Monday Is for Mothers: Rufina Ellen "Fina" Tomlinson (1863 - 1943), Part 2

I just realized that two months have passed since I posted the first part of the story of this maternal great great grandmother, ending with the death of her husband Lewis Logan Slater on July 19, 1905, leaving her a widow with four children.

["Slaters in Severy:" I think Fina is the woman in white standing on the far right next to her mother-in-law Sarah Matthews Slater; Opal is the young woman standing in the middle of the group.]

By the 1910 U.S. Census, only her two younger children were still living with Fina on Main Street in Severy, Kansas.* Her occupation was listed as dressmaker and daughter Opal was teaching at a local school.

[Enumeration District : 0037; Description: Twin Groves Township including Severy City. Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006. Original data: Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910 (NARA microfilm publication T624, 1,178 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C. ]

[Main Street, Severy, Kansas, 1911; Images of Kansas Towns and Cities.

Special Collections and University Archives, Wichita State University Libraries]

By 1911 she and Opal were listed as residents at 803 Marine Street in Boulder, Colorado, where Fina continued her dressmaking business. Cecil wasn't in this directory--he would have been barely 18 by then and perhaps considered too young to be included.**

[Title : Boulder, Colorado, City Directory, 1911. Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.]

Two years later Cecil, by then a chemistry student at the nearby University of Colorado, had his own directory listing. The family had moved to 902 Marine Street and Fina supplemented income from her dressmaking business by renting out furnished rooms.

[Title : Boulder, Colorado, City Directory, 1913. Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line].

Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.]

The 1920 U.S. Census enumerator found Fina and Opal living at 863 Marine Street in rented quarters that they appear to share with Martin Little and his wife Anita. Fina was still engaged in dressmaking and Opal was teaching at a local high school.

[Enumeration District : 0051; Description: Boulder City, Ward 3 (part) including Boulder Calaboose (No inmates), bounded by Pearl, 12th, University Ave, City limits. Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. (NARA microfilm publication T625, 2076 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C. ]

Two years later Fina's father George Marion Tomlinson died at a local Sanitarium on August 30th, 1922, having been ill since the preceding November. His second wife, Fina's step-mother Amanda Darling had died seven month before then.

We know from city directories that Fina remained in Boulder until at least 1932, living by herself while her sons Harry and Pete were living in Niwot; Opal was practicing law in Boston; and Cecil was working in Louisiana.***

Something (perhaps health reasons) made Fina decide to move to Omaha, Nebraska, and by 1935 she and Opal were renting apartment #19 at 202 22nd Street.

[Enumeration District : 94-47; Description: OMAHA CITY WARD 3 (AREA B - PART).  Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1940. T627, 4,643 rolls.]

(We can catch glimpses of the building in these c.1940s snapshots of her grandson Jack Slater on a winter visit. You can see a picture of Fina and Opal taken during this period here.)

[Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy]

 [Courtesy of Olive Slater-Kennedy]

Rufina Ellen Tomlinson Slater died  of myelogenous leukemia at St Joseph's Hospital in Omaha on July 13, 1943. She was buried in Twin Grove Cemetery in Severy, Kansas, where her husband Lewis Logan had been buried nearly four decades earlier.

[Creighton Memorial St. Joseph's Hospital, our lady of Victory in the background; The Tichnor Brothers Collection, Boston Public Library,

via digitalcommonwealth.org ]

[Find A Grave Memorial# 14305165. Photo by Judy Mayfield (#46636512)]

*Pete had obviously left the nest but I haven't been able to locate him in the 1910 census. My grandfather Harry was working as a pharmacist in Greenfield Township in Elk County, Kansas.
**I don't know who William T. or J. Archie Slater who are listed. There was a cousin named William T. but he appears to have moved to South Dakota by 1906 and remained there until at least 1940. In 1910 his oldest son another William T. was only 13.
***Opal and Cecil are long over-due for their post here and I promise I'll get to them soon.




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