Gertrude M. Barrows Bennett (1883-1948)-Part One

Gertrude M. Barrows Bennett
Aka Francis Stevens
Born September 18, 1883, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Died February 2, 1948, San Francisco, California

Introduction

I first wrote about Gertrude Barrows Bennett on March 10, 2015. I started with a biography and then moved on to a discussion of each of her thirteen published stories. My main purpose was to look into the idea that, writing as Francis Stevens, she was the person who invented dark fantasy. That idea was suspect from the beginning. I found very little if any evidence that she was in fact the inventor of that ill-defined (or undefined), late-twentieth-century sub-genre or sub-sub-genre of fantasy fiction. And yet the idea persists. I guess that shows how little influence I have on anything. Anyway, you can begin reading what I wrote about Francis Stevens, aka Gertrude Barrows Bennett, by clicking here. Within that first posting are links to my discussions of each of her stories.

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Eight years is a long time in terms of the Internet. A lot of new-old information has come to light in that time. We now know more about Gertrude Barrows Bennett--about her family, her husbands, and her date and place of death--than we did in 2015. There is a photograph circulating on the Internet that is supposed to be of her. I don't think that it is she. Unless it comes from Randall A. Everts, who has been conducting research on and gathering photographs of tellers of weird tales for more than half a century, I'm not sure that I would trust such a thing very much, at least in regards to an author who has such a very obscure life story.

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Descended from some very old families in America, Gertrude M. Barrows was born on September 18, 1883. (The M. may be for Mabel or Myrtle.) Some sources give her birth year as 1884, and so already there is a question as to the facts of her life. The earliest census in which she was enumerated was the Minnesota state census of 1885. The date was May 1, 1885. The place was Villard, in Pope County, Minnesota, northwest of Minneapolis-St. Paul, for that's where she was counted with her parents and her two older brothers. Her age was given as one year. On that date, if she had been born in 1884, Gertrude's age would presumably have been given as "8/12," or age eight months. (H. McDonald, listed on the opposite page of the census, was listed as being "2/12," or two months old. Martha M. Count, listed a few pages before, was "6/12," or six months old, meaning she was born in 1884.) But if she was born in 1883, Gertrude would have been not an infant, her age counted in months, but a one-year-old, awaiting her next birthday, that is, her second birthday. Based on this evidence, I think it has to be 1883. The U.S. census of 1900--other sources, too--had it wrong. Maybe recorders of information were given the wrong information.

Gertrude was the youngest child and only daughter of Charles A. Barrows (1841-1892), son of a Michigan farmer and a private in the 33rd Illinois Infantry from August 21, 1861, to September 1, 1864. That unit served in Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas and was at the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, one of the turning points of the war. Barrows was a life insurance agent, a traveling agent for a door and sash company, and a banker, possibly among other things. On March 25, 1892, he was admitted to the Pacific Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Sawtelle, California, with chronic pulmonary disease. He died less than two months later, on May 5, 1892, and was buried at Los Angeles National Cemetery. He was just fifty-one years old.

Going back to the year in which the Civil War ended, on December 29, 1865, Barrows married Caroline "Carrie" Pierson Hatch (1841-1918) in Cook County, Illinois, presumably in Chicago. An alternative date and place is December 26, 1865, in Will County, Illinois. Her parents were Charles Hatch (1808-1850) and Clymene (or Clymena) Rebecca (Pierson) Hatch (1813-1899), who, as it so happened, were step-siblings. They were married on July 26, 1830, in Oneida County, New York. By 1845, they were living in what is now Waukesha in what was then the Wisconsin Territory. Hatch was an abolitionist, a member of the Racine County Liberty Party, and a candidate to attend the Wisconsin state constitutional convention.

In 1850, Charles Hatch left his family to go on the California Gold Rush. He never made it to California. In a cold, wet, and snowy June in what is now Wyoming, Hatch fell ill. On June 12, 1850, he died, possibly of mountain fever, and was buried along the Big Sandy River near what is now Farson in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. His grave is marked by an old headstone and enclosed by an old wooden fence. The Oregon-California Trails Association has placed a historical plaque at or near his gravesite. (See the website Find A Grave for more information and pictures of the gravesite and plaque.) This would not be the last death by what you might call misadventure in the story of Gertrude Barrows Bennett, nor the last premature death among her family members.

To be continued . . .

A view of the veterans' home at Sawtelle, California, where Charles A. Barrows (1841-1898), father of Gertrude Barrows Bennett, died. He was a Union Army veteran of the Civil War.

Full attribution:

Title: Soldiers' Home [Sawtelle Veterans Home]. Repository: California Historical Society Digital. Object ID: CHS2013.1297. Collection: Views of Los Angeles, California. Photographer: Putnam and Valentine. Date: Undated. Format: Photographic print: b&w; 20 x 25 cm. General notes: Putnam & Valentine was a partnership of J.R. Putnam and W.S. Valentine, stereo photographers active in Los Angeles, circa 1898-1912. Preferred citation: Soldiers' Home, Views of Los Angeles, California, courtesy, California Historical Society, CHS2013.1297.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley