Aunt Tillie's Tea Kettle

I often arrange my flowers in this old copper tea kettle.  It has been through rough times.  Dented and marred with scars, it shows a long and useful life.  I have no idea how old it is.  All I know is that it came over the Atlantic in 1870 from Sweden with my great-aunt, Matilda Burke Myers, and her family.  They settled in Henry County, Illinois, joining a large community of Swedes who had first come to that area in the 1840's.  

Why is it, when you are a child growing up, no one thinks it's important to tell you who people are and something about their life?  I grew up not knowing Aunt Tillie.  I had no idea who she was or anything about her life.  As I have been doing my family history I have come across a few bare facts.

Tillie was born in Sweden in 1863.  I know her mother's name, Louisa.  And her brothers' names, Edward, Emil, and Albert.  She married my great uncle, David Allison Myers in 1910 when she was 48.  

But what else happened to her?  I vaguely remember visiting her in the nursing home before she passed away.  She lived into her 90's which was very unusual for that time.  I recall that she was very white-headed and thin...sitting in her wheelchair.  And that is all.  I have pictures of her that were found after my mom died.  She has a very Swedish look to her.  I know because, actually, I was raised by Swedes, but that is a story for another day.

Back to Aunt Tillie and her tea kettle.  My mom was always the person to rescue family pieces before they were put in the blazing bonfire.  Anyway,after Aunt Tillie died, my mom saved the tea kettle and brought it home to keep.  I assume no one wanted it.  She had no children and I imagine the other relatives were not too keen on taking on an orphan copper tea kettle that had seen better days.

There it sat on the bureau in our dining room.  When we moved, the tea kettle came too.  Many moves later it came to my house.  I love it.  The story goes that it was the tea kettle that was taken out to the fields during planting and harvest time.  It is sooty on the bottom so I can imagine it being suspended over a fire filled with water, ready to be boiled to make tea for the farmhands.  Tea?  That is what I was told.  Do Swedes drink tea?  I always thought they drank coffee.  Anyway, that is the short story of Aunt Tillie's tea kettle.

But there is more to it than that.  When I look at its dented side and bent handle, I see people bundling up all their belongings and packing them in trunks. I see them taking one last look backward  before climbing on a ship. Then turning and  looking west across that vast sea, hoping, wondering how they would fit in.  A new land.  Full of promise.  Full of dreams. 

I fill the kettle with my beautiful flowers.  I hope that Aunt Tillie knows that a part of her lives on here in the hills of Ozark County, miles and miles away from her beloved homeland, across the sea. Tillie's tea kettle has a home... right here with me.