Individual Details
Edna Amanda Clay
(16 Sep 1883 - )
My mother, Eva Call Clay, was born in Jefferson, Maine. My father, Charles Henry Clay, was a Sargent in the Civil War. He was brn in East Andover, New Hampshire. There were four of us girls, Susan, born in Farmington, N.H. in 1870, Harriet and Mary, twins born in 1873, and Edna A., born 1883. My mother's only sister and husband, George Knight, came to Cambridge, Nebraska, in 1888. He went into the furniture and undertaking business. My parents came from New Hampshire in 1889. My father bought a meat market and a confectiony store.
Susan finished high school, and was assistant postmistress, then taught school until she met Frank Selby, a very promising young lawyer. Susan was very good looking, and was called the bell of the town. She and Frank were married. They lost their first baby, then Clay Selby was born on July 25th, 1903. Susan, Harriet and I lived together. Harriet was organist in the Congregational Church in Cambridge. She had studied music at the Lincoln Academy of Music. One evening at choir practice she was taken with a catch in her hip. It proved to be TB of the bone. She was in and out of St. Joseph's Hospital in Omaha for thirteen years. We moved to Omaha for a time to be near here. We came back to Cambridge, but Harriet became worse. Dr. Lord, her doctor came, and said to save her life she would have to have her limb amputated at the hip. Dr. Lord came from Omaha to perform the operation in our home as she was too ill to go to the hospital.
Before Harriet was able to get around on crutches, our mother died in the Omaha Hospital of cancer. In five months our father died, I'd say of a broken heart, leaving me with an invalid sister. I was just out of high school.
Harriet, with the will to be up and around began gaining, so she started giving music lessons. The doctor warned her to be out side and to rough it, so every thursday I would hitch old Dock and we would drive nine miles to Holbrook for the day, in all kinds of weather, often with snow up to the buggy hubs.
A few months later, Harriet and Susan decided to go into the millenary business, in Cambridge, Nebraska.
I went to Lincoln to study voice under Professor Movis and to take some University work. I was undecided to go on with my music or get married. My teacher said I had a very promising voice.
I studied for three years and did outside solo work. In 1903, Susan, Harriet and I moved to Lincoln, Nebraska. I sang in the Plymouth Church choir and did solo work.
Chester decided to take some University work, so he came to lincoln. I might go back a few years to when I first met my Romeo. I was four years old, when Mr. and Mrs. Perry and their three sons stopped in my father's confectionery store. I remember eyeing Chester and he eyed me, then I went and got my little rocking chair for him to sit in.
A few years later, Mr. Perry and Mr. Bee went into the lumber business where the Bill Trenchhard filling station is now. Of course, the Perry boys and I started to school, Chester liked to carry my books for me when we got up in the grades. We often played house in the lumber yard, and Bob was the baby. My folks bought a home across the street from the lumber ard. As the years went by, Chester and I saw a lot of each other. Chester had a boat and he wanted me with the other girls to go boating on the lake. In the winter, we had such fun skating on the lake.
In 1900, we graduated from high school, the largest class that ever had graduated from Cambridge High School. Then, I went to Lincoln to school.
The next year, Susan, Hariet Clay and I went to Lincoln to live, while I was in school. I lacked a few months of graduating in voice from Lincoln School of Music.
Chester and I were married March 7thm 1906. We had a wonderful two month honeymoon to New England. We stopped enroute in Chicago at the Palmer House, visited friends at La Grange, a suburb of Chicago, stopped at Niagara Falls, then on to Boston. We visited the battleship, Old Ironsides, the South Church, also the art museum. From Boston, we went to Providence, Rhode Island, where my father's only sister lived. For two weeks Abbie showed us a wonderful time sight seeing. Then, back to the midwest, Cambridge, Nebraska, where our first home was built. The wood work was the best of Woods, Chester being a lumberman, birch, oak and pine. A story and a half, five rooms and bath with a foot tub. There was no city water, so we had a wind mill that did the work.
I was the envy of the town, a young bride with so many luxuries. We were married two years when our first son, Melvin, came. It was a very happy event, as were all five of our babies arrivals. Needless to say, I was a very bisy wife and mother. But, I was never too busy to go to choir practice, sing in the choir on Sundays, and get my family to Sunday school, besides doing solo work. Chester was superintendent of the Sunday school.
Now for a resume of the most wonderful life of my sister Harriet. As I have said, she had studied music at the Franklin School of Music. She played for the Congreational Church for years and also for the male quartet during President McKinley's campaign. She was a girl of twenty years. As they were practicing one evening, she was taken with a catch in her hip. One of the men of the quartet helped her home. From then on, for many months, she suffered greatly. My mother took her to Omaha to see Dr. Lord. She was in and out of St. Joseph's Hospital for months. Her trouble became worse. Dr. Lord finally came to our home in Cambridge from Omaha and said the only things that would save her life would be to amputate her limb at the hip. Of course it was done in our home as she was not able to be moved to Omaha.
Of course these were very trying days for my parents as well as me, a girl just out of high school. Harriet was hardly able to be out of bed when our mother began ailing. She died of cancer, leaving me as a home maker for my father and invalid sister. In just five months, my father passed away. From then on, Harriet gained. With her determination, she was able to go into the millinery business with our sister, Susan. whose husband had died, leaving Susan in a family way. Clay, the baby, was born in July, 1903. In 1915, Susan and Harriet took up land south of Brush, Colorado. They had to live on their land for three months during the summer. They had sod houses built. Harriet with stay with Clay who was seven years old while Clay's mother would go back to Cambridge to run the millinery business.
They proved up on their land in 1917. Clay Selby married and had four children. They had quite a time getting started, struggling to make a living off of pasture land and a few cattle. Clay is our nephew. He finally sold the land, but kept the mineral rights and today there are nineteen producing oil wells. They are getting $6000.00 a month income. Clay died in 1963.
In 1940, Melvin and Hazel moved from Greeley, Colorado to Long Beach. Melving being a contractor, found plenty of work. Hazel made a trip back to Nebraska to visit us with Donald and Anita. When it was time for them to return to California, Hazel asked Chester why he couldn't drive them back. As business was slack, he said it might be possible. We were living in Arapahoe as Chester was managing the lumber yard there. Was I thrilled. We started to pack our household effects and store them.
We drove to Long Beach, with Penny riding between Chester and me. We stopped at motels in route, and they permitted Penny to sleep in her box with us.
This was 1941. We went house hunting after living in a vacant three room store building. Hazel and I found a house with three bedrooms in a new project that was being built on Barkley Street. I had twenty five dollars with me to go make a down payment on our first home in the west. We lived there less than year. Chester was still interested in a lot where Melvin could build us a home. After some searching, we bought on the corner of Somerset and Carson.
We were very delighted with our new home with a picture window and glassed in patio with vines hanging from the ceiling and walls. You looked in through French doors into the living room and dining room. How we loved it. When Chester became ill, Melvin and Hazel thought we should go out to their home so I would have help in caring for him. Paul was rooming down town near his work. Chester became worse and passed away December 6th, 1955. Evalyn, Barbara, and Clay Selby came just before the end. The services were held at Motels at 1 p.m. The burial was in the beautiful Forest Lawn Memorial Park.
As I look back, I wonder how I lived through losing my lifelong Love. It was because "I was given the strenth according to my day." I have proved this many times.
The next move was to sell our lovely home and move to smaller quarters for Paul and me. I bought an own your own apartment at 1425 East First in Long Beach. Paul found his love Maxine Mount. They were married June 25th, 1960.
Evalyn came to visit us while Barbara, Anne and Perry were living with us on Artesia. She took Perry and Anne back with her. After a time, Barbara went to Sioux City to be near her children. She met Ed Christensen, a widower, and they were married.
Harriet went to the P.E.O. home in Beatrice, Nebraska. She went from there to Valley View Rest Home in Wausa, Nebraska, Evalyn and Pete's former home. Pete bought a lawyers law business in Hartington, Nebraska. It was twenty-two miles from Wausa, so they went to see Harriet quite often. Harriet will be 92 the 22nd of June, 1965.
After Paul married, it was too lonely for me to live alone, so I came to this beautiful home in Alhambra where I have many wonderful friends, this was in 1963.
My three sons live near so they come to see me once a week.
Some may think life here is monotonous, this is not so. I have all kinds of hobbies, I have attended as a guest to several P.E.O. chapters, and gone to lectures and book reviews. We are invited to attend the Chapter meetings which meet here every week or so. I have seen the picture, "The Greatest Story Ever Told" and at the little theater in Los Angeles, "The Green Bough in My Heart" and gone to the Date Festival with Paul. I go to the Round Table Club once a month and have been to Griff Park in April with Paul. There are all kinds of church dinners. I love my church affliliations. I take a walk each day.
I'll be 82 years old my next birthday. I am still as young at heart as I was at twenty. I know I am going down the sunset trail, that leads to the Great Beyond. I hope and pray that I leave some good behind.
Susan finished high school, and was assistant postmistress, then taught school until she met Frank Selby, a very promising young lawyer. Susan was very good looking, and was called the bell of the town. She and Frank were married. They lost their first baby, then Clay Selby was born on July 25th, 1903. Susan, Harriet and I lived together. Harriet was organist in the Congregational Church in Cambridge. She had studied music at the Lincoln Academy of Music. One evening at choir practice she was taken with a catch in her hip. It proved to be TB of the bone. She was in and out of St. Joseph's Hospital in Omaha for thirteen years. We moved to Omaha for a time to be near here. We came back to Cambridge, but Harriet became worse. Dr. Lord, her doctor came, and said to save her life she would have to have her limb amputated at the hip. Dr. Lord came from Omaha to perform the operation in our home as she was too ill to go to the hospital.
Before Harriet was able to get around on crutches, our mother died in the Omaha Hospital of cancer. In five months our father died, I'd say of a broken heart, leaving me with an invalid sister. I was just out of high school.
Harriet, with the will to be up and around began gaining, so she started giving music lessons. The doctor warned her to be out side and to rough it, so every thursday I would hitch old Dock and we would drive nine miles to Holbrook for the day, in all kinds of weather, often with snow up to the buggy hubs.
A few months later, Harriet and Susan decided to go into the millenary business, in Cambridge, Nebraska.
I went to Lincoln to study voice under Professor Movis and to take some University work. I was undecided to go on with my music or get married. My teacher said I had a very promising voice.
I studied for three years and did outside solo work. In 1903, Susan, Harriet and I moved to Lincoln, Nebraska. I sang in the Plymouth Church choir and did solo work.
Chester decided to take some University work, so he came to lincoln. I might go back a few years to when I first met my Romeo. I was four years old, when Mr. and Mrs. Perry and their three sons stopped in my father's confectionery store. I remember eyeing Chester and he eyed me, then I went and got my little rocking chair for him to sit in.
A few years later, Mr. Perry and Mr. Bee went into the lumber business where the Bill Trenchhard filling station is now. Of course, the Perry boys and I started to school, Chester liked to carry my books for me when we got up in the grades. We often played house in the lumber yard, and Bob was the baby. My folks bought a home across the street from the lumber ard. As the years went by, Chester and I saw a lot of each other. Chester had a boat and he wanted me with the other girls to go boating on the lake. In the winter, we had such fun skating on the lake.
In 1900, we graduated from high school, the largest class that ever had graduated from Cambridge High School. Then, I went to Lincoln to school.
The next year, Susan, Hariet Clay and I went to Lincoln to live, while I was in school. I lacked a few months of graduating in voice from Lincoln School of Music.
Chester and I were married March 7thm 1906. We had a wonderful two month honeymoon to New England. We stopped enroute in Chicago at the Palmer House, visited friends at La Grange, a suburb of Chicago, stopped at Niagara Falls, then on to Boston. We visited the battleship, Old Ironsides, the South Church, also the art museum. From Boston, we went to Providence, Rhode Island, where my father's only sister lived. For two weeks Abbie showed us a wonderful time sight seeing. Then, back to the midwest, Cambridge, Nebraska, where our first home was built. The wood work was the best of Woods, Chester being a lumberman, birch, oak and pine. A story and a half, five rooms and bath with a foot tub. There was no city water, so we had a wind mill that did the work.
I was the envy of the town, a young bride with so many luxuries. We were married two years when our first son, Melvin, came. It was a very happy event, as were all five of our babies arrivals. Needless to say, I was a very bisy wife and mother. But, I was never too busy to go to choir practice, sing in the choir on Sundays, and get my family to Sunday school, besides doing solo work. Chester was superintendent of the Sunday school.
Now for a resume of the most wonderful life of my sister Harriet. As I have said, she had studied music at the Franklin School of Music. She played for the Congreational Church for years and also for the male quartet during President McKinley's campaign. She was a girl of twenty years. As they were practicing one evening, she was taken with a catch in her hip. One of the men of the quartet helped her home. From then on, for many months, she suffered greatly. My mother took her to Omaha to see Dr. Lord. She was in and out of St. Joseph's Hospital for months. Her trouble became worse. Dr. Lord finally came to our home in Cambridge from Omaha and said the only things that would save her life would be to amputate her limb at the hip. Of course it was done in our home as she was not able to be moved to Omaha.
Of course these were very trying days for my parents as well as me, a girl just out of high school. Harriet was hardly able to be out of bed when our mother began ailing. She died of cancer, leaving me as a home maker for my father and invalid sister. In just five months, my father passed away. From then on, Harriet gained. With her determination, she was able to go into the millinery business with our sister, Susan. whose husband had died, leaving Susan in a family way. Clay, the baby, was born in July, 1903. In 1915, Susan and Harriet took up land south of Brush, Colorado. They had to live on their land for three months during the summer. They had sod houses built. Harriet with stay with Clay who was seven years old while Clay's mother would go back to Cambridge to run the millinery business.
They proved up on their land in 1917. Clay Selby married and had four children. They had quite a time getting started, struggling to make a living off of pasture land and a few cattle. Clay is our nephew. He finally sold the land, but kept the mineral rights and today there are nineteen producing oil wells. They are getting $6000.00 a month income. Clay died in 1963.
In 1940, Melvin and Hazel moved from Greeley, Colorado to Long Beach. Melving being a contractor, found plenty of work. Hazel made a trip back to Nebraska to visit us with Donald and Anita. When it was time for them to return to California, Hazel asked Chester why he couldn't drive them back. As business was slack, he said it might be possible. We were living in Arapahoe as Chester was managing the lumber yard there. Was I thrilled. We started to pack our household effects and store them.
We drove to Long Beach, with Penny riding between Chester and me. We stopped at motels in route, and they permitted Penny to sleep in her box with us.
This was 1941. We went house hunting after living in a vacant three room store building. Hazel and I found a house with three bedrooms in a new project that was being built on Barkley Street. I had twenty five dollars with me to go make a down payment on our first home in the west. We lived there less than year. Chester was still interested in a lot where Melvin could build us a home. After some searching, we bought on the corner of Somerset and Carson.
We were very delighted with our new home with a picture window and glassed in patio with vines hanging from the ceiling and walls. You looked in through French doors into the living room and dining room. How we loved it. When Chester became ill, Melvin and Hazel thought we should go out to their home so I would have help in caring for him. Paul was rooming down town near his work. Chester became worse and passed away December 6th, 1955. Evalyn, Barbara, and Clay Selby came just before the end. The services were held at Motels at 1 p.m. The burial was in the beautiful Forest Lawn Memorial Park.
As I look back, I wonder how I lived through losing my lifelong Love. It was because "I was given the strenth according to my day." I have proved this many times.
The next move was to sell our lovely home and move to smaller quarters for Paul and me. I bought an own your own apartment at 1425 East First in Long Beach. Paul found his love Maxine Mount. They were married June 25th, 1960.
Evalyn came to visit us while Barbara, Anne and Perry were living with us on Artesia. She took Perry and Anne back with her. After a time, Barbara went to Sioux City to be near her children. She met Ed Christensen, a widower, and they were married.
Harriet went to the P.E.O. home in Beatrice, Nebraska. She went from there to Valley View Rest Home in Wausa, Nebraska, Evalyn and Pete's former home. Pete bought a lawyers law business in Hartington, Nebraska. It was twenty-two miles from Wausa, so they went to see Harriet quite often. Harriet will be 92 the 22nd of June, 1965.
After Paul married, it was too lonely for me to live alone, so I came to this beautiful home in Alhambra where I have many wonderful friends, this was in 1963.
My three sons live near so they come to see me once a week.
Some may think life here is monotonous, this is not so. I have all kinds of hobbies, I have attended as a guest to several P.E.O. chapters, and gone to lectures and book reviews. We are invited to attend the Chapter meetings which meet here every week or so. I have seen the picture, "The Greatest Story Ever Told" and at the little theater in Los Angeles, "The Green Bough in My Heart" and gone to the Date Festival with Paul. I go to the Round Table Club once a month and have been to Griff Park in April with Paul. There are all kinds of church dinners. I love my church affliliations. I take a walk each day.
I'll be 82 years old my next birthday. I am still as young at heart as I was at twenty. I know I am going down the sunset trail, that leads to the Great Beyond. I hope and pray that I leave some good behind.
Events
| Birth | 16 Sep 1883 | Farmington NH | |||
| Marriage | 7 Mar 1906 | Lincoln NE - Chester Arthur Perry |
Families
| Spouse | Chester Arthur Perry (1884 - 1955) |
| Child | Melvin E. Perry (1908 - ) |
| Child | Leonard Clay Perry (1911 - 1996) |
| Child | Evalyn Jane Perry (1914 - 1995) |
| Child | Barbara J. Perry (1918 - ) |
| Child | Norman Paul Perry (1923 - ) |
| Father | Charles Henry Clay (1838 - 1902) |
| Mother | Eva Call (1846 - 1901) |