Jane May (Hoagland) Bailey (1881 – 1986): Possunt quia posse videntur

Posted on August 11, 2018 Updated on July 29, 2018

The Press Democrat

Santa Rosa, California

December 20, 1981

Page 21

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20^th Century woman still one who can

By Celia Ersland

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Jane Bailey’s motto in high school was “Possunt quia posse videntur.” Loosely translated, it  means, “He who thinks he can.”

Recently, Mrs. Bailey, a resident of Martin’s Retirement Home, 3357 Hoen Ave., rounded out a century of her life. Two parties were given for the centenarian – one for her friends of the retirement home and another at the home of her daughter, Betty Schreiber of Oakmont.

The party at her daughter’s home was attended by Mrs. Bailey’s grandchildren and great grandchildren, and for this occasion, she wrote a history of her life and of her family. She was assisted by Mrs. Schreiber.

“My high school motto has proven true many times in my life for when you live in a mining camp there are many challenges. I once remember sewing up a deep gash in a miner’s hand with an ordinary needle and thread to stop the bleeding. The hard rock miner who was holding the victim’s hand for me fainted!”

Mrs. Bailey who is alert and uses only her walker when she moves about, adds, “Our graduating class was called ‘The Twentieth Century Class’ as we were the first class to graduate in Elgin (Illinois) in this century. One of the highlights of my life was playing Hermes, the lead in our class play, ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream.’” It played two nights at the Elgin Opera House and we were directed by an actor from Chicago.”

“I must not have been as great as I thought I was, for I tried out for an elocution scholarship to the University of Chicago and lost. I did win a scholarship to the University of Illinois in home economics. My father didn’t believe that girls needed a college education, but he finally let me go. So in the fall of 1902, he took me by train to Urbana, Ill. I joined Chi Omega Sorority and had a wonderful time.”

Mrs. Bailey, who has four grandchildren and eight great grandchildren, was born in Elgin on Nov. 14, 1881. Her father Samuel Hoagland had a livery stable with “matched teams and equipment for all occasions – wedding, funeral, holidays … he finally owned the Yellow Cab Taxi Co. there.”

Her mother, Maria Blow Hoagland was “only five feet tall and always full of fun.” Her grandmother, Lucy Flude Knott, came from Leicester, England at the age of 20. She and her husband, Mrs. Bailey’s grandfather, who sailed aboard a sailing vessel to America in 1848, had 10 children and lived in Dundee, Ill. Grandmother Blow advised Mrs. Bailey when she was married “not to have such a large family as she always had one baby on her lap and one under her apron.”

Grandmother Hoagland was born Celia Sears and was related to the Sear, Roebuck & Founders. Grandmother Blow had Roebuck relatives.

One of Mrs. Bailey’s “happiest childhood memories is of riding over the snow to Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations in Dundee with the sleigh bells ringing.”

Another recollection involved her freshman year at the University of Illinois in 1902. “At my first dance I met a tall handsome Sig Alph who asked me for a dance and put his name on my dance card – and then stood me up.”

“He must have had a good alibi, as we later became engaged and were married June 5, 1906, just before Tom Bailey graduated with a bachelor of science degree in chemistry. I didn’t graduate as after two years in school we had become engaged and my father didn’t see any reason for me to continue my education.

The Bailey’s had been bitten by the mining bug and we took a job as assayer with a mining company in Silverton, Colo.

Mrs. Bailey remembers the trip to the west in 9105. Indians stood around “wrapped in blankets at the train station and she was frightened a bit by the narrow gauge railroad they rode in the Colorado mountains.

“Silverton was a rough mining town in 1905…We took up residence in a rooming house.” Later they found a furnished home and eventually had their first daughter, Mary Elizabeth. But she lived only a few days. Two years later the couple moved to Wallstreet, another Colorado mining town.

Their children, Thomas, Dorothy and Betty, were born there.

“Wallstreet was about nine miles from Boulder,” Mrs. Bailey recalls, “but it took about a half a day to make the trip by horse and buggy – lots of resting the horse, as it was a steep road. Then we moved to Boulder where Tom opened a custom assay office and Bob was born.”

During World War I and II, the Baileys were involved in volunteer work. After World War I, he sold the assay office and took up metallurgy full time. During World War II, Tom Bailey went to work for the Bureau of Mines in Washington, D. C.

Later they moved to Oxford, N. C., for a few years and eventually back to Colorado. Tom Bailey died in 1965, after almost 60 years of marriage. Mrs. Bailey lived in Colorado until three years ago, when she came to Santa Rosa to be near her one remaining child, Betty Schreiber, and Mrs. Schreiber’s husband and children.

She attributes her century of life to her forebearers.

“They say if you want to live to a ripe old age, you should choose your ancestors for longevity. My grandfather Blow lived within 10 days of his 99^th birthday, and four of his children lived into their late 90s – my mother lived the longest: 99 and four months.”

She adds, “Grandfather Blow smoked a pipe most of his life – a fact which some would say should have shortened his life. When he was 95, Prince Albert Smoking Tobacco used his picture in their ad.”

Mrs. Bailey, however, has never smoked and has never fancied alcoholic beverages.

If you ask her what vices she does have, she laughs and says with a twinkle in her eye. “Oh. I’ve had many!”

 

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Relationship between Jennie “Jane” May Hoagland & Robin Melissa BOSWORTH:

Jennie “Jane” May Hoagland (1881 – 1986)
2nd great-aunt

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Maria Elizabeth BLOW (1854 – 1953)
Mother of Jennie “Jane” May Hoagland
Frederick Judson “Fred” HOAGLAND (1880 – 1961)
Son of Maria Elizabeth BLOW
Helen Marie HOAGLAND (1907 – 1965)
Daughter of Frederick Judson “Fred” HOAGLAND
Frank Hunt BOSWORTH (1933 – )
Son of Helen Marie HOAGLAND
Tenderly Rose-Robin Melissa BOSWORTH
The daughter of Capt. Frank Hunt BOSWORTH