Sept. 14th — Pa, Charley Gibbons, Geo., John & I went to Chilli. I got some clothes. Mary came home with us.
Remember that Mary is living in Chillicothe with her Uncle Ed and Aunt Sallie, helping out with chores and childcare during the week, and then she comes home to her parents’ house at the Bench property on the weekends. Correction: While she might be helping out with chores and childcare, according to her daughter Jessie Dawkins, “Mom worked in Chillicothe for a lady living near the business college & this lady did sewing.“
This is the second time that Jesse has mentioned buying clothing readymade. Men’s clothing was easier to mass produce, and there were plenty of stores in Chillicothe in 1901. If you start a free account at chillicothe.newspaperarchive.com, you can see the shops unsophisticated advertising of the time.
This is the only time that Jesse mentions Charley Gibbons, and there are two Charley Gibbons in the area. Both are older than Jesse and closer to John’s age. If it was the older, married, farmer Charles A. Gibbons of Rich Hill on the other side of Chillicothe, maybe he was looking for a ride home. The younger Charley M. Gibbons wasn’t married yet and even went missing in the 1900 federal census possibly due to his mother Margaret being remarried to William T. Hutchison. That is a phenomenon that shows up in genealogy, where the mother marries again and the son of the dead or missing father leaves home by choice or expulsion in his early teens. Those boys somehow go missing in the next census like this one, or they are harder to find because they are in the census but are no longer a part of their family group that can be easily traced.
