Mary Ingham Kay's ...History
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Mary Ingham as a Baby
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THE INGHAM 's
FROM ENGLAND TO SALT LAKE CITY | MOVING IN WITH DAUGHTERS FAMILY
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MORE ON INGHAM HISTORY
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THE BEACH PROPERTY
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MARY INGHAM KAY'S WORK | INGHAM DATABASE
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From England To Salt Lake City
On my mother's side of the family, Mary Ingham Kay's grandparents, were Charles Henry Ingham and Mary Ann Barron,who were converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in England, and then came over to the United States. Whether they were married just before they were converted or just after isn't clear, but they were married very close to the time they left England, because their first baby was born on the plains of Wyoming as they were crossing to come to Utah. They had settled down in the Salt Lake area. The first and second children were both boys. Mary 's father (William Henry Ingham) was the second child and both of these older boys remained active in the church and raised their families in the church. However apparently something happened, either with an individual or with the ward , I don't think anyone knows exactly what, but my mother's grandparents (Charles Henry Ingham and Mary Ann Barron) became very hurt with the church. Sometime after their first few children were born they stopped going to church. The two older boys continued to go to church and be active, but not the other seven children . As the two older boys grew up they apparently asked their parents questions about their ancestors but their parents would not give them any information.
Mother's parents, William Henry Ingham and Mary Agnus Pack, were from the pioneers that came across the plains at the time Brigham Young came . William Henry Ingham had served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints in Tennessee, in January of 1894. He was also the first councilor in the Bishopric for the last ten years of his life. He and his wife,Mary Agnus Pack, were very active in the church and raised their family in the church. They had six children, Madelon, Helen, Ardell, Alta, Ward, and Mary. As it turned out my mother(Mary Ingham Kay), Aunt Dot(Ardelle Ingham Kay) and my Uncle Ward were married in the temple, however none of the others did. Yet my cousin (Maureen Perona - Aunt Alta's daughter )and I, used to kind of wonder, how it happened that it seemed none of the girls had very strong testimonies, it just seemed strange to us.
William Henry Ingham owned a shoe store called "The Ingham Shoe Company" in Sugarhouse, UT. And that's were he earned his living, selling shoes. One of the things that mother (Mary Ingham Kay)used to tell me was that she loved shoes, and of course she was very small build and had small feet. So she was able to fit into almost any pair of shoes, but she says she probably ruined her feet trying to fit into shoes that were way too small.. She always seemed to have good feelings whenever she talked about her parents. Besides owning a shoe shore her father is also reported to have been working for the FBI. When she spoke of her mother she seemed to like her, but I don't know how close they were because that's not something that she would talked to me about. I think she was close to her sisters, especially her oldest sister, Madeline. Madeline seemed to have helped raise a lot of the younger ones. When she spoke of Madeline it wasn't so much Madeline liked her as she liked Madeline. She talked about how she and her brother were close as they were growing up. Mother (Mary Ingham Kay) was fifteen when her father died on March 7, 1924. She said she could even remember seeing him in the chair as he had passed away, it was a real shock for her. He'd had a sudden very sever stroke (apoplexy).
But apparently after he died the family lost the shop and her mother, Mary Agnes Pack Ingham, didn't really have any way to support the family. By that time her two oldest daughters were married. The oldest, Madelone, married Delbert Cushing Guiver and stayed there in Utah. The second oldest, Helen, Graduated from University Of Utah in June of 1922 and then went out to Oakland, California where she taught High School. There she met Gerald Arnold John Beukers, they were married Oct. 25, 1929.
Gerald A. J. Beukers, had a yard business selling coal and lumber, along with all kinds of building commodities and landscaping materials. He was doing well and he began to buy property there throughout Oakland and Berkeley. He was a widower himself, he'd married Grace Frances Bartlett who had died Oct. 15, 1928. They had one daughter, Barbara Jane Beukers, born Aug. 9, 1923. She was six years old when Helen and Gerald were married. Helen raised Barbara along with their other three children (Gerald, Helen and Donald). They were doing well, so Helen talked her mother(Mary Agnes Pack Ingam ) into bringing what was left of the family out to California, where the girls could earn a better living. In the meantime, my mother (Mary Ingham) had finished business school in Salt Lake City UT, so she was able to earn a living. She had a younger brother (Ward Ingham) that I'm pretty sure still needed to finish school. But whatever family my grandmother Ingham still had living established a place and found work.
Mary Ingham and John B. Kay (my parents) actually met while attending the Oakland ward, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Mary Ingham's sister , Ardell Ingham, also met and married John B. Kay's only brother James Kay. Their mother, Margaret Young Kay, encouraged them to be married in the Temple, and financed their trip to Salt Lake City. They were both married on the same day in the Salt Lake Temple by, Joseph Fielding Smith. Times were hard then and traveling money hard to find. They may not have done so without their mother's help……. FYI -she was also known as Grandma Kay to me Yvonne Kay Marshall, and others.
Even though John Black Kay and Mary Ingham Kay became inactive for many years they, considered their Temple marriage to be the reason they stayed together throughout many difficult years. It was truly a blessing for them and me(Yvonne Kay Marshall), their daughter. They struggled to overcome financial problems until Mary Ingham Kay received a large inheritance from her aunt Jean (Eugene Pack Kilpatrick) in 1946/47. That enabled them to move away from "The City" and its influences, to Menlo Park where they bought a home.
Mother (Mary Ingham Kay) told me of an experience, when I was about one year old. She was driving in a car with her brother, my uncle Ward. And with her mother (Mary Agnes Pack Ingham....my grandmother Ingham) and my Aunt Pearl;(Pearl Irene Pack) who was my grandmother Ingham's sister. I think there were one or two more in the car, but I don't know who they were. Plus I don't recall where they were headed, but I had been sitting on my grandmother Ingham's lap in the back seat. My mother tells me that she suddenly handed me to her, in the front seat and told her something like, she thought she shouldn't hold me any longer. And mother was a bit surprised, because she had thought everything was fine in the back seat, and that that seemed unusual. However just a moment after she handed me to her, they were hit by a drunk driver. They were hit on the side of the car were my grandmother was sitting, she was knocked out of the car and killed instantly. My Aunt Pearl and my Uncle Ward were injured. Mother said everyone in the car was injured except for her and I. Again, she was the one that was holding me. (see more on this stories in mom's history The Life and Times of Yvonne Kay Marshall)
More on Ingham History, (With Some Help From My Cousin Maureen Peronna)
A little recap from here, My Aunt Madeline and Aunt Helen were now married, And the next one down the list was Aunt Dot (Ardell) ,then Aunt Alta, then my Uncle Ward and last my mother (Mary). But Aunt Alta had sort of run away, and married a Mexican, she became pregnant but he left her. So she came back home without a husband and being pregnant. Any way that was Maureen's father. I guess Aunt Alta had a reputation for being a romantic, but very very unrealistic. She was always the one they were worried about, the one that was going to get in trouble mostly . She remained that way all her life. I remember Maureen used to kind of shake her head about it. She would say, "I don't know how mother thinks she's going to be able to do some of these things, she was so unrealistic." It turns out that Maureen's father was quite a wealthy Mexican young man, from quite a wealthy well known Mexican family. He just came up to the states to play around for a while or something and that's when he met Ardell. They were all very strong Catholics (his family). And he didn't ever tell his family that he had married her because he was afraid he'd be disowned or something. So when he left her he didn't let her know his whereabouts or anything. He didn't want her to ever find him. Some years later when Maureen was a young married and was trying to do her own genealogy she started asking her mother many questions about who her real father was and try and get information about him. And then she started actually searching for him down there in Mexico. She finally did find out who he was and where he was. She didn't want to approach him because she didn't know if she would be accepted. Instead she sent him a couple of registered letters, so she knew he received them. But she never ever heard back from him at all. To the extent that she really felt strongly that he didn't want to be reached; he still didn't want his family to know anything about it. So for Maureen it's kind of a bitter thing. She didn't s want to bother him but she wanted to go ahead and do her genealogy for his ancestors, her ancestors. That was a long time ago. But that was hard for her.
Maureen remained active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints, she married an Italian who was also a very, very strong catholic. He spent about four years of the first years of their marriage in the South Pacific in WW II. And it was just a miracle that he lived through it, because he kept having to stay there, he never got back home. During that time Maureen worried and worried herself do death, she lost almost all her hair. But about three years after he came back, he decided to listen to the missionaries. And he's probably one of the strongest members of the church that I've ever met. But I always felt like that's what would happen, because he was a strong catholic. In other words, since he was a very faithful man, and a very religious person, when he recognized the truth there was just no stopping him. He was so strong in the church. He raised all of his kids in the church. And he was thrilled because they had one son, and he was called on a mission to Italy. He was able to go into the area where his ancestors came from, so that was a real thrill for their family.
The Beach Property
The second oldest daughter in my mother's family was named Helen Ingham Beukers , she's the one who had studied to be a teacher, and went to California. She had a good offer there, for teaching, and also met her husband there. Gerard Arnald John Beukers, who was a widower , and had one daughter(Barbara Jane Beukers). He wasn't a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Saints and yet he was well to do at the time. He's the one who owned th3 landscaping yard and been buying property. they had three children, Gerard, Helen Jean, and the last one was called Don. Helen Jean was about a year younger than I (Yvonne Kay Marshall) was. I had lived with that family for a while also, so I was well acquainted with all of those cousins, and fairly close to all of them.
They had a home in Berkeley, and also a home in Rio Del Mar, which was fairly close to Monterey. At first it was what they called a cabin, which was rather an elaborate cabin. It was two stories and very, very nice. But it was right on the cliff above the beach of Rio Del Mar. Gerard A.J. Beukers had bought quite a bit of property down in that area, all along the beach and up on the cliff side. This was a man that I had described, as being in those days, quite tall. He was six foot seven, and just a great big guy. In those days even the basketball players weren't that tall. And he loved the beach, and just loved being down there so they felt they could afford to move their business headquarters there at some point in time. He built another house that wasn't very far away from the cabin. This was quite a lovely home also for those days. It was kind of a Spanish type of home, it was up on the cliff still, it wasn't down on the beach. That was the home that they lived and raised their kids in, and Helen Jean and Gerard finished school down in that area.
From what I was told there got to be a point where he felt like Gerard A.J. Beukers felt he had to keep making more money. He would build things in a hurry and rent them out, he wasn't happy until everything was rented out. So he rented out the cabin and that meant they had rentals that were fairly close to their main home.
Then he decided he wanted to get close to the beach, so it wouldn't take so long to get down to the beach. They had steps that went down the cliff, to the beach, from the cliff house, but he wanted to get even closer to the beach. So that's when they built the house there on the beach. They built it right into the cliff. It was a very sandy cliff of course, but they managed to build a good part of the foundation right into the cliff. So I guess he felt like the cliff wasn't going to come down on them. Still I always worried about that cliff because we knew how sandy it was. We used to start at the top and slide all the way to the bottom. Not straight down, we had kind of a snake trail , but it was a long ways and pretty sandy.
This "beach house" was a rather large house. It had three stories, the main story , which was really, quite large, a big front room, a big kitchen, a lot of bedrooms. And under that they had built just some more rooms for the kids and such. And on the top deck was a swimming pool .Well, that was fine for a while because it was a beautiful home. But then he kind of figured they didn't need all that space so they started renting the bottom part of the house. Then people wanted it, the "high class" I guess want stuff on the beach. So there wasn't a problem renting anything. But I remember at that point my Aunt got a little bit unhappy and discouraged because she really didn't want all those rentals all around. However he did, and continued to rent and he even went so far as to divide some of the upper parts of the house when the kids stared leaving and started renting that. Just about that time my Aunt had a heart attack and she died. That was my Aunt Dawn (Helen Ingham Beukers). Then he was alone there in the home. His son Gerard at that time, was established in Redwood City with his business and family. So he invited his daughter Helen Jean and her husband and family to come and run the business. So she did.
That particular beach house kind of became a place for the Ingham family to get together once a year. We used to try to do that at New Year's. We'd go down and have family reunions there. That's when Maureen's family(The Perona's) used to go down, and Helen Jean Beukers (Kestner) and Gerard's family(The Beukers) and all of those cousins. I don't know whether my cousin Kathleen (aunt Dot's daughter)- (aka Ardell Imgham) showed up very much, one of the cousins I lived with.. By that time I think her older sister Jo Ann had died. I don't remember ever seeing Jo Ann there.
Mary Ingham's Work
Unlike her mother before her, Mary Ingham worked outside the home. Her mother, Mary Agnus Pack was a stay a home mom. But Mary had gone to secretarial school and had her business degree and from that time, she knew shorthand and typing very well, and was very good at it. The company she worked for most of the time was called Stedheimer's, which was a wholesale place that handled sweaters, t-shirts, and sports clothing, all that sort of thing. She actually worked in a big business building right down on Market Street, not in the store. I used to go down and visit her every once in a while. They took up one whole floor of that particular building. I can remember going down there and seeing boxes and boxes of sweaters and things. She wasn't the only secretary there, but she was the president's secretary, or one of the chief secretaries and worked there for many years. Then when we moved to Menlo Park, she became the secretary at Jordon Junior High School. This is interesting, because a long time before, that's where my dad (John Black Kay) had gone to Junior High when he was a young man.
But she was very well liked in Jordan Junior High. As secretaries in schools often do, she began running that whole office and kept track of everything. They really liked her there. She was sixty eight when she retired but she didn't retire from Jordan, though. At one point because of politics or something , the new school board came in a changed the principal and how the system was run there. So when the new principal came in he brought a lot of people in, and brought in his own secretary. I remember that was a hard time for mother because she like that school, and they liked her. But because she worked for the school system she was given the opportunity to work at another school. However that was still hard. Then she worked for a school that worked with handicapped children, called Loma Vista. I think it was grammar school and junior high age. All of the children were handicapped in one way or another. And after a while she became of the main spokesperson in the office again, they all thought a lot of her. I can remember her getting all kinds of little gifts, notes and letters from people there. It seemed like whoever she worked with really, liked her. So that's where she actually retired from. She could've retired at sixty five, but she decided not to, since she was feeling well she continue working. So she retired at sixty eight and that's when she built on to our house and moved in with us.
B. Vaughn Marshall and Yvonne Kay Marshall - Her Daughter, And The KIDS
We had been asking Mother (Mary Ingham Kay) ever since my father (John Black Kay) passed away in 1968 to come live with us because we worried about her. At one point she did have a terrible experience. Her house was broken into and she was attacked and robbed. She didn't tell us anything about it until a couple of days later. And after that Vaughn and I really didn't want her to stay up there. But she still really wanted to stay in her own home. But I think towards the last she began to be a little worried because she always had problems with high blood pressure and I think she was beginning to fall down a lot. She started to worry that something would happen and there wouldn't be anybody around. So I think that's what finally made her decide to come down and live with us. She planned when she was going to retire and the building onto the house, all ahead of time.
Toward the end of 1977 my mother decided it was time to make the move to our home. She hired a contractor to add some living area onto our house for her. And it increased the size and comfort of the house a lot. Mother sold her home in Menlo Park and used quite a bit of that money to finance the addition on our home. There were some difficulties with the construction, but it was finally finished in 1978. Mother moved into her new living quarters in July 1978. She seemed to really enjoy being there
She liked taking care of Louie, a dog we kind of just acquired. She was an animal person, she really did like them. Although the big thing that she wanted when she came to live with us was space in the backyard to plant her corn and her plants. And she very much enjoyed the flowers. Of course Vaughn was more than willing to give her all the space she wanted. Mother and Vaughn had something special in common. They both loved to plant things. Vaughn used to love to go to the nursery and just browse for hours. It was one of the things he enjoyed most. He always liked having company because it was fun to share ideas. I was usually the one to go with him and probably got bored far too quickly. But when mother came to live with us she would often find a reason to go to the nursery and invite Vaughn to go with her. She loved "treating " him to all kinds of plants. It was fun watching the enjoyment they both got out of their excursions to the nursery.
Mother's Days Grow Short
In April of 1981, I (Yvonne Kay Marshall) was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and then in July, as I was recovering from a major episode, mother (Mary Ingham Kay)was diagnosed with cancer. She had surgery and radiation therapy, this was in July. For about a month after the radiation it looked pretty good, but then it spread rapidly. By August we all knew her time was limited.
I took a leave of absence from work to help care for her. It would have been very hard to do if Vaughn, my wonderful husband, had not been willing to help also. He told me that he found himself doing things for her that he never thought he could ever do for anyone. She often told me how thoughtful he was and how grateful she was to him. He had a much more tender nature than I. Mother was sixty nine when she moved into our house and passed away at seventy two years of age. She wasn't with us very long. Among the poems that Vaughn wrote, he wrote this in memory of Mother.<
It was not sweet,
There was no thrillNor was it ever pleasurable.
With soft warm feet
Regardless how she did entreat.
And she is dead, she could not stay
Her lovely skin became all yellowed
She aged ten years
each day she stayed
And though we prayed
and wiped our tears
prompted not by any fears
but only sympathy for death unhallowed.
Some say that on that day
They'll kick and scream
And fiercely fight
So all within their sight
Shall change their theme
And hold in admirable esteem,
that fools.
The Reaper is not held at bay
The Reaper never comes to play
Today he left with Mary Kay
Mary Kay has passed away
She did not hesitate to leave
The choice, she made,
Then why the pain!
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Web Author:Colette, Yvonne and Angela, © 2009
To reach me by E-mail:Colette ---mamacc.grame2@gmail.com
Web Site: Marshall and Kay Family
Page Title:Mary Inhgam Kay History
Created Aug. 12, 2011
Revised: Oct 30, 2011
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