IF THIS HOUSE COULD TALK -- Blog #11

 Jennie was four years old when consumption claimed her mother. I remember the early morning Sylvia died. Jennie was awake and sitting with her father and talking with her mother right before she passed on. Charles recorded Jennie’s plaintive words in his diary: “Is she gone? Did she go away. Oh, how sad for us!”

From the beginning, Jennie was an adventurous girl. She had quite a sense of humor.

Jennie really loved candy. Against his better judgement, Charles let little Charley and big sister Tinnie have some of Jennie’s birthday candy before breakfast on her seventh birthday!

Charles was always saying that he wished Jennie would save her “earning money” rather than spending it on little trinkets and candy. He encouraged the children to save their earning money and would have them come to the bank to make deposits. One time Jennie had five cents in her pocketbook compared to Tinnie’s 75 cents and Charley’s $4.55.

Jennie liked to play the piano although she didn’t always like practicing. She often played before breakfast. She gave recitals at the Turner Hall. Charles once commented about how quiet the home was during her absence. He missed her singing and entertainment.

Jennie was playful with her brother, Charley, who was two years younger. When Charley was late coming home one night, she stacked pillows in front of the door for him to trip over and put little toys with sharp edges in the bottom of his socks for him to find in the morning.

She was close to her big sister, Tinnie. They went to parties together. As teens, they took the train to visit friends and to shop and attend performances in St. Joe and Kansas City. Traveling together would be something that they did later in life when, as widows living together here, they went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for a month in the fall.

Jennie loved the latest fashions, and Charles didn’t always understand why young ladies needed so many new dresses and hats. Although Jennie and Tinnie were excellent seamstresses just as their mother Sylvia was, Jennie preferred to buy her hats and dresses from local stores or to order them from St. Joe.

Jennie tested her father’s patience as she grew older causing him to remark that “she is the disobedient child in the household.” At 15, she went to an ice cream social without permission. At 19, she and a friend rode a train caboose one evening to get back to Marysville from Beattie. Jennie was 31 years old when she married Arthur Scott in 1910. Arthur was from Clinton, Missouri, and was a cashier and director at the Exchange Bank of Schmidt and Koester. Jennie and Arthur lived here. Although they had no children of their own, they treated brother Charley’s son and daughter as their own. They called Jennie “Jinks,” a nickname that her great nieces and great nephews affectionately continued.

After Arthur passed in 1938, Jennie continued to live here until she died in 1964 after a long illness. She was the last Koester to live in this house.

The top right photo of Jennie was taken in January 1886, when she was six years old. Jennie and her husband, Arthur Scott, are pictured at the bottom right.