough to take care of themselves?
Well, dear heart, that is how I cared for you.
I carried you under my heart, my sweet
And I sheltered you safe from alarms
'Til one wonderful day the dear God looked down
And I cuddled you tight in my arms.
.
My dear child, i hope that by now you understand that you have many things to be thankful for and chief among them is the fact that you knew the care of a kind, intelligent, trained mother for the first four and one-half years of your life. Also, not all little girls have a blessing such a you had in your silver-haired grandma, who has left us for her heavenly home.
Each morning when I awaken -- each evening when I go to rest -- I pray to the Lord to guard you as you go through all the hours of your life. And again I kneel in memory as I did when you were twelve days old. Daddy had so cruelly lied about me and was taking you from me for what turned out to be one long terrible month. You weighed six pounds when I left and only four and one half when I was allowed to return. Again I repeat the prayers i uttered that day. "Into thine care and thine alone, dear Lord, do I surrender the charge thou hast given me in this, the birth of my daughter. They are sending me away -- but O God, in your tender mercy,.do not let them keep me from her. If you see fit to call me home, plese grant, O God, that your guardian angels watch over her by night and day to lead her in the paths of righteousness. This is my prayer -- but thy will, O God, not mine, be done."
Don't be downhearted, sweetheart. Someday God will again make it so that you can live with your own true mama. Until that day, my child, remember that nowhere can you find a love to equal the love of your mama. Never another so tender and true to you. No one will ever sacrifice and work with such joy for you as your mama now is -- and will, in saving your college money or helping you always. Nowhere, no time will you find a friendship like your mother's, which will remain unbroken 'til death calls and life's work is over. Remember that wherever you go, whatever you do, your mama's loving thoughts and tenderest prayers will follow you forever.
My chief desire is now and always has been to place you among children and grown-ups where you will not be exposed to such shame and reproach as you are now. A child of so sensitive a nature as yours can not be allowed to suffer such untold misery living under the conditions you have been forced into since they took you away from my care.
You were always a very sensitive child and my heart aches for you with an unnamable grief -- as we are taught that "Out of the heart are the issues of life." I greatly fear that your spiritual happiness and contentment throughout your entire life is now being jeopardized.
You were intensely interested and memorized Bible stories so quickly when you were only two or three years old. I know that it was very natural for you to turn to and believe in God the Father, the maker of Heaven and Earth, and Jesus Christ as his only begotten Son, born to the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem in Judea. Enclosed with this I'm sending you a copy of "Bible Stories," which is an exact copy of the book your silver-haired Grandma gave me when I was six years old. I read it and knew it from memory long before I was as old as you are now. I hope you will read it and enjoy it as much as I did my copy.
This letter is written, dear child, with your mother's most profound prayer that, when December 25 arrives this year, some true Christian soul will have taken an interest in you and read this, my Christmas message to you. Hopefully that person will explain things to you so you will be able to keep henceforth keep that first and greatest commandment of them all -- which is "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart, all thy soul and and with all thy mind." That is my Christmas prayer.
First, last and forever your loving mother,
Ella
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Notes:
The "silver-haired grandma" was Grace Acre (1863-1926), Ella's mother. John and Athol Withrow matied on Thanksgviing Day, 1925. "The auntie you never remember" (because Marjorie was then only an infant) was Ella's sister Ivah Acre (1897-1918). "The Landing of the Pilgrims" is a poem by Felicia Hemans (1793-1935). Frances E. Willard (1839-1898) was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. The first poem, "Truth Forever On the Scaffold,"was written by James Russell Lowell (1813-1891). The second poem is actually titled "To A Child Who Inquires" and was written by British-American actress anf writer Olga Petrovs (1884-1977): . . . . .
The middle photo on this page show John with Ella; the lower photo shows him with Athol.
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