The Corner of Landis and Valley

Fanny Jane Kidder Tillotson. Park 25, Rockville, Connecticut.

Standing at the kitchen sink, Fanny quickly grabbed a clean pressed tea towel and buried her face in it to catch the wracking sobs and let the woven familiarity slow her gasping breaths. She dried her eyes when her breathing slowed again.

This was a safe moment to release into.

Then back to composure and tasks.

The great yellow house, the pride of Lyndonville, was sold.

William C Tillotson standing in front of his home in Lyndonville, CT

Doctor F. H. Davis had taken over the practice from Willie, and was quickly coming up to speed on the needs of his patients.

Her parents, Edwin and Jane Kidder, had moved into the family home. Father took on the home maintenance and gardening around the yellow home at the corner of Center and Elm in Lyndonville, and Mother helped her with the children and the preparations for the move.

Still.

The unspoken in the home in Vineland now rang louder than Willie’s night cough, even as Fanny made sure that their daily life continued as it should through the months and seasons. Fanny was just like the bedrock granite being mined from her hometown in Barre, Vermont - strong and reliable.

But Willie’s night sweats had become impossible to ignore. His exhaustion was showing. Finally, he’d admitted he needed to make some changes. After trying and failing every homoeopathic remedy of his own that he knew, Willie searched for a new way to improve his health. In November, he’d found what he was looking for. Vineland, New Jersey. Somewhere the air might help.

Willie moved there to take up market gardening as a profession, under the treatment of allopathic physician Doctor Cornelius Van Evra. Both the air and the community were dry in Vineland. It suited him, he hoped.

Willie left for Vineland on 24 February, with Fanny, their children Ruth & Kenneth, and her mother following a couple of weeks later. That was the unspoken agreement.

Lyndonville Journal, 24 February 1892

Rex, their English Mastiff, padded into the kitchen and put his head into her hands, seeking to reassure and looking for reassurance at the same time.

Fanny gave his head a loving pat and turned from the sink, her swollen pregnant belly only now visible in profile. Rex turned and panted his way out of the kitchen, tongue hanging, satisfied that he had once again made things right.

Fanny sighed and set aside the tea towel. Ruth and Kenneth would come bursting in at any moment after Rex, possibly with her mother in tow, carrying the fresh wash from the line.

This thought softened her brow even more. But then her eyes flickered. Love was complicated.

Barre had been a small community, and smaller still for Congregationalists. Willie was a boarder at her parents’ home while he studied medicine before his final studies in Chicago, back when he was full of a thirst for life and for nurturing that life in others. Before he had made a name for himself.

Fanny knew then he was the man for her. She waited two years whilst he studied, making a name for himself as a surgeon and doctor of homoeopathy.

And he’d come back for her after he set up his first rooms to start practising in Lyndonville. She chose him, and he chose her. They were married on 29 June 1882 by Reverend P. McMillan at the Congregational Church, with her bouquet full of wild white roses from her father’s garden.

Now Fanny stood in an unfamiliar kitchen that was to be her own for a while.

Willie was not yet up in his room after another long, hard night. Once he did get up, he’d make the most of the afternoon warmth by tending to his cabbages and vegetables in the garden.

Suddenly, she felt the whole surface of her stomach harden. Bracing herself against a table with one hand and holding her stomach with her other, she breathed deeply.

It was time.

Only this time would not be like the other two. This was edged in black grief and something else. Fear.

Once the first contraction had slowed, she carefully walked to the back door of the kitchen, her eyes scanning the garden for her mother.

Her eyes locked with her mother Jane’s eyes. Mothers know. Jane knew. Jane bustled calmly to Fanny’s side. I’ll heat the water and get the clean linens, dear.

Those capably warm hands now directed her to her room, while pausing in the kitchen to fill the largest pot with water from the pump at the sink and stoke the fire.

A pause in the hall on the way to the room for another breathtaking contraction, leaning on the doorframe as her mother set the lidded pot on the waking fire.

Jane called to Ruth and Kenneth. Ruth, dear, take Kenneth to the front room and read him a story, please. That’s a good girl. Read to Rex, too; he’ll enjoy that.

Ruth wasn’t really reading much at the age of five. But she was very serious about her enjoyment of books, and she took this responsibility very seriously. She soon had boy and dog seated ceremoniously in the front room while she lisped through an extemporaneous reading of Uncle Remus, complete with authoritative page turning.

Mother helped Fanny to her room, and her hands, softened with age, fluttered through the buttons on Fanny’s dress with ease. At least Mother was familiar, thought Fanny, letting herself be taken care of like a child as she sat on the edge of the bed. In her presence, Fanny took comfort.

Mother found the nightgown in the chest of drawers that Fanny had set aside for this birth, and slipped it over Fanny’s head, pausing to hold Fanny by the shoulders as another contraction gripped Fanny’s stomach.

From a room across the hall came a grating cough.

Willie.

Fanny couldn’t help but tense. This was her first delivery without him by her side, too. But she knew this time would be different. Willie was far too poorly to deliver his third child.

And in the room across the hall, Willie was aware of the sounds he’d heard and attended so often in his ten years as a physician. His own wife this time, entering the doorway between life and death that delivery brings.

He also tensed, and his own private grief flared once again.

In the front room, Ruth was busy instructing Kenneth and Rex on how to act their parts in the story when there was a knock at the door.

Slipping off her chair, she reached up to the doorknob and turned it with effort.

The familiar weathered face smiling back at her removed his top hat and said 'And how is my patient this morning?’

Doctor Cornelius Van Evra, Civil War veteran and now doctor for Doctor William Clinton Tillotson, only had to walk around the corner to check on his patient during this acute phase of the illness. Willie had planned it that way when he’d moved the family here.

But now Dr Van Evra was presented with another kind of case.

Mama is having a baby!

At Ruth’s words, Dr Van Evra saw Mother Jane hustling to the kitchen.

He set aside his hat, walking stick, and gloves, and followed her to wash his hands.

Fanny dear, Doctor Van Evra is here to assist. He’s coming into the room now.

Mother Jane brought in more clean linens and hot water along with her reassuring words.

Across the hall, Willie also relaxed just a little.

Fanny was already in good hands, but having Doctor Van Evra eased his mind.

Fanny suddenly felt the urge to bear down, something she remembered well from Ruth’s & Kenneth’s births. This time, however, things seemed a bit faster. A bit more chaotic. The fear stayed in the corner of the rooms.

Mother held her legs, and she began to push, loudly roaring with the effort.

She felt as the baby’s head began to crown. Another roaring, sweat-drenched push.

The baby’s head was just free when Doctor Van Evra sprang into action, telling her to stop pushing.

Deftly, he unwound the umbilical cord wrapped twice around the baby’s neck. Suddenly, the little one gasped hard as Fanny gave one final push, and the room split with the cry of new birth.

A son, loud and enraged at having entered life on such a note, shook his newborn fists to everyone who could see.

In the room across the hall, Willie sat on the edge of the bed and gripped the mattress with both hands as tears swept down both his cheeks.

He slowly made his way across the room, opened his door, and stood in the doorway.

His beloved Fanny lay in bed, cuddling a newly washed and wrapped newborn son - his son.

He smiled.

He knew his name.

Laurence Van Evra Tillotson.

Laurence Van Evra Tillotson, 1893