Echo and Jean

The photo at the left is my favorite Tenney photo of all time, and it appears in my book, THE TENNEY QUILT. I gave a framed copy of this photo to my mother this past Christmas and it proudly hangs on her bedroom wall between two framed doilies made by Gertie Kapitan, a Tenney woman well-known by anyone who lived in Tenney prior to the 1950s. The women are lined up in the town hall in front of the stage. These 1920s-era women are wonderful in their ordinariness—a line-up of women of all shapes and sizes that took care of the families, their church, their neighbors, and the little community of Tenney for many years and whose spirit I tried to capture in THE TENNEY QUILT. I don’t know them all, but front and center, third from the left, is a most delightful image of little Jennie Waite. She’s the one with a dark hat, “granny glasses,” misbehaved hair, and the telling hands—tanned, leathered—of a farm wife who spent hours in the garden and in Jennie’s case, hunting mushrooms out in the grove.

Lately I have had the opportunity to do many book talks and book signings, and was in Little Falls (MN) this week to speak to the Prairie Point Quilters group. I was absolutely thrilled when two women walked up to me as I was getting set up and told me they were the granddaughters of Jennie Waite: Echo [Andersen] Kowalzek and Jean [Andersen] Schwinn. I recognized their names, as they were both book customers, and I had quoted some stories from Jean’s family history book in my own book. It was such a pleasure to meet these sharp, spry women of ages 84 and 81, and witness their joy in seeing Grandma Jennie Waite’s name on the quilt. I snapped a photo of them by the quilt (seen here--Echo's on the left, Jean on the right), and if you click on the photo and look closely you can see Jennie’s embroidered name.

Though the sisters grew up in the St. Cloud area, they visited Tenney often as children and Echo told me the story of the time during her youth when she came and stayed for the entire summer at her grandparents’ farm, and hung out with Lois Wittman and Adeline Kapitan, and even played with my mother, who was a few years younger. They both told of their affection for the little town of Tenney, and shared many Tenney memories with me.

Grandma Jennie was born in Wisconsin and left home at age 12 to work for the Dexter Cross family, taking care of the children. In 1878, she traveled with the Billy Cross family to the Tenney area and worked for them for three years until she married Thomas B. (“T.B.”) Waite in 1881. While working for the Cross family, she owned one set of clothes. She would have to get in bed when they were being washed.

According to Jean Schwinn’s family history book, Jennie was called on many times to help care for neighbors and family members—she delivered babies (even nursed a neighbor’s child at the same time as one of her own!), cared for new mothers until they were on their feet again, prepared bodies of the recently departed to be “laid out,” and made beautiful knitted lace. T.B. and Jennie had seven children—Mayme, Earl, Carrie, Bessie, Florence, Rodger and Margaret, and they were very “hard up,” as such condition was expressed in those days. When T.B. died, the farm was rented out. Jennie had to borrow money to cover family debts. She borrowed $2,000 from a neighbor and signed over the farm as collateral. The lender said, “Don’t worry, Jennie, I’ll never foreclose,” but he did. She lost the 400-acre farm.

Jennie and her son Rodger rented various places, eventually landing in Tenney in a house next to the parsonage. After Rodger died, Jennie lived alone there until age 89, in 1947. She is buried in the Pleasant Hill Cemetery in rural Tenney, where I have visited her and others frequently. If there is ever a second Tenney book, Jennie will certainly be featured as one of the pioneer women.