Mabel May Haller ¹

  General Notes:

Hello, David;

My name is Fran Self. I discovered your website just today, while I was searching for information about my great-grandmother, Bertha (Bertie or Birdie) Leas. My mother, Jean Doran Robinson, was the daughter of Mabel Haller. Mabel was the daughter of Bertha. My mother was born 08-15-1931, when her mother was 19 years old. That means Mabel was born ca. 1912. Bertha first married Mr. Haller. She had two children with him, Lloyd being the eldest, and then Mabel. When the two children were very young, Bertha met and fell in love with Mr. Perrot, whose family were farmers in the Rolla, Missouri area. Bertha left her husband, Mr. Haller, and took her two children to live with their Aunt Goldie, in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Goldie and her husband had never had children, and she was glad to take Mabel and Lloyd, but made Bertha promise that she would never come and take them back. Subsequently, Bertha divorced Mr. Haller (or maybe he divorced her), and married Mr. Perrot. Their first child--and only son--together was Wilbur, as you know. What you may not know is that Wilbur was born in a hayfield, two months premature. Bertha was taking lunch and lemonade out to the men making hay, and the mule pulling the wagon ran over a copperhead. This spooked the mule, who ran away and wrecked the wagon. Bertha was pinned underneath the wagon, and gave birth to "Bud", as he was always called, either there in the field, or at the house immediately thereafter. "Bud" was mentally retarded and affected by cerebral palsy. Bertha always believed that his condition was a judgment from God against her and Mr. Perrot, for leaving her husband and her marriage.

Mabel married Neiel Clayton Robinson in Indiana when she was just 18 years old. She gave birth to my mother, as related above, in 1931. In 1934 or 1935, she had a son, who lived only a few weeks or months. During the pregnancy, she had become gravely ill, and she lived only a couple of months after the baby died. She was just 24 years old when she passed. We now know that she probably died of a kidney infection, as she undoubtedly was affected by polycystic kidney disease, passed on to my mother, and to me, and now to several of my offspring. Her husband's family in Illinois, with whom she stayed while she was pregnant, were all Christian Scientists, and would not allow her to have medical treatment when she became so ill during the pregnancy, or after the baby boy died.

The last time I saw my great-grandmother Bertha was in 1969, at the farm near Rolla. That same year was the last time I saw my mother's Uncle Lloyd and his family (we knew than as "Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Dot"). While I was growing up, my mother took me and my siblings to visit her Aunt Goldie several times in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Aunt Goldie loved Dachshunds, and I remember she always had at least one.

I have a picture of Bertha as a very young woman, and she and my middle daughter (I have five daughters, and six grandchildren) look enough alike to be sisters! Bertha was a petite, energetic, great-hearted woman who was never still and seemed to be everywhere at once, even to an advanced age. She and Grandpa Perrot were soul mates, and remained obviously in love all their lives. I don't know anything more about Mr. Haller.

At age 18, I myself left home in Illinois to marry a man from Shannon County, Missouri, and after that spent several years traveling between our 40 acres in the Ozarks and the logging camps in the Northwest, so I never really had an opportunity to get to know my maternal grandmother's side of the family.

Grandma Perrot (Bertha Leas) always told my mother and me that her mother's name was Mary, but that was about all I could ever find out. She told a story of her mother's mother having been Cherokee, that her grandmother's family was wealthy and owned extensive farming property in Kentucky, and that they had sent her grandmother (also named Mary, according to Bertha) from Kentucky to a convent in St. Louis to be educated. Bertha's story then continued that Mary had met and married Mr. Leas in or near St. Louis, and that Leasburg, Missouri had been named for Mr. Leas, who was originally from Ireland. In my research, I have learned that it was a Mr. Samuel Lea after whom Leasburg was named, and that he did marry someone named Mary, but that he was originally from England--which I suppose could, over the years, have become Ireland in his descendants' minds.

Anything further back than Bertha's mother is all hearsay from Bertha. I have been unable to find documentation for even my grandmother Mabel Haller's birth.

Just thought you might be interested in what information I do have. Your website is very well-thought-out and informative.

Sincerely,

Fran Self

Mabel married Living