Eulogy for Mary Alice Wellons Dixon

She was the daughter of Ralph and Bess Wellons. She was the younger sister of Bob Wellons. Her other brother, Edward, dies in infancy. She was the wife of Jarrett Denton “Jerry” Dixon. She was the mother of Jay, Lee and Todd Dixon. She was my mom.

Mom was born on Memorial Day of 1929. Back then, Memorial Day was always celebrated on May 30th, instead of on a nearby Monday. I found out when my wife and I moved to Florida to begin our teaching careers that Memorial Day was not celebrated in the south, since it honored Union soldiers. Only later was it viewed as a day to celebrate all veterans. She died in Gainesville, Florida on July 26, 2018, a victim of dementia for several years. 

She (and dad) were proud members of the Anderson High School class of 1947. She missed the chance to go to college by a generation, but was one of the smartest people I have ever known. She was a “lifetime learner” through reading of the newspaper, watching tv news, traveling later in life and playing Bridge. Whenever we bought a new biography (Adams, Hamilton, Lincoln) for dad, we knew that we were getting a “two-fer” and that mom would also read every one. Dad only got to go to Purdue for one semester before the money ran out, and both of my parents saved money for years to make sure the I and my brothers would have to money and expectation that we would go to college.

Mom also developed a variety of artistic and craft skills. She was skilled at sewing, and made clothes for herself and other ladies and sometimes for us kids. She was a knitter and even taught knitting classes. She also learned basket weaving and taught classes. She ran an upholstery shop out of our garage and living room…not my favorite since the kids got the job of pulling staples and tacks out of old furniture that would then be transferred into new pieces. She became a skilled shopper of antique glassware and furniture, and toyed with the idea of opening a shop. She even made Christmas crafts with felt, glue and glitter before that was a trend. All “classes” took place in our living room.

Mom also had a career. Actually two careers. But only before and after raising three boys. She helped an independent insurance agent and said that he offered to bring her into the business so she could take it over when he retired. She had kids instead. After kids, she was the secretary to a small town bank president in Chesterfield.

She had the most amazing friendships, especially with her bridge buddies Joy Skiles and Sally Lacy. They would play bridge one day every other week or so, and then have monthly bridge games with the hubbies. I learned the art of arguing (without losing my temper) from the endless arguments that I heard the next day after husband and wife bridge night. Mom gave more than she took in these arguments. One tragedy of her dementia, which we didn’t understand at the time, is that she turned against her friends late in life, saying “All they want to do is play cards!”, when that was the foundation of their friendship all along. It turns out that she was struggling to keep up with such a complicated card game. Even though they switched to easier card games, she just couldn’t keep up and didn’t want to admit it. The ladies bridge games where literally a riot of laughter, with the competition and the gossip. They even went on an annual camping trip to a state park in Ohio for three days each year in our pop-up camper.

She also had a couple of close neighbor friends, Violet Hill and Irma Barber. Stay-at-home moms essential ly lived on an island in the 1950’s and 60’s. They depended on each other for a cup of this or that and for help with babysitting when they needed to go to an appointment of get away. Mom was lucky to have her own car since many in that era were stuck at home without one. Mom essentially considered her life over when she could no longer drive. Mom was also very proud of the fact that she had a private phone line around the time we started school. Before then, several neighbors were on a “party line”, essentially sharing one phone line. After mom and dad moved to Wooded Ridge addition north of Huntsville, she became good friends with another neighbor, Beth Fox. Beth got to know mom so well that she was the first person to realize that something wasn’t right and mom was struggling. This was months before she was diagnosed with dementia.

Mom was acting very weirdly when dad got sick and eventually died from a rare autoimmune disease called Wegener’s Disease. She seemed to function intellectually, but was at times hostile and at other times she seemed to ignore the fact that dad was sick or not care that he was sick. After he passed, she lived on her own for a few years, with Todd taking over finances and bills put on autopay. Jay would help with home repairs and we all tried to talk her out of bad decisions, like buying a condo in Meadowbrook that routinely flooded under the house. A good attorney talked her out of buying another house in Wooded Ridge after putting down $1000 since he knew the house had issues.

Eventually Todd moved mom to his home in North Carolina. Mom was depressed since dad passed and was crying on the phone. She refused to interact with others other than Todd and Jill and one of their dear friends who would go shopping with mom once a week to get her out of the house. When she came to Gainesville, she also refused to participate in a very rich activity program, except for movie night, which she believed that she ran for the benefit of all. When she moved to memory care at another facility, the activities coordinator was able to get her to participate fully as long as she was physically and mentally able to do so.

Mom loved to talk. I can’t say that enough. It was the cruelest thing that memory loss, or loss of intellectual ability was not her primary problem throughout her disease. First there were the personality changes that drove friends and family away, and later she developed an aphasia, resulting in the inability to say the words that she was thinking. To her, it all made sense. To an outside observer, especially one who did know her well, she was talking nonsense. Despite this, she developed friendships at the independent living facility in Gainesville and they loved to listen to her talk. One lady even cried when I was there for lunch one day because the staff would not let her sit at mom’s table because they didn’t want a fourth chair to block an aisle.

Mom was a great mom and seemed built to be a mom for boys. Dad worked 12 or more hours most days and was tired when he got home. Mom raised us. She encouraged us to participate in sports and she was the transportation chief. That fit in well with her love of driving. She demanded a good showing, but not perfection, in academics. She did go to school at the end of third grade and told them to never put me in the same class with my best friend Larry Swindell, which literally worked until we took Chemistry in 11th grade. (Of course, I proceeded to fail most of the chemistry tests and only passed due to the teacher being a rookie who dared not fail anybody!) Mom was the alpha golfer in the family, and we played behind her group on Ladies Day each week at Grandview. Jay was old enough to supervise us with mom within shouting distance. Mom and Carla Yust, who also had three boys who were literally best friends with Jay, Lee and Todd, took us camping in our teen years at Pokagon State Park. We developed an ideal routine of breakfast, basketball, beach and babes (a juke box dance at the pavilion above the beach). Rinse and repeat! And s’mores at the end of the night before bed.

She was able to smile or grin whenever staff approached her and loved to give and get hugs up to her final week of life when she physically and mentally wore out.

Noticeable Trends in Family History

There were some trends that really stood out as I completed the Wellons/Wyant family history, covering a time span from the late 1700’s to the late 1970’s. The trends outlined below are not necessarily in chronological order.

The industrialization of America is fully illustrated by our family history. From almost complete reliance on farming to almost complete reliance on mechanical skilled trades and manufacturing, the Wellons and Wyant clans survived the change really well. Our ancestors ended up in the right place (Anderson, Indiana) at the right time (early 1900’s).

The advent in birth control methods, first with surgical sterilization, and then with the birth control pill and other methods, changed everything. Family size dropped drastically over the course of the 1900’s. Along with this, economic wealth was not divided into ever smaller portions. Almost all of our early ancestors at least owned farm land and a home. But when you have 8-15 kids, there is nothing to inherit or pass on the the next generation. And it’s hard to build wealth when supporting so many people. America, unlike England, did not practice primogeniture, where the oldest child inherited the bulk of any wealth. Eventually, women started working outside the home, although this really didn’t happen until the baby boom generation.

The changes in transportation were drastic, from relying on horse power, to the development of trains, to the development of autos and air travel, folks could move greater distances and more quickly. In some ways however, the nomadic trend in our family branches defied this trend. Our families moved a lot and long distances when horses powered it all, mainly due to the availability of free or really cheap land as Americans drove the Native-Americans west. Although technically purchased by the federal government from the Indians, the deals were anything but fair to the sellers.

Eventually, family members started attending high school and even graduating. Although the move to college education didn’t happen until the 1970’s and later, it has mirrored national trends. Formal education was not required for farming in the early years or for even for skilled trade work and other manufacturing jobs, although some advanced mathematics was required and received as part of apprenticeships.

One thing about health stands out. The family was lucky in that there were a few deaths in infancy, but not nearly what you might expect given the level of medical knowledge in the period before World War II. Most children in our family survived and many lived long lives. There was almost a decline in the mid-1900’s as smoking contributed to early deaths. However, most folks reached middle age and senior status before smoking related diseases killed them. Maternal deaths appear to happen, but again not as frequently as you might expect.

Other Family Information

Religion

There isn’t a lot to know about our ancestor’s religion, but we know a little:

There were no Catholics in the family.

There was at least one Quaker family who settled near Richmond, Indiana.

Two men were described by at least some accounts as ministers: Daniel Hudson and Issac Fallis.


Occupations

Of course, almost everybody prior to 1900 was a farmer. One of the most significant changes in the family was the participation in the industrial revolution by working at Delco-Remy and Hill-Standard  in what are called “the skilled trades”.

There were no doctors (not counting chiropractic as practiced in the mid 1900’s).
There were no lawyers.
The two ministers were actually farmers. The ministry was very part-time.

But we had a few men who were not farmers in the 1800’s:

One ran a tannery.
One was a photographer just after the civil war.

And we get several occupations in the 1900’s other than farming and mechanical skilled trades.

We had no high school graduates until the middle 1900’s and no college graduates until the baby boomer generation.

Our Lucky and Unlucky Ancestors

Jessie Wyant, Bessie’s sister lived to 103.

Jacob Webb died at age 98, earning obituaries in 3 Madison County newspapers.

Aunt Carrie Wellons was divorced from Ralph Musick (and already remarried) when he committed a murder suicide by shooting his second wife and then himself.

Isaiah Lane died at 26 years old with a wife and 3 children. His estate was declared insolvent. Then his wife and her new husband filed to partition the property the survivors jointly inherited.

Harris Gammon died at age 20, with a wife and one child and another on the way.

The wealthiest folks in the family appear to be:

The father and son team of William and Andrew Carson, who have pages of property purchase records documented.

And Henry Wellons, who was granted 200 acres in Kentucky as a young man, plus a large inheritance from his father. A family story says he had 12 slaves on the Pulaski County, Kentucky “plantation”, and that the slaves were freed before the civil war by Henry or his son John Chapple Wellons, but there is no proof of either claim.

Veterans Roll of Honor

Ralph Robert Wellons served in World War II.

War of 1812:

Isaac Fallis
John Henry Shetterly
Andrew Carson

Civil War:

William B. Barnhizer
Isaac Wyant
John Chapel Wellons (Jr.)
And several brothers of direct ancestors.

Fun with Names

The most unusual names among our ancestors:

Three generations of the Nash family... in the Wyant line of our ancestry:

Obediah Nash (grandpa)

Pleasant Nash (pa)

Emaline Nash Carson (I like the name, but they called her Emma)

Cuthbert Webb, who is actually a Junior to Cuthbert Senior.

Mercy Mary Fallis, who named two of her daughters Mercy and Mary, of course!

And Ralph’s brother Branson (actually a first name in five generations in the family).

And his sister Pansy, who married Bessie’s brother Paul Wyant.

And let’s not forget Absolom Davenport, the father of Lucy Davenport (he’s actually another whole generation back)

And we had some old-fashioned names, like:

Delila Webb Lane

Isaiah Lane

And two Isaac’s... Isaac S. Wyant and Isaac Fallis.

The most unusual last name was the maiden name of the wife of Harris Gammon, who was Margaret Krutsinger.

There were some unusual middle names, until you realize that they are using an old custom of using the maiden name of the mother or grandmother. For example, John Chapple Wellons, John Lewis Lane, Jacob Mulford Webb.

Lots and Lots and Lots of Kids

One thing that struck me in pulling together our family trees was the large size of many of the families. Ralph Wellons came from a family with 10 kids. Bess Wyant Wellons came from a family with 8 kids. I thought these were huge families when I recalled all of our Great Aunts and Uncles... the ones we actually met in Anderson growing up. But this is nothing unusual in the 1800’s and early 1900’s for our ancestors.

For example:

Cuthbert and Mollie Webb had 14 kids and maybe 15, although Cuthbert may have had the last child with his second wife.

Thomas and Naomi Lamb had 11 kids.

John Henry Shetterly and Mary Jane Shetterly had 13 kids.

Jacob and Mary Webb had 13 kids.

John Chapple and Sarah “Sally” Wellons, Ralph’s Great Grandparents, had 14 when Sally died and John Chapple Wellons had a 15th later.

John Lewis Lane and Delila Lane had 13 kids (and 37 grandkids) according to her obituary and John Lewis Lane had one more with his next wife.

Pleasant Riley Nash had 11 kids, but with multiple wives.

FYI... the youngest parent appears to be Elisabeth Gammon Nash, Pleasant’s first wife, who had just turned 16 when she had Emma.