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| Bertha Tolstedt | Bertha Tolstedt Everett, Joseph, Lester and Harold. |
Note: The text of this section is excerpted from Tales of Tolstedts, by Grandon E. Tolstedt, MD and Betsy E. Tolstedt, Ph.D..
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| Bertha Tolstedt | Bertha Tolstedt Everett, Joseph, Lester and Harold. |
Bertha was the first girl of the Ulrich Tolstedt family. She was born in 1872. It must have been a joyous occasion for her mother Eliza to have a girl after five vigorous boys. Bertha would have been twenty when her mother died.
She married at age twenty-one and then lived with her husband, Joseph Everett, in many places including Omaha, Nebraska, Amsterdam, Texas, Indian Territory in Oklahoma, as well as Sapulpa, Okmulgee, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, and finally Roswell, New Mexico. This was not an easy life. They rented a covered wagon to move from Texas to Oklahoma. They saw huge tarantulas making their way across the road. There were also scorpions. They had a tornado shelter. Once Harold and Lester were out with the cow when a tornado came, and they took shelter in a ditch. Another time, when Harold was about 4 and down by a bayou (a stream coming in from the bay), he or Lester stepped on a log, which turned out to be a crocodile, who flipped him back onto the bank.
We know that Bertha’s father, Ulrich, did not care for Joseph Everett. Ethel Lind wrote the following in a letter to the junior author in 1969, “my Grandfather disapproved of Mother’s marriage. My father was a civil War orphan and in his early years was cared for in a Soldier’s orphan’s home as his Mother also died. At the time of their marriage he was attending Business College. Grandfather bought mother a lovely wedding dress embroidered in seed pearls, mutton leg sleeves, the style of the day, etc., but would not sign the license so Uncle Lew and Uncle Frank signed instead.” Given that Ulrich himself had forged his way at a young age, it does not seem reasonable that he would have held Joseph’s lack of parents and attendance in school against Joseph Everett. Perhaps it was simply that Joseph was not a farmer or in the manly trades (like a blacksmith or iron-worker). The letter written by Ulrich to Lewis implies that Joseph was not a good provider for his family, another source of major irritation to Ulrich.
Karen Lind describes her grandfather, Joseph, as follows: “I believe he was a clerk and in ill health, bedridden, for many years, so that Bertha had to do things like catering dinners, etc. for the family to live on. He liked to read, and was fond of a couple of minor poets. He had done a lot of genealogical research, which was in a trunk with stuff like grandmother's wedding dress, which was stolen from their porch, and was a source of great sorrow to them. I believe I met him as a small child, but have no memory of it. Mother said that Nancy was scared of him, an old man lying in a bed, but I went right up and gave him a kiss.”
There is some mystery about what happened to the funds Bertha inherited after her father’s death in 1913. One story was that Bertha gave the money to Lester to invest in a railroad car full of pecans which then got sidetracked somewhere on the rails and all the money was lost in storage fees.
Bertha and Joseph took in Bertha's oldest brother, Edward, during the later years of his life and then handled and paid for all of the arrangements. At various times, Bertha's father, Ulrich, and brother, Joe, also lived with the Everetts
Bertha was a very stoic person who shouldered responsibilities and misfortunes without complaint. She was very proud of her children and did a good job of raising them. She was a good communicator with an excellent vocabulary and maintained an interest in national and world affairs. Karen Lind describes her grandmother as the disciplinarian of the family:“Grandmother was a stern disciplinarian, and did all the punishing. Granddad didn't take too much interest in any of the kids.”
Bertha’s husband, Joseph, was a Christian Scientist. To our knowledge Bertha never became a member of that church. Bertha’s daughter Ethel Lind suggested to the author that religion was not of great importance to Bertha, but education was. She encouraged her children to pursue their schooling. In one house, a log cabin, the walls were papered with newspapers. Bertha would have her daughter, Ethel, spell words out loud from the newspapers on the wall. That's how Ethel learned to read.
Joseph Everett died in January of 1943 at the age of 82 years in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Bertha died in 1958 in Roswell, New Mexico, at age 86 of illness related to diabetes.
A Biography of Bertha Melissa Tolstedt (1872-1958), by Grandson Harold U. Everett
Bertha Melissa Tolstedt was the product of an Iowa farm upbringing. In photographs with sister and later with her husband, she appears tall, with erect posture (though unsmiling, as was the custom), an attractive, prim young lady with hair that could be blonde or light brown, about the same shade imparted to her son, Harold. Her childhood on the farm with five older brothers and a younger sister must have prepared her for the rigors of the following years, for she would prove to be an exemplary wife, mother, and grandmother. She married Joseph Hamilton Everett in 1893 at age 21. On her son Harold's birth certificate (Omaha, Nebraska, 1896) Joseph lists his occupation as bookkeeper. However, he and Bertha must have decided to try another occupation, because they headed south for Amsterdam, Brazoria County, Texas with their three youngsters; oldest son Lester (born in 1894), youngest son Joseph, Jr. (born in 1898), and Harold. In 1900 the family survived a devastating hurricane, which leveled nearby Galveston and killed several thousand people. Although only four years old at the time, Harold remembered a good-sized ship being washed up and deposited on the farm. The year 1900 also saw the birth of Bertha's first daughter, Ethel. She was followed by her sister, Violet, in 1902. Some time later the family backtracked north by covered wagon and stopped near Sapulpa, Indian Territory, which was soon to be the state of Oklahoma. Daughter Ethel had recollections of life on the farm near Sapulpa: picking cotton; learning to read under her mother's tutelage; visiting the one-room, one-teacher school house her brothers attended; and the family decision to move into town for better schooling. In 1908 the family settled in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, where Joseph took up a non-farm occupation (bookkeeping), and the five children attended school. Bertha and Joseph lived there together until his death in 1943. Afterwards, Bertha lived in Houston for several months with Lester, in Tulsa near Harold until 1946, then in Roswell, New Mexico, near Violet where Bertha died in 1958 due to complications from diabetes.
While the children were growing up in Okmulgee, the circumstances of the family were anything but luxurious, but perhaps typical of the lean times before World War I. The Everetts scrimped and saved, and the boys worked to augment the family income. College education was out of the question except for Ethel, who won an academic scholarship and eventually earned her Ph.D. in chemistry. Yet this was a fully functional family. The love and respect for each other was in evidence throughout their lives. Financial circumstances of the parents improved after the children left Okmulgee to pursue their own livelihoods. The home that the grandchildren remember was a single story, white frame house with two or three bedrooms, a separate garage housing a 1930s vintage Hudson Terraplane, and a vegetable garden. Situated at 802 East 13th Street in a respectable neighborhood, it still stands.
Grandson Harold visited this home during summers of the 1930s. These were enjoyable occasions, with activities provided by a devoted grandmother. Cousins Everett, Taylor and Harold learned to box with gloves provided by their grandmother; she refereed the bouts. Harold also learned to swim and ride a bicycle in Okmulgee. Grandfather Joseph was seldom present as he was often bedridden with an illness, later diagnosed as a brain tumor that eventually killed him.
What kind of person was she? Certainly she possessed stamina, both physical and emotional. She was tall (about 5' 8" in height), strong, and healthy. There were no recollections by family members of illnesses until her late-life bout with diabetes. She revealed inner strengths in the last half of her life as she endured the disappointment and remorse of Joseph, Jr.'s confinement in a mental institution due to schizophrenia. Later she would care for her husband as he slowly declined from the effects of a brain tumor. The couple may have been slow to seek medical help due to their belief in Christian Science; the brain tumor diagnosis came after his death.
She had some less attractive traits, maybe typical of the older generation. She was judgmental and quick to criticize. Both daughters-in-law felt the sting of remarks about their cooking, housekeeping, child rearing methods, etc. One of the grandsons, now in his senior years, still remembers his grandmother supervising his bath and scolding him for running too much water in the bathtub: "one bucketful is enough," she said. But there was substance to this woman of pioneer stock. Despite the dubious educational background that could be expected from her early farm life, she was educated. She read well, taught her children to read well, knew her multiplication tables well enough to teach her grandchildren, expressed herself well, and conversed knowledgeably about current events. Perhaps her most valuable quality was the ability to influence her children positively. All except the handicapped son grew to be responsible adults who lead productive lives and raised children of their own.