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You might think I was related to the Ackley family after reading the previous posting about the covered bridge built by an Ackley ancestor and now a second story involving the same family.
I can assure you that I am not related to them at all, though I have become friends with a descendent of the bridge builder.
The article I am linking this post to is such a wonderful family history story - one that any of us that does genealogy would love to have happen.
I think you'll enjoy it:
(click the link below)
Ackley Family Heirloom Found!!
Then there are words...yes words. Did you know that numerous U.S. Presidents have coined words that are now in the dictionary?
Yep, it's true:
Click HERE for that bit o' information.
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Should
we show our children this clip? Yeah...let's get them off their iphones
and ipods for a few minutes and show them a thing or two here and help
them understand what their lives would have been like 200 years ago:
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Have you ever given any thought to the history of your local road?
Sounds silly, doesn't it?
But
many of our expressways, avenues, streets, have quite a past. There is
one road in particular here in Michigan that pretty much sums up 19th
century mid-west travel - a road that still retains much of its
historical charms even in the 21st century. It's called the U.S. 12
Heritage Trail, and history abounds all around you, even while driving
in your car!
There are actually two links to this bit of Michigan history:
and
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And
for those of you who do not mind images updated by colorization, here
is an interesting little article that brings the Civil War into the
modern times without a reenactment (thanks to my cousin Hazel for this link!):
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I found a very detailed account of what that poor woman went through upon finding a lump in her breast.
I must prepare the reader of this link - - if you are like me and put yourself heart, mind, and soul into historical situations, you may find this a very difficult and heart-wrenching read:
Click HERE for the original link to the essay written by Jim Olson on Nabby Adams.
I am also including Mr. Olson's essay here in this post, for I always fear links may end and then it could be lost:
Perhaps
the disease had started out as a tiny dimple. On a man's chin it would have
looked rugged and distinguished. On a woman's cheek it might have been called a
"beauty mark." It was on her left breast and Abigail "Nabby"
Adams wondered what it was. She had never noticed it before. Perhaps it was
just another sign of age, an indicator that she was not a young woman anymore.
Actually the dimple was not really the problem. Beneath the dimple, buried an
inch below the skin, a small malignant tumor attached itself to surface tissues
and drew them in, like a sinking ship pulling water down its own whirlpool.
Nabby was forty-two years old.
At first she did not give it much
thought, noticing it now and then when she bathed or dressed. Nor did she talk
about it. She was a shy, somewhat withdrawn woman, quiet and cautious in her
expressions, most comfortable with people who guarded their feelings. She
blushed easily and rarely laughed out loud, allowing only a demure, half-smile
to crease her face when she was amused. She had a pleasant disposition and a
mellow temperament, both endearing to family and friends. Nabby was a striking
woman, with long, red hair, a round face, deep-blue eyes, and a creamy,
porcelain complexion. She commanded respect, not because of an aggressive
personality but simply because of the quality of her mind and her unfailing
dignity.
She was born in Quincy,
Massachusetts, in 1766. Her parents named her Abigail Adams, but they began
calling her "Nabby" when she was still an infant. Nabby had an
extraordinary childhood. Her father was John Adams, the future president of the
United States, and her mother Abigail Adams, the most prominent woman in early
American society. Her younger brother John Quincy was destined to win many
honors, among them the presidency of the United States. From the time of her
birth, Nabby's parents busied themselves with colonial politics, eventually
playing leading roles in the American Revolution. They raised her on a steady
diet of political talk about freedom, liberty, rights, despotism, and foreign
policy. Nabby absorbed it all.
An only daughter, she enjoyed the
special attentions of her father, who felt the need to protect and pamper her.
Abigail doted on her, dressing her up in the latest fashions when she was
little and counseling her when she was an adolescent. Their relationship
evolved into a deep friendship. Nabby took it all in stride, never becoming
spoiled or self-indulgent. She was even-handed, thick-skinned, and unafraid of
responsibility.
In 1783, when Congress appointed her
father as minister to England, Nabby was seventeen-years-old. The family took
up residence in a house on Grosvener Square in London. Caught up in a whirlwind
of social and political activity, they met King George III at court and other
prominent politicians at parties and banquets common to the life of an
ambassador. After a few months, Nabby became acquainted with William Smith, a
thirty-year-old veteran of the Continental Army and secretary to the American
legation in London. A dashing, handsome figure, Smith raced around London in a
two-seated carriage, the eighteenth-century equivalent to a modern sports car. He
was bold and impetuous, inspired by courage and limited by poor judgment.
Because of his work with the U.S. legation, and his role as secretary to
Minister John Adams, he saw a great deal of the Adams family, and Nabby fell
secretly in love with him. Drawn to Nabby's beauty, grace, and intelligence, he
soon felt the same way about her. They married in June 1786, after a courtship
which John and Abigail Adams felt was too short. They accepted it, however,
because "a soldier is always more expeditious in his courtships than other
men."
But Colonel William Smith was a
soldier without a war, a has-been at the age of thirty, and Nabby, an innocent
victim of what her brother John Quincy called "fortune's treacherous
game," faced a difficult life. Colonel Smith was not cruel. In fact, he
always loved and cared for Nabby and their three children. With a stoicism that
would have made the most devout Puritan proud, she accepted her fate and made a
life for her family wherever Smith settled. The problem was that Smith never
really settled down. He spent more money than he ever earned, and Nabby worried
constantly about bills and the family reputation. Early in the new century,
Smith tried his hand at real estate speculation, but he lost everything. In
1809, when Nabby first noticed the lump in her breast, they were living on the
edge of the frontier, on a small farm along the Chenango River in western New
York, where Smith spent his days behind a walking plow and a mule.
Nabby was a well-informed woman, and
breast cancer was as much a dread disease in the early 1800s as it is today. No
records exist describing her initial reaction to the lump, but it is safe to say
that concern about the dimple flared into gut-twisting fear. Like so many
women, then and today, she tried to ignore the lump, hoping that in the busy
routines of running a small farm and household she would not have time to think
about it. But cancer has a way of asserting itself, finally obliterating even
the most elaborate denials. Nabby was no exception. The lump grew ominously, in
spite of the efforts of local healers and their potions. She wrote home to John
and Abigail Adams in February 1811 that her doctor had discovered "a
cancer in my breast." As soon as they received the letter, the Adams wrote
back urging her to come to Boston for medical advice.
In June 1811, with the lump visible
to the naked eye, a desperate Nabby returned to Massachusetts, accompanied by
her husband and daughter Caroline. As soon as she arrived in Quincy, she wrote
to Benjamin Rush, describing her condition and seeking his advice. When Abigail
Adams first looked at her daughter's breast, she found the condition "allarming."
The large tumor distended the breast into a misshapen mass. John and Abigail
took Nabby to see several physicians in Boston, and they were cautiously
reassuring, telling her that the situation and her general health were "so
good as not to threaten any present danger." They prescribed hemlock pills
to "poison the disease."
Soon after those reassuring
examinations, however, the family received an unsettling reply from Benjamin
Rush. In her initial letter, Nabby told Rush that the tumor was large and
growing, but that it was "movable"--not attached to the chest wall.
Rush found the news encouraging, as would most cancer specialists today.
Malignant tumors which are "movable" are better candidates for
surgery, since it is more likely that the surgeon can get what is termed a
"clean margin"--a border of non-cancerous tissue surrounding the
tumor--reducing the odds that the cancer will recur or spread. Knowing that
Nabby had already traveled from western New York to Boston to seek medical
advice, Rush wrote to John and Abigail, telling them to break his news gently
to Nabby:
I shall begin my letter by replying
to your daughter's. I prefer giving my opinion and advice in her case in this
way. You and Mrs. Adams may communicate it gradually and in such a manner as will
be least apt to distress and alarm her.
After the experience of more than 50
years in cases similar to hers, I must protest against all local applications
and internal medicines for relief. They now and then cure, but in 19 cases out
of 20 in tumors in the breast they do harm or suspend the disease until it
passes beyond that time in which the only radical remedy is ineffectual. This
remedy is the knife. From her account of the moving state of the tumor, it is
now in a proper situation for the operation. Should she wait till it suppurates
or even inflames much, it may be too late... I repeat again, let there be no
delay in flying to the knife. Her time of life calls for expedition in this
business... I sincerely sympathize with her and with you and your dear Mrs.
Adams in this family affliction, but it will be but for a few minutes if she
submits to have it extirpated, and if not, it will probably be a source of
distress and pain to you all for years to come. It shocks me to think of the
consequences of procrastination.
Mastectomy was Nabby's only chance,
but first the family had to convince William Smith, who was in an advanced
state of denial. When he learned of Rush's recommendation, he reacted
indignantly, heading for libraries to learn whatever he could about the disease
and hoping to spare her the operation. He convinced himself for a while that
perhaps the tumor would just go away, that it was not so bad. Nabby's mother
had more faith in Rush and wrote to Smith: "If the operation is necessary
as the Dr. states it to be, and as I fear it is, the sooner it is done the
better provided Mrs. Smith can bring herself along, as I hope she will consent
to it." She even asked her son-in-law to be with "Nabby through the
painful tryal." Smith finally agreed. They scheduled the operation for
October 8, 1811.
The day before the surgery, John
Warren, Boston's most skilled surgeon, met with the family in Quincy. He gave
Nabby a brief physical examination and told her what to expect. His description
was nightmarishly terrifying, enough to make everybody reconsider the decision.
But Rush's warning--"It shocks me to think of the consequences of
procrastination in her case"--stuck in their minds. Nabby had no choice if
she ever hoped to live to see her grandchildren.
The surgery took place in an
upstairs bedroom of the Adams home in Quincy, Massachusetts. It was as bad as
they had all feared. John Warren was assisted by his son Joseph, who was
destined to become a leading physician in his own right, and several other physicians.
Exact details of the operation are not available, but it was certainly typical
of early nineteenth surgery. Warren's surgical instruments, lying in a wooden
box on a table, were quite simple--a large fork with two, six-inch prongs
sharpened to a needle point, a wooden-handled razor, and a pile of compress
bandages. In the corner of the room a small oven, full of red-hot coals, heated
a flat, thick, heavy iron spatula.
Nabby entered into the room as if
dressed for a Sunday service. She was a proper woman and acted the part. The
doctors were professionally attired in frock coats, with shirts and ties.
Modesty demanded that Nabby unbutton only the top of her dress and slip it off
her left shoulder, exposing the diseased breast but little else. She remained
fully clothed. Since they knew nothing of bacteria in the early 1800s, there
were no gloves or surgical masks, no need for Warren to scrub his hands or
disinfect Nabby's chest before the operation or cover his own hair. Warren had
her sit down and lean back in a reclining chair. He belted her waist, legs,
feet, and right arm to the chair and had her raise her left arm above her head
so that the pectoralis major muscle would push the breast up. A physician took
Nabby's raised arm by the elbow and held it, while another stood behind her,
pressing her shoulders and neck to the chair.
Warren then straddled Nabby's knees,
leaned over her semi-reclined body, and went to work. He took the two-pronged
fork and thrust it deep into the breast. With his left hand, he held onto the
fork and raised up on it, lifting the breast from the chest wall. He reached
over for the large razor and started slicing into the base of the breast,
moving from the middle of her chest toward her left side. When the breast was
completely severed, Warren lifted it away from Nabby's chest with the fork. But
the tumor was larger and more widespread then he had anticipated. Hard knots of
tumor could be felt in the lymph nodes under her left arm. He razored in there
as well and pulled out nodes and tumor. Nabby grimaced and groaned, flinching
and twisting in the chair, with blood staining her dress and Warren's shirt and
pants. Her hair matted in sweat. Abigail, William, and Caroline turned away
from the gruesome struggle. To stop the bleeding, Warren pulled a red-hot
spatula from the oven and applied it several times to the wound, cauterizing
the worst bleeding points. With each touch, steamy wisps of smoke hissed into
the air and filled the room with the distinct smell of burning flesh. Warren
then sutured the wounds, bandaged them, stepped back from Nabby, and mercifully
told her that it was over. The whole procedure had taken less than twenty-five
minutes, but it took more than an hour to dress the wounds. Abigail and
Caroline then went to the surgical chair and helped Nabby pull her dress back
over her left shoulder as modesty demanded. The four surgeons remained
astonished that she had endured pain so stoically.
Nabby endured a long recovery. She
did not suffer from post-surgical infections, but for months after the
operation she was weak and feeble, barely able to get around. She kept her limp
left arm resting in a sling. Going back to the wilds of western New York was
out of the question, so she stayed in Quincy with her mother, hoping to regain
strength. What sustained all of them during the ordeal was the faith that the
operation had cured the cancer. Within two weeks of the surgery, Dr. Rush wrote
John Adams congratulating him "in the happy issue of the operation
performed upon Mrs. Smith's breast...her cure will be radical and durable. I
consider her as rescued from a premature grave." Abigail wrote to a friend
that although the operation had been a "furnace of affliction...what a
blessing it was to have extirpated so terrible an enemy." In May 1812,
seven months after the surgery, Nabby Smith felt well again. She returned home
to the small farm along the Chenango River.
But she was not cured. Breast cancer
patients whose tumors have already spread to the lymph nodes do not have good
survival rates, even with modern surgery, radiation treatments, and
chemotherapy. In Nabby's case, long before Warren performed the mastectomy, the
cancer had already spread. Nabby suspected something was wrong within a few
weeks of arriving home in New York. She began to complain of headaches and pain
in her spine and abdomen. A local physician attributed the discomfort to
rheumatism. The diagnosis relieved some of her anxiety, since she was already
worried that the pain had something to do with cancer.
But it was not "the
rhemuatism." That became quite clear in 1813 when she suffered a local
recurrence of the tumors. When Warren amputated her breast and excised tissues
from her axilla, he thought he had "gotten it all." But cancer is a
cellular disease, and millions of invisible, microscopically-tiny malignant
cancers were left behind. By the spring of 1813 some of them had grown into
tumors of their own--visible in the scar where Nabby's breast had once been and
on the skin as well. Her doctor in New York changed the diagnosis: the
headaches and now excruciating body pains were not rheumatism. The cancer was
back--everywhere.
She declined steadily in the late
spring, finally telling her husband that she "wanted to die in her
father's house." William Smith wrote John and Abigail in May that the
cancer had returned and that Nabby wanted "to spend her state of
convalescence within the vortex of your kindness and assiduities than
elsewhere." The colonel was back in denial. Since the country was in the
midst of the War of 1812, he told his in-laws he had to go to Washington, D.C.
for a military appointment, and that he would return to Quincy as soon as
Congress adjourned. John and Abigail prepared Nabby's room and waited for her
arrival. The trip was unimaginably painful--more than three hundred miles in a
carriage, over bumpy roads where each jolt stabbed into her. Nabby's son John
drove the carriage. When they finally reached Quincy on July 26, she was
suffering from grinding, constant pain. Her appearance shocked John and
Abigail. She was gaunt and thin, wracked by a deep cough, and her eyes had a
moist, rheumy look. She groaned and sometimes screamed with every movement.
Huge, dark circles shadowed her cheeks, and a few minutes after she settled
into bed, the smell of death fouled the air.
Nabby's pain was so unbearable, and
misery so unmitigated, that Abigail slipped into a depression so deep she could
not stand even to visit her room. It was John Adams who ministered to their
dying daughter, feeding her, cleaning her and seeing to her personal needs,
combing her hair and holding her hand. He tried to administer pain killers, but
nothing seemed to help. Smith returned from Washington, and the deathwatch
commenced. On August 9, Nabby's breathing became shallow and the passage of
time between breaths lengthened. The family gathered around her bedside. She
drew her last breath early in the afternoon.
A few days later, in a letter to
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams wrote: "Your Friend, my only Daughter,
expired, Yesterday Morning in the Arms of Her Husband her Son, her Daughter,
her Father and Mother, her Husbands two Sisters and two of her Nieces, in the
49th. Year of Age, 46 of which She was the healthiest and firmest of Us all:
Since which, She has been a monument to Suffering and to Patience."
Jefferson understood his friend's pain: "I know the depth of the
affliction it has caused, and can sympathize with it the more sensibly,
inasmuch as there is no degree of affliction produced by the loss of those dear
to us, while experience has not taught me to estimate...time and silence are
the only medicine, and these but assuage, they never can suppress, the deep
drawn sigh which recollection for ever brings up, until recollection and life
are extinguished together."
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I hope you enjoyed this Links into History post.I realize it's not in the fashion of my usual postings, but there is some fascinating reading here.See you next time - - - -
.
