My 5 Great-Grandmother, Maria Elizabeth (nee Petrie) Schell, was referred as "Angel at Fortress Gate" due to stories of her assisting her husband Johann Christian Schell and their sons in fighting off attacking Indians and British at Schell's Bush near Herkimer New York. The story is detailed in the book Schell or Researches after the Descendants of John Christian Schell and John Schell written in 1896 by Christian Denissen.
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| Mary (nee Deadman) Schell with her 10 children |
raise her 10 children - only the 2 eldest had reached adulthood and the youngest was only 6. The operation of the farm was taken over by eldest son George (my grandfather), but Mary would have maintained the house as it was another 11 years before George brought a wife (my grandmother Martha Jane Irene Bates) into the household.
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| Eveleen "Sis" Schell & Wm John "Jack" Allen on their wedding day |
They started their married life, in 1949, in the same community where they were both born and raised and surrounded by extended family. By the time she was a first time mother in 1952, Jack was often working out of town and only home on the weekends. She never learned to drive but would have a diaper bag ready to go if her mother or other family members stopped by to go into town.
By 1955, Jack's work took him to Kingston, Ontario and when it became evident that the plumbing constrution company he worked for would continue getting jobs in that area, Mom and my brother joined him in 1956. For the first time in her life she was in unfamiliar territory with only her husband and young son for support. Her first day in Kingston was spent learning the bus transit system in the city so that she could be independent. She grew up with the family nickname "Sis" and everyone in the family still call her that. However, when she moved to Kingston she wanted to be more mature and started using one of her middle names "Eveleen".
By the early 1960s it was evident that Jack's work would continue in Kingston and the family purchased the house where Mom still resides. Within a year my younger brother was born and the family was complete. Growing up, Mom did everything around the house as my father worked long hours - in addition to the traditional housewife duties, Mom would also do minor house repairs as well as grass cutting and snow shovelling depending on the season. It was always her goal to have the driveway cleared of snow before my father arrived home and the weight of his vehicle pack snow down on the driveway. If my brothers or I acted up, she was the one to provide the discipline, not wait "until your father was home". It was always her responsibility to have the car packed when we would travel to my grandparents' on the holiday weekends. For the Christmas trip, she somehow managed to conceal the unwrapped Santa gifts as well as packing the wrapped gifts decorated with ribbons, bows and garland without them getting crushed.
I grew up in a traditional family of father, mother and siblings but without the stereotype that only the woman did the cooking and child rearing while the man worked outside the home to provide the income and his duties at home was child displining and yard work. Although Mom was a stay-at- home mother while Dad provided the income, they did not hold the stereotypes firm. There was a period of time over a couple of years when my Mother was hospitalized several times for a variety of reasons (broken ankle, gall bladder, etc.). Dad was still working his 12 hour days, often travelling out of town to check in on various job sites. He would cook dinner for us when he got home and if we were not in school, would take my younger brother out of town with him.
Mom's recovery from her broken ankle is another example of her strong will. While in a cast and on crutches, she still did her housework: she would vacuum sitting in a rocking chair, moving through the house; to get to the laundry machines in the basement, she would go down the stairs on her butt, one step at a time. When her parents made a visit while she was on crutches, her father took ill and was hospitalized. Even though it was wintertime, she had knitted a toe cap for her foot and would travel to the hospital to visit her father. Nothing stopped her from doing what she wanted to do.
Mom's strong will was tested during the summer of 1990 when my father took sick. At first we thought it was a reoccurence of his bowel cancer but it was eventually diagnosed as pancreatitis. Although the doctors kept changing the medication, my father's condition continued to decline and he died several weeks later. During the entire summer, my mother spent her waking hours at the hospital, only leaving my father's bedside to eat. When Jack died, Eveleen felt that she had no reason to continue to live as the love of her life was now gone. But she managed to pull herself together and a few weeks later resumed her life of bowling and playing cards with friends. It has now been over 27 years and she still misses him every day but has managed to get on with her life.
Once she accepted that my departure was similiar to hers 4 decades earlier, she was determined to travel to visit her only daughter. At the age of almost 80, she flew with my brothers from Toronto to Regina to suprise me for my 50th birthday and then on her own about 18 months later rather than stay alone while my brothers vacationed in Florida. While Terry's work took us back to Ontario for 5 years, we were only a couple of hours drive away from Kingston, so she was able to visit fairly frequently. Now that we are located in New Brunswick, she is back to having to fly to visit, even though she is 88 years young.
Her advanced years has slowed her down and for a number of years she claims "she no longer cooks". But she does still cook the occassional meal as well as doing housework and laundry; however, yardwork and snow shovelling has been contracted out for several years now. My bachelor brothers live with her so she has continued providing a home for them.She has had a few stumbles and falls during the past few years. No broken bones, but difficult to get back up and would have to wait until she was able to get someone's attention for assistance. So we do not want her staying alone when my brothers go on vacation. This has meant that she has had to fly across the country a few times to where I was living at the time as I was not able to take the time off work to go to her. Fortunately there have been direct flights so that she has not had to change planes. The airline provides a wheelchair and staff to see her on and off the planes. While visiting, she continues to do as much as possible for herself, not expecting to be waited on. Each morning she would get up and make her own breakfast and carry it on a tray to her chair.
My mother continues to be a pillar of strength (usually from afar) for me as I have followed my husband around the country for the past decade. Due to her loss of hearing, phone calls can often be a challenge (even with hearing aids and hearing impaired telephones), but we do our best to keep in touch when something important happens.
Although I have had an easier life as I have not had to live through the Great Depression or a World War as my Mother has done, I hope that as her daughter I will be able to carry on being as strong a woman as she has been all of her life.
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