December 19, 2009- The Teackle/Weaver Connection

Before you read this entry, you should go back and read my blog of December 15, 2009 for the background information. I wrote about Mrs. Weaver's Diary, a book I found about four years ago at a used book store. I named the book because it had no name and was a personal diary written by an unknown person. I have read the diary many times, but could never figure out who wrote the diary. Just since my entry on December 15, I have learned who Mrs. Weaver really was. I had been looking past some obvious information in the diary.

Mrs. Weaver, whom I named Cassie, was taking care of Ellen Teackle Schley in Baltimore, Maryland in 1916. Mrs. Schley was the mother of Mrs. Arunah S. Abel (Ann Teackle Schley Abel). The Abel family was very wealthy and the founders of the Baltimore Sun newspapers. Cassie wrote about how unhappy she was, how hard she worked, how so tired she felt all the time and that both Mrs. Abel or Mrs. Schley seemed to ignore her complaints. Cassie wrote that she had a son, Cyrus. It was her comments about Cyrus that lead me to finally identify the author of the diary. After December 15, I went back to re-read the diary again. Guess I also must have put on my thinking cap.

On January 3, 1916, on her day off work, Cassie writes about making a birthday cake for Cyrus.
So, now with a new perspective on the diary, I assume that January 3 is the date of Cyrus Weaver's birth. I began searching on ancestry.com and familysearch.com for Cyrus Weaver born January 3 in early 1900. And I found one. A California Death Index showed a Cyrus Heller Weaver born January 3, 1901 in Maryland and who died in 1952 in California. I went back to the page where Cassie describes making the birthday cake and read her next comment. "I was too tired to take out the 15 year old fruit cake that Roman made". Fifteen years before the date of her diary entry, would have been 1901. So, Roman (who ever that was), made the cake in 1901.

The next steps were pretty easy. The census records show Cyrus Weaver living in Baltimore in 1900 and 1910 with his parents Roman and Sallie Weaver. On the 1900 census, Cyrus H. Weaver is shown to have been born in 1900 and was 4 months old. The 1900 census was completed on June 7, 1900. On the 1910 census, Cyrus is recorded as 10 years old . I have found that it isn't unusual for see a slight various in birthdates in census and death records. The California Death Index for Cyrus showed that his mother's maiden name was Heller. I searched a bit more and learned that Sallie Weaver was Sallie Heller Weaver, born in West Virginia in 1868 to Cyrus Heller and Mary Eliza (Sallie) Matthews Heller.

I am speculating that Roman Weaver, Sallie's husband probably died around 1914. This is based on a comment Sallie made in the diary that she had not had a Sunday off in two and a half years.
No longer Cassie to me, but now Sallie Heller Weaver, made her last diary entry on November 7, 1916 after being brought home from the hospital by her physician, Dr. Gross. It seems likely that Sallie never recovered and may have died shortly after that date. I have an obituary for Ellen Teackle Schley showing that she died in 1917 in the home of her daughter, rather than in her home where Sallie Weaver had been taking care of her. Ellen Schley's obituary was just three months after Sallie Weaver's last diary entry. I have not located a burial location for Sallie Heller Weaver or Roman Weaver, but I did find that Cyrus Heller Weaver is buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery in Logansport, Cass County, Indiana.

Well, I read the diary again and it became much more meaningful knowing who had written it.