Nettie Walton – A Documented Idiot – 52 Ancestors 2015 #33

This week’s optional theme for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is “Defective, Dependent, & Delinquent.”  Amy Johnson Crow describes the theme this way:

In 1880, there was a special census schedule for “Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Classes” — the blind, deaf, paupers, homeless children, prisoners, insane, and idiotic. Do you have someone in your family tree who would have been classified as such? (To learn more about the special 1880 schedule, see my post, “Do You Have a Defective Ancestor?“)

I reflected on who might fit this post for week 33 and remembered Nettie Walton, part of my mother-in-law’s family. Yes, I would like to know more about Nettie, born 5 August 1865 to James Walton and Mary Ann Davis Walton. She would be my husband’s 3rd great-grand aunt. I recalled that in the 1880 I had seen the check mark in column 18 indicating that she was an “idiot.” This terminology seems harsh to us in the 21st century, but in the 19th and even into the 20th century, this was the common term for an individual who was mentally handicapped.

I had known about the special schedule for the 1880 census, but until the topic came up for this week’s blog, I had not located Nettie. It didn’t, once again, on my first try this time around either. I decided to narrow the search to the database for the special schedule, looking for people named Nettie in Chester County. Bingo, there she was – transcribed as Nettie Hulton. (I submitted the obligatory correction to Ancestry.com and moved on.)

I learned new, but heartbreaking, information about Nettie. According to this document, Nettie suffered an injury to her head that when she was four months old. The head trauma is said to have caused convulsions. There is a question that asked about the size of the head and hers was described as “large.” It seems plausible to me that Nettie’s fall may have been caused by the convulsions. There are a number of congenital conditions that are characterized by an enlarged head.

In 1870 and 1880 Nettie was living with her parents. The 1880 census tells us that Nettie could neither read nor write. The 1900 census is more telling. Nettie’s parents were deceased by this time and she is an inmate in the County Home. We learn that Nettie is portrayed as not being able to speak English. This question was intended to give a count of people who spoke a foreign language rather than English, but the census taker recorded Nettie’s inability or unwillingness to speak. This gives us a picture of a fairly low functioning individual. Her age is recorded as 1871 and the month is birth is unknown. Nettie is single and had never had children.  I can only imagine that Nettie must have been bewildered by being placed in an institution after having been surrounded by family her entire life.

In 1910, Nettie is shown as living with her sister Sallie’s family. This census does say that she speaks English, but of course, cannot read or write. I am grateful that Nettie’s older sister decided to rescue her from the county home. Sallie Gore seems to have kept Nettie with her through the decade as Nettie is recorded in the Gore household in 1920.

On 14 November 1925, Nettie died at the Homeopathic Hospital in West Chester at the age of 60. She had been admitted there after a fall on October 2 that left her with a compound fracture of the lower femur. She did not recover and fell victim to septic pneumonia.