Eugenia

I've moved past Mattie Sleeth, and moved on to Dana's wife, Eugenia. She only has a few things, tossed in the back of the box, all in a mess. Clearly, she was not seen as the important figure of the family. But for me, this has been a fascinating afternoon. There are several gaps in her folder, and her life seems to jump from her high school report cards, to letters from her son Marshall, to letters of condolence. Eugenia's papers illustrate, better than anything I could ever write, the extraordinary difficulty historians have studying women's history. People often choose to keep things based on what they consider to be "history." And for the majority of American history, that definition hasn't included women's history. Unlike Dana, whose every scrap of paper was carefully preserved, Eugenia's noteworthy information included report cards, a few scraps of paper from her husband and son (not her daughter, notably), and letters from people on the death of her husband. Undoubtedly, she wrote letters back to her husband and her son, and her daughter. Undoubtedly, there was an obituary upon her death. But no one thought to keep it, like they did with Dana.

So when reconstructing her past, it's incredibly difficult, and usually done in the relief of her husband and son's past. It's what we historians call "oblique" history-- looking for a story, not by looking at your subject, but looking past it, looking around it, looking at the shadow it casts on the wall of the cave.

So in shifting through what was kept,it's a bleak picture that's painted. Hidden amongst the letters of condolences from a senator from Washington, the Scripps family, and old friends, was a newspaper clipping, advocating a new way of treating burns using tannic acid. And thinking about Eugenia, who just lost her husband far too young of extensive burns, clipping out that article, leaves the impression of a grieving woman, whose voice has been lost in history.