Save $201. Archival Quality Reprints of the 1899 Phelps Family in America family history are now available.
Elizabethe Margarethe Wilhelmine Bremser
Independent minded and stalwart
My maternal grandmother, Elizabethe (Lizzie) Margarethe Wilhelmine Bremser (2 Nov 1888-2 Jun 1952) was born in Hähnstatten, Germany. She arrived in the United States on Ellis Island at age 3 on May 12, 1892, with her parents, Henry and Phillipina Bremser, along with her sister Anna Karlena (Lena), age 2. The family settled in Norwalk, Ohio, where they knew other German immigrants. Her father gradually built up a cement, masonry, and coal business and the family had five more children.
Leaves home at age 14
In 1901 at age 12 or 13 she apprenticed herself to a milliner (hatmaker) for no pay. She apparently disliked her parent's "old world" approach to raising her. According to her daughter Jane, Lizzie had continuing conflicts with her father. In 1902 at age 14, she quit school. With her mother's financial support, and the help of the two ladies who ran the hat shop in Norwalk, she got her a job in a shop in Columbus and a place to stay in a Quaker boarding house. In 1909, she was listed in the city directory as a Milliner in Norwalk. (City of Norwalk Directory pub. W. M. Lawrence, 1909. p 9)
Moves to Chicago
Lizzie discovered that the millinery trade was seasonal and the next Christmas she got a job as a saleswoman. She found she liked that work more. The next winter at age 17, when hat season ended, she went with a friend to Chicago. She got a temporary job during the Christmas season at Marshall Fields, the largest retailer and most exclusive department store in the city. She outsold all the other employees and was given a full-time job.
Seven years later she met Johnson Tucker Beasley, who was a salesman for a seating manufacturer. Joh was from Lexington, Illinois. They dated and were engaged and married within two months.
Marries John Beasley
Lizzie wrote a letter to her parents and two sisters on Wednesday, April 15, 1903: "I am going to be married Friday night at 8:30 and shall be at home to see you some time Sat.... Now don't say I am foolish as my husband to be and myself are in our right minds. His name is John Beasley... [We] became engaged last Sunday and [I] shall be Mrs. Beasley by next Sunday." The couple was married on April 18, 1913 in Chicago.
Three children die young
John and Elizabeth were married in the Emmanuel Baptist Church in Chicago. The witnesses were Lizzie's best friend, Hazel Liggett, and John's brother, Guy. They had five children. Their marriage proved to be full of tragedy.
Their first child Robert Johnson Tucker Beasley was born on Feb 9, 1914 but he lived only four days. Johnson and Lizzie separated for a few weeks, broken up by the grief and stress of losing their son.
Three years later, in 1917, they were living in an apartment in Detroit when they had twin girls: Jane Elizabeth and Ruth Beasley. Ruth was sickly and frail. She died only 19 months later, two days after Christmas, on December 27, 1919, during the flu epidemic.
The family moved to Des Moines, Iowa. and their third daughter Mary Elizabeth (Betty) was born on July 3, 1920, only five months after Ruth died. Betty was a "blue baby," born with a heart valve defect. Doctors told John and Lizzie that Betty would not live long. But Betty beat the odds and lived until she was five and a half years old. She died two days after Christmas, on December 27, 1925. Elizabeth was pregnant with their fifth child when Betty died. The family moved again, this time to Kansas City, Missouri, where they bought their first home. Annabeth was born there six months later, on July 16, 1926.
John was a traveling salesman. When the Depression hit, John's good job of at least nine years with the American Seating Company of Chicago ("Exclusive Manufacturers of Furnishings for Theatres, Churches, Schools and all Public Buildings") went from a salaried, expense-account position to a position as a Manufacturers Agent. It meant he didn't get paid if he didn't sell. John drifted deeper into debt and was frequently absent. Lizzie struggled to manage the mortgage payments each month, embarrassed when the grocery bill went unpaid at times.
Friction in the Family
John's daughter Jane recalled years later that he was known as a "high expense man," which was family code for "alcoholic". Jane remembered talk of his womanizing and drinking "on the road." Both John's and Lizzie's fathers also drank excessively. The tensions occurred in whispers supposedly out of Jane's hearing. John drifted deep into debt. In 1930, John forced Lizzie to agree to a second mortage on the house. Foreclosure loomed ahead, a dreaded specter.
In 1930, John left Lizzie and his two daughters, Jane and Annabeth, and moved to Chicago. Lizzie's mother, who made a side income selling eggs, doing laundry, and selling butter she churned herself, frequently sent Lizzie money. Lizzie finally could not keep up the mortgage, and decided to rent the house and live with family. They moved a number of times over the next nine years, living with her parents, then with her sister Minnie and husband Curt Klein, and with family friends. Over the next nine years, Elizabeth Bremser worked various jobs and moved several times between Norwalk, Kansas City, Detroit and Decatur.
In 1934, during the depths of the Depression, Elizabeth worked in a cafeteria. She was unable to care for Annabeth, who spent the summer in a children's home. Elizabeth and Jane got a room in a neighbor's home, the Penniwells. Elizabeth got a job in a sorority home.
In 1935, they moved back to Norwalk, Ohio and into another family's home, the Lexa's. Jane's grandfather Heinrich Bremser agreed to help put her through college. In 1935, Jane attended Drake University in Des Moines as a freshman, where she worked in exchange for room and board. She later transferred to Bowling Green State University which she graduated from in 1940. (From there she moved the University of Michigan and received her masters in 1945. She earned an Ed.D. in 1955 from Columbia University's Teachers College.).
In 1936, Elizabeth and her daughters spent the summer in Lexington, Illinois at Ray and Ruth (Beasley) Rickett's home. Annabeth had several cousins her age living there and no doubt made some friendships. However, when fall rolled around, they moved back to Des Moines where Annabeth started in the fifth grade. In the spring of 1936, Annabeth was in school in Norwalk and living with her big sister Jane in the Robin's home. Elizabeth then got a job in the Wentz' Childrens' Home in Norwalk as the Director of Girls and a counselor.
Return to Kansas City
In about 1939, Heinrich, heavily pressured by his wife Bina, agreed to give their daughter Lizzie an early inheritance: he paid off both mortgages on the house in Kansas City. Lizzie and Annabeth moved back to Kansas City. After 11 moves in seven years, the Lizzie and Annabeth returned to Kansas City. ane, making almost $750 a month at age 18 as a teacher, bought her mother and sister a new stove. Annabeth worked part time as a secretary for a Kansas City department store while finishing school. She graduated from Southeast High School in Kansas City in 1943. She also worked for a brief period in the test kitchens for TransWorld Airlines.
During the summer of 1943, Jane worked in a glider factory. She said she could never forget the penetrating smell of the glue. In early 1944, Jane married a serviceman, Art Budden Jr. Jane's intellectual, independent attitude contrasted with Art's conservative, quiet nature, and they separated and divorced within two years.
In 1947, Annabeth volunteered at the USO where she her future husband Hal Phelps. They married in 1947.
Elizabeth and Johnson were separated the rest of their lives. While family members said they were divorced, John's 1950 obituary describes him as being survived by his wife. While living in Chicago, John mostly managed hotels. He died in Chicago at age 67 on Saturday, April 1, 1950 of a heart attack. He was buried in the Lexington, Illinois cemetery.
Lizzie remained in Kansas City through at least 1947 and then moved to Sandusky, Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie, about 19 miles from Norwalk. After a heart attack, she entered a convalescent facility in Sandusky where she died of a heart attack on June 2, 1952 at age 64. Lizzie was buried in the family plot in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Norwalk with her children Robert and Betty. When Jane and later Annabeth died, they too were buried near their mother and siblings.