Complications in the Family Tree

O. K. Here’s where the “splainin’” gets hard to do.  Charles M. Bales married Ivy (or Ivey) Mackey in 1905.  Earley S. and Cynthia Bales had a daughter, named Elma.   After George Mackey’s first wife (Ella F. Reynolds) died, he married Elma Bales.  They had several children.  So Charley Bales sister became his his wife’s stepmother.  I guess you could say his sister was his mother-in-law. 

You have to try to figure out how George and Elma’s children were related to Charles and Ivey’s children.  Were George and Elma’s children cousins or were they aunts and uncles? Or were they both.   Takes somebody smarter than me to figure it out.  

Their children were Georgia, Leah, Veda (or Vida, but known generally as “Sweeheart”), Isom (who died when he was 2), Richard, and Obedia (known to everyone as “Lady Beth.”  I knew all of them, although I didn’t know Leah very well.  Ann and I visited Lady Beth in Antioch, California in the early nineties. She was the last survivor of that generation.  They were my kin, but I never knew what to call them.  I simply called them by their first names.

Grandpa Mackey was a man of moderate height.  When I knew him he was white headed and wore a large handlebar mustache.    He was ruddy faced and somewhat light skinned.   He seemed to have a lot of physical ailments.

I found it interesting that the public records indicate his cause of death was apoplexy. 

Now all my life, I’ve heard people talk about apoplexy, but I never heard it defined, and I didn’t know it could be fatal.  Usually you hear somebody who was under a great deal of stress say, “I nearly had apoplexy.”  So what is it?   According to Wikipedia (which is not always reliable), it is sometimes used as a synonym for stroke.  The same records indicate the he suffered from cardiovascular disease. 

At any rate he was 76 years old when he died.  I was seven years old at the time.  In those days people often lay in state in their own homes.  I well remember seeing his casket in the living room of the house.  Years later my grandparents lived there, and for some reason I was struck with the fact that their piano was in the exact spot where the casket had been place.