Daughterhood

To me, Elsie Jean Coleman was my grandmother’s sister, a great aunt.  To my great grandfather, Jeremiah Donovan, Elsie was ‘dearest beloveth daughter’. Three letters in my grandmother’s papers from Elsie’s estate have flipped my thinking about Elsie from aunt to daughter, and made me consider the notion of dutiful daughter.

If you read my January post, you will know that I am, ‘contemplating a new chapter’, to use LinkedIn vernacular. Out of necessity, I have spent considerable time as a dutiful daughter. It has proven incompatible with writing and researching family history. However, supporting my elderly father has given me the daily space to dredge his old memory banks,  while the sedimentation of old memories is mostly sharp as jagged bedrock, the silt of new information refuses to settle and invariably floats away.

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In 2018, I took long service leave from my job and spent six months immersed in family history research. I would start the day with a walk to the local cafe to read a book from my mother’s family history collection. It was an Irish history book on Dunkerrin, the homeplace of the Meagher ancestors, written by my second cousins’ history teacher, and gifted to my mother by their mother as part of decades long correspondence. In the afternoon I digitised the family archive, corrected transcriptions, set up this website and wrote some early essays. The last three months of the long service leave were spent travelling round Ireland, Britain, Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.

Librairie Tropismes – 11 Galerie des Princes, Bruxelles. 2018

In a fabulously baroque gilded bookstore, Tropismes, in the Galeries Saint-Hubert, Brussels, I picked up a book in the English language section by Rebecca Solnit, A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland. Following my return home, I read this book over coffee on the one day a week I dedicated to history projects. In Solnit’s delightfully meandering writing style, she reminisces about Ireland, ancestry, history, landscapes and migrations, and recalls a conversation with a fellow American traveller.

‘And so we talked about mothers and the difficulties of daughter-hood. Families up close, particularly the parent-child debacle, are often something one defines oneself against rather than with. But families at a distance, relatives with whom the ties of obligation and experience are not so tight, are another matter, a half-imagined community, an ancestry often seemed to me a wholly imagined one, a mythology of origins and membership – for its not the dead ancestors but the surviving stories that provide sustenance.’ [1]

Ever since reading this passage, I’ve been keen to explore the concept of daughterhood in more detail in my family archive, and Women’s History Month in March presented the perfect opportunity to find some stories of sustenance.

Two Irish history books juxtaposing the global and local perspectives.

Daughterhood

Elsie Jean Coleman, née Donovan (1911-1989), was an elegant, delicate, sparrow like woman with long grey hair always worn in a bun. There were several childless, widowed great aunts who were always present at family gatherings, but it was Elsie who I knew best. I stayed at her house with my cousins, she took me to Georges (a former department store on Collins Street), she would clasp my hands and tell me I had long fingers perfect for playing the piano, and she lived with my grandparents towards the end of her life.

However, she was not just an aunt; she was a daughter, a sister, a wife and a business woman.

Elsie’s mother, Mary Ellen, at the age of 58, turned her energy to running a hotel in Victoria’s outback after years as a mother and farmer’s wife. Most of the family lived at the Railway Hotel in Chillingollah from 1929 to 1941, although from time to time throughout this period, the family also resided at a property in Hawthorn (first in Robinson Road, and later in Elphin Grove).

Elsie, the eldest surviving daughter and the sixth of seven children to Mary Ellen McCormack and Jeremiah Donovan appears to have spent most of her twenties living in Chillingollah from 1934 until 1941.[2] There is no evidence in the family archives to reveal how Elsie spent her time working during these years, but presumably she supported her parent’s hotel business. Elsie’s future husband, Frank Coleman, worked as a grocer in his family’s business, Coleman General Merchants, also in Chillingollah. The electoral rolls place Frank in Chillingollah from 1937-1939.  He also switched between a primary residence in Melbourne (Sunshine) and the outback business during the 1920s-1930s. When in Melbourne, Frank’s occupation is listed as a railway employee or as a clerk. [3] Bucking the family trend of working in the outback, Elsie’s youngest sister, Dot (my grandmother) worked and lived independently in Melbourne as a chiropodist for shoe stores from the ages of nineteen to twenty-five until she was married.[4]

M.E. Donovan Railway Hotel, Chillingollah, c.1920s

After the Donovan family’s indefatigable matriarch, Mary Ellen, died in 1939, the family sold the hotel business and moved to Melbourne permanently in 1941 living in Elphin Grove, Hawthorn. It is during these years of bereavement as the Second World War was raging, Elsie’s occupation changes from home duties to sales. Elsie lived with her father, Jeremiah, her brother, Roy, along with his wife Ellie and their children Colin (born in 1937) and Helene (born 1940) in Elphin Grove.

Dot, the youngest in the family, married my grandfather, Jack Meagher, in 1940 leaving Elsie as the only unmarried daughter. Initially, Dot and Jack started married life living on the premises of a dairy business Jack operated with his brother Wilbur in Hawthorn (787 Burwood Road). Their first born came along in 1941, followed by twins sixteen months later in 1942 and another baby in 1944. By this time, Dot’s sister-in-law Ellie also had four children from newborn to seven years of age. Housing shortages during the war years and post war was significant in Melbourne. Perhaps three babies under the age of two, unsuitability of the dairy as a residence, finances, Ellie’s household load looking after her father-in-law and children, Elsie working, or Dot’s typical pragmatism; whatever the case may be, at some point, Dot and Jack and their kids moved into Elphin Grove and Elsie took flight to Adelaide, newly married and setting up a business selling luxury handbags.

Street photography of Elsie Coleman (nee Donovan) and unidentified man by Modern Photography, Melbourne. undated.

An appreciated daughter

When I first read the letters to ‘dearest beloved daughter’, I had in mind that the letters were to Dot, as they were found among her papers, but when I retrieved them to write this post, I realised they were addressed to Elsie.

Elsie was a 33 year old saleswoman when she married Franklin D. Coleman in 1944. There is only a smattering of material in the family archives that provides insight into Elsie’s life. My mother’s research notes recorded Dot describing Elsie as, ‘gay with outgoing personality, a loving sister to her siblings. Generous to a fault and an excellent business woman.’[5]

In a letter dated 10 May 1948, that you can read here, Jeremiah writes, ‘I think you are most generous to me in every way needless to mention how deeply I appreciate your most generous attention. But all the same if I could write with my pen how fond I am to know what a lovely Daughter I possess and I am the Father of. But I cannot find words to express my sentiments of Love and deep [feeling?] which I can truthfully state are above my writing on paper what I would like to convey to you. But my prayers will be to Almighty God asking Him to spare you for the manner & generosity which you have treated me. If I only had your Mother Alive no doubt what so ever she would have no hesitating in joining me in stating althoug [sic] she left us. But never the less the whole family I am certain has the same dear feeling for you & all here are proud that you are progressing so well in your business.‘[6]

Earlier the same year, Jeremiah wrote, ‘Well my Dearest Beloveth Daughter. Once again I take up my pen to convey to you that the fact is although I do not write to you more often I can assure you it is not for the want of love for your own beloveth self. But it is because the rest of the house is always getting letters from you. But I am always thrilled when I get one from you for myself.’ [7]

He ended this letter with ‘I am hoping you may come over at Easter I suppose I am selfish But it always cheers me up when you come along. From your Dear & Loving old Father with heaps of Love.‘[8]

Excerpt of letter from Jeremiah Donovan to Elsie Coleman, 1 March 1948.

Reading between the lines

The letters reveal the family’s pride in Elsie’s commercial pursuits, their delight in receiving her attention, and Jeremiah’s desire for his daughter’s company in the holidays. Elsie was free to pursue her calling in life. She was not tied down as the only childless daughter, struggling against what Solnit described as ‘the difficulties of daughterhood’. The inter generational responsibilities shared between some of Elsie’s siblings, in what appears to be a mutually beneficial financial arrangement of shared housing and care alleviated Elsie of this responsibility. Elsie took care of the family in other ways. She provided a much loved holiday destination in the city of Churches. In the third undated letter, Jeremiah thanked Elsie and Frank for his three week holiday with them. There are other letters and postcards in the the family archive documenting occasions of when Dot went to Adelaide sans children or other times with the twins. My father fondly remembers going to Elsie’s by himself aged 12 and tasting oysters for the first time, and has mentioned his older cousin Colin also visiting Adelaide, possibly with Ellie.

What the letters don’t reveal is the role daughter and daughter-in-law, Dot and Ellie hold. The responsibilities that come with home duties, wrangling meals, caring and washing for five adults and eight children during the war and post war years.  It is reading in between the lines that enables us to see them honouring the notion of dutiful daughters, who shoulder considerable responsibilities in caring for aging parents and children, a scenario today badged as ‘the sandwich generation‘.

Filial Piety

Filial piety is a key virtue and deeply embedded in Eastern religions and culture. Filial pieta was a chief virtue in ancient Roman times.  In Catholic traditions, filial piety is set out in part three of the Catechism.  A quote directly from the Bible, “With all your heart honor your father, and do not forget the birth pangs of your mother. Remember that through your parents you were born; what can you give back to them that equals their gift to you?” [9]

However, in Western culture, and certainly in Australian culture, caring for aged people has overwhelmingly been outsourced to commercial and private entities. A phenomenon that was unleashed with the Howard Government’s Aged Care Act 1997. [10]

The child-parent debacle, as Solnit frames it, does not seem to feature in the family stories of the Donovans and the Meaghers, nor in the archives. To me, Solnit is referencing a tension when roles reverse. It is a debacle if the child who is parenting, is still a child, whereas the adult child expands their brood to take in an elder who needs extra support. Typically it is a dutiful daughter who steps up to take this on, and in the Donovan family it included the daughter-in-law.

It takes a village

As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Traditionally and historically, the village, including children, can also take care of the elders. A classic story my father has told me, when he was six or seven, he walked past his Grandpa Jeremiah’s bedroom and nonchalantly commented to his mother Dot in the kitchen, “Grandpa’s room is full of smoke.” Dot rushed in, flung open the windows, and found that Grandpa had fallen asleep while smoking, his pipe setting his pajamas alight. Needless to say Grandpa Jeremiah was no longer allowed to smoke unsupervised, and someone would sit with him while he smoked his pipe.

Elsie Coleman (seated) and Dorothy Meagher at Yonga Road, Balwyn, 1987.

In writing this post, my understanding of Elsie has changed. I still remember her as a sweet, elderly great aunt, but my knowledge of her has expanded more fully to an energetic business woman who created the job she wanted to do, but also found other ways to care for her family, despite being interstate. Jeremiah’s letters are instrumental for this new knowledge, and potentially had Elsie not lived interstate, they might not exist.

I wonder what Elsie would have said if she was asked to describe Dot? I can easily imagine her saying, Dot was a devoted sister, daughter, mother and wife. Dot epitomises the dutiful daughter, an archetypal carer. A role she later expanded to all those around her, including Elsie in the last years of her life. Elsie’s role as a dutiful daughter is less obvious, obscured under the term of home duties, a blanket description for women in the electoral rolls.  On balance, each daughter consistently spent more or less a decade of their adulthood living with one of both parents. Almost as a tag-team, Elsie in her twenties, and Dot in her thirties, they covered two decades of their parent’s lives, supporting and caring.

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I didn’t quite get this blog finished in March for Women’s History Month before my father had a little catch up with the surgeon’s scalpel. He’s recovering well, but being a dutiful daughter, spending most days with him has proven incompatible with getting this blog piece finished as I intended.

When I collected my father from the hospital after his overnight stay, we caught a taxi back to his place. As I helped him out of the cab, the driver asked me if he was my father. I said he was. He turned to my father and said, ‘You have a good daughter.’

End notes

[1] Rebecca Solnit, A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland, Verso, London, 2011, p.151.
[2] Electoral Roll, Victoria. Accessed through Ancestry and Find My Past websites.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Employment references from Wittner and Mantons shoe retailers, Meagher family archive.
[5] Meagher Tree Chronology and Worksheets, Meagher Family Archive.
[6] Jeremiah Donovan to Elsie Coleman, correspondence, 10 May 1948. Meagher Family Archive.
[7] Jeremiah Donovan to Elsie Coleman, correspondence, 1 March 1948. Meagher Family Archive.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Holy Bible, Ecclesiastics 7:27–28.
[10] Gabrielle Meagher, A Genealogy of Aged Care, in Arena Quarterly no. 6, June 2021.