Flashback Friday – Mabel Edna Tracy Creech

Mabel was my mother’s mother. She graduated from the Training School for Nurses at the Methodist Episcopal Hospital in Brooklyn, NY in 1903.

Mabel is the second from the left in the top row. I still have her nursing cap.

Mabel was born in 1879. Her mother died when she was only 11 years old in 1890. Mabel was taken under the wing of my granddad Fremont Chapin and his wife Ella. Mabel was married to Clarence Creech from the Chapin’s house. Mabel and Clarence moved to Denver, Colorado. My mother, Frances, was born in 1910. Mabel died when Frances was only five years old in 1916.

Here is where the story gets interesting. Fremont and Ella Chapin rushed to Denver to take care of Frances. Her father, Clarence, was unable to cope with raising a young girl. Fremont and Ella took Frances back to New York to raise her as they had raised her mother. The Chapins adopted Frances.

So, in a way, Frances was her mother’s “sister.” That would make Mabel my aunt as well as my grandmother because Fremont Chapin was always my granddad. I wrote about Fremont’s memories of Abraham Lincoln in January.