Hattie Belle Ringen: Poet, Artist and A Little Bit Naughty

Harriet Belle Ringen, known as Hattie, was born in 1873 in St.Louis, Missouri.  Hattie was the child of German immigrant John Ringen and his wife, also of German descent, Louisa Heinzelman. 

Hattie's father fought in the civil war, and made his wealth as a manufacturer and retailer of stoves.  John Ringen worked hard for his family, hard enough to send his precocious 17 year-old daughter to finishing school for girls from upper class families in St.Charles, Missouri.  From 1889 to 1891, Hattie attended The Lindenwood School for Girls, the second oldest higher-education institution west of the Mississippi.

Class of 1891

Sometimes you come across something that brings a person from your past alive to you, and helps you understand who they really were.  This is the case with Hattie.  She left a journal from her time at Lindenwood.  I received the journal with a bag of other family memorabilia.  It was days before I could finally open the journal up to have a look.  What was inside was extraordinary. Indeed, you could say that it was this journal that encouraged me to share my family history through a blog.  You see, Hattie didn’t just write a journal of memories, stories and meanderings, she wrote the entire journal in verse – in poetry!

Thanksgiving at Lindenwood 1889

The poems reveal a young woman with a wicked sense of humour, who took her studies none too seriously.  She was clever, witty and thoughtful.  I have come to appreciate my tenuous link to her over three generations of my family.

While Hattie was enjoying her education in 1890, Walter C. Allison was learning the merchant trade in New Brunswick at the foot of his father Joseph.  As fate would have it, Walter’s health began to fail in 1897, and his physicians sent him to Colorado.  It was felt that the high altitude would help clear his lungs.  Records don't explain what Hattie was doing in Colorado, but sources are all in agreement that it was there that she met Walter.  You can imagine that a young and talented merchant (by all accounts) and the child of a successful manufacturer and marketer of stoves would find plenty in common. 

They were married in 1900 and settled in Denver.  While there, Hattie partook in any social events that treasured the arts.  On Christmas Day Hattie would deliver “good cheer and practical gifts” to the poor.

Hattie and Walter’s first child was Helen Ringen Allison (later married to James V. Russel).  Walter worked in real estate in Colorado and apparently felt that his ventures there could translate well to the life he left behind in Saint John, New Brunswick.  He moved his young family back and settled in.   

Hattie reportedly struggled with poor health after moving to Saint John.  Her stoic nature, however, ensured that she maintained her sunny disposition and appreciation for the arts in her new life in Canada.  In 1910, Joseph Ringen Allison was born.  This certainly should have been a happy occasion. Tragically, ten days after Joseph was born, Hattie suddenly and unexpectedly died.  The newspaper reports that Hattie seemed to have been recovering from an illness following the birth, and “there was no thought of danger”, but she suddenly began to “sink rapidly” at 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon, and “within minutes” was dead.  

Sometimes you read a newspaper report of a death and you hear facts, times, dates and names.  This article emphasized what I had gleaned from other records of Hattie's past.  The doctor attending her said that “in all his practice he had never found more of sunshine in a sick room.”  She was remembered as a “devoted wife and mother, and of a bright and sunny disposition.”

Neither Joseph nor Helen really knew their exuberant, talented mother.  She died at 37, mother of two young children, wife of a well-to-do merchant, and daughter of a self-made German-American.   She was a poet, patron of the arts, philanthropist, and inspiration for future generations.

Here is a poem from the journal of Hattie B. Ringen, Lindenwood School for Girls, St.Charles, Missouri, 1890.  This particular entry highlights Hattie’s humour and rebellious nature.  I had to look up the book to which she refers.  I identify it at the end, so you can guffaw as I did when I discovered what it was about.  Enjoy!

A Tale of Woe

Some elevating literature

Miss Jess of the city did send

To the O.C. crowd of Lindenwood

Thinking their ways to mend.

The book was received and read by each one

From Clara down to Kate

Then came the dreadful after-thought

What would be their fate

If the faculty should discover

They’d devoured the contents of that cover

The envious Maude as usual

Planning to do some harm

Told Miss Sheldon of the fact

Then came the Alarm –

That Miss Sheldon knew the book was in school

And intended to know who had it

So we concluded the best thing to do

Was to go back of the barn and burn it

As yet I have not told the name

Of this wonderful book of worldwide fame

It was Kreutzer Sonata* and all the rage

And pray, why should we not read a page

Well Wednesday our Jess with the book in her blouse

Carefully stepping stalked out of the house

The rest of us followed with matches and tears

For the loss of the object that caused us such fears

In a solemn procession, we filed one by one

To the graveyard where the deed was done

This was pasted in the journal next to the poem.
The burned page to which she refers perhaps?

First we built a funeral pile

And laid the book upon it

There without a shadow of smile

We set the fire to it

Alas! Alas! Deal old Kreutzer

Farewell Farewell Ah Me –

For all ‘twas saved of you glorious book

Was a burnt page to remember thee

Thus ends the sad sad story

Of a book in a boarding school

And my advice to you dear friend

Is remember the “Golden Rule”

*  The Kreutzer Sonata, by the way, is a Tolstoy novella published in 1889.  It is reportedly an argument for the ideal of sexual abstinence and against “carnal love”, and the protagonist in the book kills his wife in the end in a jealous rage.  It’s more complicated than that, of course, but the book seems to have brought out the latent feminist  in our heroine Hattie and her friends.  The Golden Rule reference ("do unto others") in relation to this book is hilarious: it is pretty clear what she is wishing on Tolstoy…  

Sources:
Lindenwood archives (photos)
Hattie B. Ringen journal 1890
newspaper clippings (from family scrapbook)
Census (various)
Kreutzer Sonata article from Wikipedia