Jessie Louise Schenk (1897-1995) – 52 Ancestors # 14

Although the theme for this week was Maiden Aunt, Cousin Jessie came to mind.  She was my closest relative who never married, and she was of an age to be a great aunt or grandmother.  We called her Cousin Jessie because she deserved the honorific, and even my father (who grew up knowing her) called her Cousin, not simply Jessie.  She was his second cousin and our second cousin once removed.

Jessie Louise Schenk was the first child born to Jessie Belle Dalton and Eduard Schenk.  Although both Belle and Eduard were born and raised in Newport, Kentucky, they had eloped to Columbus, Ohio and shortly thereafter traveled to New York on their way to Argentina.  Jessie Louise was born in Brooklyn, New York, where the Schenks were waiting for word from the family in Argentina about a job for Eduard.  They ended up not going because they got word that the family in South America wouldn’t give Eduard a job due to his being German.  In those years ships did not go directly from the U.S. to Argentina so you had to go to England and sail back to South America from there.  It is likely that this trip was also to be a wedding trip, however, with no job at the end and Belle pregnant they stayed in New York.  Jessie Louise was born there in February 1897.

By 1899 the Schenks had returned to Newport, Kentucky.  Two other children were born to them, a son E. Harrison and another daughter, Henrietta.  Jessie was raised speaking German as well as English, since her grandfather Carl Schenk spoke German.  In 1908, when she was 11, Jessie and her father Eduard made a trip to Germany to visit his father’s birthplace and perhaps to visit remaining family there.  I don’t see evidence (yet anyway) that the rest of the family went on this trip, and perhaps they could only afford to send the two of them.

By 1908 the family was living in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania for her father’s job.  I don’t know how long they spent in Pennsylvania, but it was at least several years, since they were found there in the 1910 census.  However the family again returned to Newport, Kentucky and Jessie graduated from high school.   She then attended the University of Cincinnati, graduating in 1919 with a Bachelor of Arts.  She got a job teaching at a high school in a nearby town (Dayton, Kentucky) and taught both mathematics and French in the Kentucky school systems until the mid 1940s.  In the late 1920s and early 1930s she attended the Teachers College at Columbia University for several summers and got a Masters in 1933.  Jessie Louise continued to study in various college and language programs, including in Quebec and then Paris (even one year at the Sorbonne of which she was very proud).  From about 1945 on she owned a house in St. Petersburg, Florida that she ran as a guest house.  Her mother would come down in the winter time occasionally.  Jessie Louise likely got the money to purchase this property when Henry B. Coffin (her great uncle and the family head and support for a number of impecunious women in his family) died.  Another tale to be told one day.

Jessie continued to teach (although I’m not sure she taught in Florida), to study, and to travel.  She always had a friend and companion with her, from the mid-1960s her companion was a teaching nun and they both taught for about 5 years in Minnesota at a Catholic school.  She and her companion at the time came to visit my parents in Indiana when I was about 10, and I remember her getting out of the car on arrival saying “I so love to go motoring!” which struck me as a funny thing to say.

Jessie was a pianist (as was her mother), and an avid family historian being particularly interested in the family’s Coffin family connection.  She worked with her cousin Louis Coffin to produce the compiled history of the Coffins in the U.S. ¹ and attended the Coffin family reunion on Nantucket in 1959.  In her later years she was an avid baker, and often gave breads or cakes to friends having made too much.  I remember (and still have a copy of) the sherry cake recipe.  Also in later years, she and her companion would plan to take cruises over the Christmas-New Year’s holiday so they didn’t have to be at home but could enjoy the holiday celebrations.