1914-1915: THE DEATH OF ONE SO SMALL

Five years before Margaret married Edward; his sister Esther Herman (n) married a carpenter from Germany. Esther and Otto Zastrow were married on October 6, 1903. For nine long years, Esther had waited for a child. Finally, after giving up the idea that she and Otto would have a family other than to be baptismal sponsors for her younger sister’s daughter, Esther became pregnant. On September 11, 1912, Esther gave birth to a girl. She named her Violet. Esther had been close to her brother Edward. It was only natural that she asked him to be one of the sponsors at the child’s baptism. Therefore, by proxy, Keeper Edward M. Herman (n) became a godfather to a small delicate infant. Edward was working at the Horseshoe Reef light station when Violet was baptized, making it impossible for him to attend the ceremony. Esther did not care. She wanted the Lighthouse Keeper to be the sentinel for her child. Margaret was Methodist and the rules of the Lutheran Church did not allow her to be a sponsor. Violet was the closest either of them would come to having a child permanently in their lives.

Perhaps the time and the hour of death for one so small should come gently and softly. Yet just as the winds blow from the Great Lakes to whip up the seas and form a storm on the unsuspecting, Violet died on October 10, 1914. The day before Esther sat waiting for the doctor to travel from Buffalo in hopes of saving Violet’s life. While waiting for the doctor Esther penned a poignant postcard to her brother, the Lighthouse keeper. By the time the card reached its destination, the tiny child was all ready dead. The Lighthouse Keeper could do nothing to save his goddaughter. There would be no funeral to attend because the distance was too far and the navigational season had not yet ended.

Death was not to give a respite to the weary soul of grief, and certainly not to Margaret’s soul. The following year her beloved sister Claire died. It must have seemed to Margaret all her family was leaving and it was not to foreign lands for a new beginning. For two years, the pen of correspondence was silent until the summer of 1916. From a mother-in-law’s visit to the Lighthouse in Marblehead came a postcard to let her “dear son and daughter” know she had returned home safely and “had a very good time out there”. The card was signed by a “loving mother”. It would be another two years before a postcard was sent to Marblehead. The year it was sent would have a direct effect on not only Edward and Margaret, but also the entire world. Margaret was about to become politically active.