#52 Ancestors 2019 Week 34 Tragedy: The Tragic Death of Celestia Gwynn Belt

My 3X great-aunt, Celestia Gwynn, died tragically in a house fire at age 86.

Celestia was the fourth of eight children of John Hilleary Gwynn and Ann Eliza Dyer of Prince George's County MD, born in July 1826. Her brother, Andrew Jackson Gwynn, was my 2X great-grandfather.  She married Stephen Belt, the son of Benjamin Belt and Margaret Hilleary, in Washington DC in November 1846.

The couple spent most of their married life farming in Prince George's County.  Stephen won prizes at the county agricultural fair for his hogs and attended meetings of the Patuxent Planters Club on topics such as how to make tobacco farming more profitable.

Late in life, Stephen became more or less an invalid, and in 1902 went to spend the winter in Baltimore with the Edelen family, Celestia's sister Emily having married Walter Edelen.  Stephen died suddenly at the Edelen's on 10 March 1902.  And here is where Celestia's life took a drastic turn for the worse.

Just a few hours after her husband's death, Celestia fell  down the front steps of the house on her way to church, sustaining a compound fracture of her thigh, from which she never really recovered.

She spent the remaining 13 years of her life as an invalid, living with her sister Emily's family in Baltimore and getting around only with the help of crutches.

On the evening of March 22, 1915, Celestia apparently knocked over a candle next to her bed and set the bedclothes on fire.  She was unable to rouse anyone or get herself out of the bed and died in the fire.

There were three other women in the house at the time, Celestia's sister, Emily Edelen, and Emily's two granddaughters, Mary and Carmelite Edelen. According to the news accounts, Carmelite smelled smoke and went out to the hall only to see her great-aunt's room engulfed in flames and the fire within minutes of cutting off the stairway.  She roused the other two women and they escaped in their nightclothes to a neighbor's house.  Carmelite stayed long enough to call the fire department and Mary ran down the street to pull the fire alarm.

The three women ended up staying at my great-grandmother's house (Louise Gwynn Scrivener) who was a niece of Emily and Celestia and lived nearby.  Carmelite became a lifelong friend of her cousin, my grandfather, Frank Scrivener, and I knew her as an elderly lady who played poker and drank whiskey with my grandfather.  She was a character in her own right who was the secretary to a wealthy man and loved betting the horses among other things.  She often told us about her friends who were "fabulously wealthy and beautifully connected. "

Celestia was buried beside her husband at Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Upper Marlboro.  They had no children.

#52 Ancestors 2019 Week 36 School Days: Baden Agricultural High School

Worried that the big cities were stealing away their children, the good citizens of Prince George's County decided to build an agricultural high school designed to "awaken in its pupils a just appreciation for the many advantages of country life."  My maternal grandparents, Paul Francis Summers and Theresa Evalina Sasscer, were among the first students of Baden Agricultural High School.

Baden Agricultural High School, built in 1912 at a cost of $13,000, was the first agricultural high school in Southern Maryland. The Annual Report of the State Board of Education in that year touts the new building as "a fine example of modern school architecture," constructed of "thoroughly waterproofed concrete" with maple floors and woodwork.  The report also noted how "inordinately proud" the local community was that the architect and builder of the school were local men, J. Howe Rawlings and Walter S. Young, respectively. "Who can claim more for one community?" 

As the local newspaper bragged: "The passer-by looks more than once, so attractive in design and esthetics in its harmonious colors is this three-story concrete structure."  The editor went on to rhapsodize the well-equipped laboratory, the domestic science classroom (where samples were dispensed) and the considerable library.  The school even boasted a piano! "Do you wonder at our boastful spirit?"  
 
But more important than the design was the purpose of the school.  According to Principal, W.R.C. Connick:

The establishment of this school is the beginning of a movement by the people of the community to conserve one of their most valuable assets--their boys and girls. The proximity of the large cities of Baltimore and Washington has for years caused such a steady draining away of the young people that it had become imperative that something be done to stop it. Believing that the chief cause of this exodus is the character of the education that is given to their children--fitting them for the city's workshop and the city's office instead of adapting them to the environment of country life--the more progressive spirits of the community asked and received from the General Assembly a bond issue...for the erection of a school, the dominant aim of which would be to awaken in its pupils a just appreciation of the many advantages of country life.

In addition to following the Course of Study adopted by the State Board of Education, Baden Agricultural High School aimed to "equip its boys for the successful solution of the problems of farm life" and to inspire and cultivate in its girls an interest in and love for the highest sphere of women--homemaking."  Baden aspired to be the social and intellectual center of its community, emphasizing the dignity and importance of labor and above all, "to waken an enthusiasm for the glorious privilege of living in God's out of doors."

 This photo is the class of 1916, when both my mother's parents were students there.

My grandfather, Paul Francis Summers is in the back row, fourth from the right next to the girl with the bow. My grandmother, Evalina Sasscer, is seated in the middle row on the left end of the bench in a white blouse with a bow. Grandfather's sister, Ruth Summers, is the girl in the dark dress.

I think my grandparents absorbed the ideals of the school.  Paul Summers went on to found the Marlboro Tobacco Market, a new idea for selling single-leaf tobacco.  He and my grandmother raised nine children on their farm, and if my mother, who cultivated a large garden until she was almost ninety, was any evidence, they all enjoyed the "glorious privilege of living in God's out of doors."

Paul Summers also played on the school's baseball team.  In this photo from 1915, he is in the back row on the far left.

Finally, I found online a wonderful picture of the horse-drawn wagon that served to carry students to Baden Agricultural High School in the early 1900's.  I haven't identified any relatives for sure in this picture, but I think that might be my grandmother seated in the wagon, second from the left.

Here is the graduation program for 1916 that includes both of my grandparents.