Sisters Ruby and Gladys Niel

Doesn’t your heart just melt when you look at these darlings? They were sisters Ruby and Gladys Niel from Midland in Michigan.

Can’t the world just stop and stay as happy and innocent as the faces of these angels? Brace yourselves and make sure you have some hankies closeby, this will be a sad one...

Life started out happy for our siblings. Their father George Adelbert Niel had a steady job with the Pere Marquette Railway Company, he could afford a morgage-free house in Ionia, Michigan. In 1890, he married the sisters’ mum Emma née Lane. Ruby Louvisa was born on November 28, 1896, and little Gladys on October 15, 1900.

But in the Census of 1910, the father was missing from the household, and one census further, in 1920, Gladys was missing as well. What was going on here?

By the 1910 Census, mum Emma was widowed and she had moved her daughters to Midland, some 100 km from Ionia. For income, she was renting rooms to lodgers in her house in Rodd Street which she owned morgage-free.

But what had happened to the children’s father George Niel? I was in for a tragic surprise. At Christmas 1903, on a snowy evening of December 26, two Pere Marquette trains collided heads-on near East Paris, Michigan, due to a missing stop-sign. George had been one of the conductors of the trains. He initially survived the accident with a fractured leg and some other injuries and was improving, but his condition worsened a few days later and he died from a nervous shock on December 30 in the hospital.

Link: www.newspapers.com

Link: FindaGrave.com

Newspapers reported horrific details about the train wreck. Body parts of unidentifiable victims together with Christmas presents lying at the scene next to the demolished train wagons. Apparently George was not supposed to be on the train, but he relieved a fellow conductor who needed a lay-off. George died before his 40th birthday.

And as if that was not enough sorrow for one family, in January 1913 Gladys came down with meningitis which led to her death at just 12 years of age. She was buried at the Midland City Cemetery.

I don’t know where mum Emma took the strength to carry on. By 1920, she had sold her house in Midland and moved to Flint where she continued to rent rooms to lodgers.

Ruby was 23 and working as a stenographer.

Ruby married Willard Fuller on October 30, 1923, in Flint. Willard was 2 years older, worked at an automobile factory, and he was a WWI veteran. He was originally from Ruby’s childhood town of Ionia, Michigan. I wonder if they knew each other from their childhood?

In the next decades, Ruby and Willard moved around quite a bit. The 1930 Census lists them in Clayton, the 1940 Census in Swartz Creek and the 1950 Census had them in Genesee near Flint. And each Census has Willard working in an automobile factory, as a straightener or a press operator. This was hard manual labour and I’m afraid Willard worked himself into his grave. He passed away way before his time in 1953, at the age of 59. As a WWI veteran (also drafted for WWII), he was laid to rest at the Sunset Hills Cemetery in Flint. Five years later, in 1958, Ruby also lost her mother Emma who had been living with her since the 1940s.

I wish I knew what became of Ruby after this, where she lived and who kept an eye on her as she came into old age, I suppose the cousins mentioned in her obituary in The Journal of April 23, 1989. She and Willard never had any children. She passed away in April 1989 in Durand, Shiawassee in Michigan.

I believe that the photo of the sisters was taken around the time their father died. Just heart-breaking that their daddy was taken from them way too soon. Rest in peace, both Ruby and Gladys, I hope you are reunited with your dear daddy on the other side of the rainbow.