The Mystery of Uncle George

The third child in the Peterson family was my uncle George, and all during my recollection of him he lived sort of a recluse-like existence in my grandmother’s house. There is an unexplained aspect of his condition to which I was never privy. My sister Vivian apparently knew something which would have clarified why he was like he was. But she vowed not to reveal it to anyone and since her death couple of years ago, it will remain forever a mystery.

Vivian’s information cam probably from either my mother or my aunt Laurine, though possibly from my grandmother. There seemed to have been a feeling on Vivian’s part of protecting the memory of him from idle curiosity or reproach of his attitude or condition, or of capitalizing on the information bout him (as in the case of my cousin John Milton, who might have used the information in some of his semi-fictional writings). The feeling on the part of Vivian may have been transmitted to her by my mother or my aunt Laurine.

I have the vague feeling that there may have been some evidence of a nervous disorder, perhaps even epilepsy, in uncle George. Certainly he seemed to have less physical stamina than his brothers — on the other hand my mother wrote in her family story that he did participate in the farm work. And in the batch of letters which I have that my uncle Carl saved from his time in business school in Des Moines, there are two letters to him from uncle George. One of these is in English, the other in Swedish, so he was bilingual both in speech and writing (as were all of his siblings). I shall have to inspect these letters more carefully, particularly the two that uncle George wrote but also the others.

My brief and cursory inspection is that at that time (about 1900), uncle George was active in both farm work and in social activities. Thus there seems to have been a deterioration in his condition from that time to when I knew him, say from when I was 6 years of age to when he died in the later 1930s.