50 A Christmas Keepsake

 

Ralph David Wallis and Margaret Ella Nolen, My Parents

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 50 – December 9, 2025

Prompt: Family Heirloom

Some heirlooms are precious because of their age, their craftsmanship, or the generations they pass through.

Others are treasured because they hold a story no one else could ever carry.

Mine is the latter.

I was born two months early on December 20, and I spent my first Christmas in an incubator at Hillcrest Hospital. In those days, mothers stayed hospitalized much longer after a difficult birth, so my mother spent Christmas in the hospital too — a young woman with a fragile newborn she could not yet hold. Her Sunday School class brought her a large ceramic Santa head vase filled with red carnations, her favorite flower. To her, it was a bright spot in a frightening season — a reminder that she was surrounded by love and that better days were coming.

And that Santa vase stayed with her for decades.

One Christmas, long after the decorations were put out in their familiar places, my mother told me that she had always intended to give me the Santa vase when I had my first child. It was meant to be passed from mother to daughter, a quiet symbol linking her experience to mine.

But life did not unfold that way.

I wasn’t married yet, and no children were expected. She knew it. I knew it. And with a tenderness only a mother can offer, she handed me the vase anyway.

There are two photographs taken that day.

In one, my mother stands proudly beside her Christmas shelves, the Santa vase prominent beside her — not small at all, but bold and unmistakable. In the other, my father stands beside me as I hold the vase for the first time. The moment is preserved forever: my eyes glistening, my face caught between surprise and longing, the emotion just beneath the surface. It is plain to see that I am about to cry.

I cried because of the sentiment, yes.

But also because the gift acknowledged a truth I had lived with quietly — that I was not going to have children of my own. Even when I finally married at age 57, motherhood was no longer possible. My husband had never married, so there are no stepchildren waiting in the next generation. There is no obvious heir to receive the Santa vase.

But maybe that isn’t the only way an heirloom can matter.

This Christmas keepsake carries the story of my earliest days — days my parents feared they might lose me, days shaped by hope, prayer, and the devotion of a young couple who wanted their daughter more than anything. The vase holds their love through the years, my mother’s sentiment, my father’s support, and the journey I’ve traveled to become the woman they raised me to be.

Every December when I set it out, it reminds me that I was cherished from the beginning… that my story mattered… and that family heirlooms don’t need a next generation to be meaningful.

Some treasures exist simply to tell the truth of a life —

and this one tells mine.

49 Five Little Words

Elizabeth Crull, My Maternal 2nd Great-Grandmother

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 49 – December 2, 2025

Prompt: Written

Five little words stopped me in my tracks:

"Elizabeth Crull ordered to Almshouse. "

They appeared in a short notice titled County Court in The Springfield (MO) Leader on January 10, 1878. Until that discovery, the last record I had of Elizabeth and her husband Daniel was the 1870 census in Spring River Township, Lawrence County, Missouri—thirty-two miles west of Springfield. I had never thought to look for the family in Springfield.

But recently Nancy—who helped me research my great-grandparents Lucinda and Josiah Coon long before I knew Lucinda’s maiden name—sent me the link to that newspaper snippet. And with those five words, a new path opened.

Following the Clue

My first questions were immediate and practical:

• What was the Almshouse like?

• Did it have a cemetery where Elizabeth might be buried?

• Did Daniel die before she was admitted?

• And why was Elizabeth in Springfield at all?

The Greene County Almshouse—also called the county poor farm—sheltered the impoverished, disabled, or ill. It wasn’t a place people entered lightly.

I posted my new clue on Facebook, and Annette—one of my genealogy friends with a legendary personal library—replied within hours. She said she had a book that indexed the Superintendent’s Register of the Almshouse. She scanned it and sent me a PDF.

There, on page 50 (page 56 of the scan), I found Elizabeth Crull, age 40.

But then came the surprise.

Lucinda, age 14, was listed too.

And beside her—Samuel, age 6—a younger sibling I had never heard of.

The Almshouse Records

The index listed their dates of admission and dismissal. The “date of death” column was blank for all three, confirming that Elizabeth did not die in the Almshouse.

Their timeline:

• January 8, 1878 – Elizabeth and Samuel admitted

• March 10–11, 1878 – Elizabeth dismissed; Samuel dismissed the next day

• November 11, 1878 – Elizabeth, Lucinda, and Samuel all readmitted

• January 13, 1879 – All three dismissed together

The index noted that the original Superintendent’s Register was held at the Greene County Archives and Records Center, so I contacted them to see whether anything more could be learned. Jake at the Archives checked for a surviving court record (none exists) but confirmed they still had the original register itself. Within minutes he photographed the relevant pages and emailed them to me. The entries didn’t offer much beyond what the index provided, though they did include Elizabeth, Lucinda, and Samuel’s race—listed as white—but seeing those original pages felt like touching their lives directly.

So why were they admitted? Illness seems unlikely with all three together.

Most likely they were destitute.

What Five Little Words Revealed

Those five words—“Elizabeth Crull ordered to Almshouse”—gave me more than I expected.

I learned:

• Elizabeth lived at least until 1878, extending her known life by eight years.

• Lucinda had a younger brother, Samuel Crull.

• The family lived in Springfield in 1878–79, adding a new location to their story.

The Springfield Thread

Springfield has appeared in this family’s story before.

Lucinda wrote in her Bible that she and Josiah Coon were married in Indian Territory in 1898, yet her oldest son, Charlie Walter Coon, was born in Springfield in 1890.

Her son Frank Coon’s WWII draft registration gives his birth as February 29, 1898 in Springfield, while his WWI registration and Social Security record list February 29, 1896. Since 1896 was a leap year, that is likely correct.

Family lore says that Charlie died in Springfield when the horse-drawn hearse he was driving overturned.

Springfield keeps returning—quietly, unexpectedly—like a place that refuses to be left out of the story.