Aunt Esther

Esther, circa 1905

The second child in the Peterson family was my aunt Esther. She never married, indeed I have no hint that any romance ever entered her life. I seem to recall that sometime in her early adulthood, she made some money as a seamstress. Later on she worked as a domestic servant for the Hubbell family in Des Moines. How she entered this work I have no idea. The Hubbell family was well off economically and I think influential politically in the Iowa of the times. Aunt Esther was the cook for the other servants. There was another cook for the members of the Hubbell family themselves. My impression is that there were maybe half a dozen servants employed by the Hubbells. I have a vague impression that some time in my youth I was taken for a ride in the city of Des Moines and one of the sights pointed out to me was the Hubbell mansion.

Subsequently she worked at the Deaconess Institute in Omaha again I think as a domestic. She was never one of the deaconesses. During her employment there she suffered a mental breakdown and spent several years at the state institution in Cherokee for the mentally disturbed. She recovered enough to be discharged, returned to the parental home where she lived until she and uncle Carl went to the home in Madrid.

In her youth I believe she had some instruction in the piano and later on she was the first teacher that my aunt Ruth had. In her later years she was severely afflicted with arthritis and her hands were pretty gnarled. She used playing the piano as therapy for her condition, how successfully I have no idea. But it shows that she retained her knowledge of the piano to an advanced age.

After her return from Cherokee I believe she would on occasion help my mother with household tasks but I am not certain of this. For example she would come on the days when my mother did the weekly wash and assist her. One time, perhaps on one of these visits she and I were having lunch together. Lunch consisted of potatoes with gravy. There were not many potatoes so she said that she would have bread instead with the gravy. I thought this was odd, I had never had bread and gravy together.

She died at Madrid not long after uncle Carl died. Where my uncle was often a querulous inmate at the home, my aunt Esther was just the opposite — simply grateful for the care she was given.

Of all my grandmother’s children I think her life was the most tragic. Devoid of an occupation that contained any aura of interest, with her outlook on life crippled by her Lutheran belief. Through it all she was an uncomplaining soul.