Mrs. Mahala Chaddock
By: Nina Bagley
Mrs. Mahala Blanch Pettay Chaddock was born near the Mississinewa branch of Wabash Grant County, Indiana, December 15, 1845. Her family and friends occupied the same territory among the Miami Indians, who came from the big Miami near Piqua, Ohio. Mahala’s family found the land had the most beautiful river in the Mississinewa. The dense forest of black walnut, hard maple, hickory, elm and sycamore trees and the wild plum trees yielded fruit in the seasons in addition to the wild grape, the black and white walnut, beech and mulberry that also yielded their stores. They had fish from the river, flocks of geese and ducks and all the various animals common to the area. Her ancestors were Scottish and were exceptionally proud of their incredible strength and endurance. Raised as a Quaker, her mother appreciated the land and recognized its beauty. She taught Mahala to appreciate nature, teaching her about the different plants and flowers. She was ten years old when her mother got sick and died.
Mahala wrote: “My mother’s people were Friends (called Quakers). She married “one of the world’s people,” and was disowned for doing so. My parents moved to a new state, where there were no “Friends meeting,” and there my mother united with people calling themselves “Disciples of Christ” I believe, I was a small child then, but the “New Lights called them,” and we went to that church until mother died.” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, 1888).
Neighbors and strangers helped care for Mahala and her siblings after their mother’s death. She found herself living among Christian people and their friends. They were strangers that fed her and clothed her. Mrs. Chaddock attended nine months of school a year, earning her boarding and clothing. She taught her first school at the age of fifteen. Mahala felt gratitude and the debt that she could never repay to the Christian people. She loved them! When she was old enough, she went to find her mother’s people who were living in Ipava, Illinois.
Mahala continued teaching until she married, at the age of twenty-two, to John Chaddock who was twelve years older. He was an industrious farmer of Fulton County, Illinois, who patriotically served in the Union Army with Gates Sharpshooters during the Civil War. They had a son and two daughters born into a loving union. During her marriage, she lived on the same farm in Ipava, a Quaker colony in Illinois.
In 1872 she hived a runaway swarm of black bees, which had clustered on a peach tree, and this was her start in bee culture. She was a contributor to the Prairie Farmer, and this is how she became friends with Mrs. Lucinda Harrison. Mrs. Harrison was writing articles in the Prairie Farmer on her beekeeping experiences. So Mrs. Chaddock wrote to Mrs. Harrison asking some questions about bees. Mrs. Harrison would send Mrs. Chaddock her Gleanings to read. Mrs. Harrison sold Italian queens to her in 1874 to help Italianize her apiary. Mrs. Chaddock ran about thirty hives. She sold honey and bees. Mrs. Harrison said, during a visit to Mahala’s pleasant home, “[I] found the whitest of combed honey graced her table. I never ate finer canned peaches than at her table, the peaches were sweetened with some honey.” Mrs. Chaddock and Mrs. Harrison remained good friends for over 14 years.
A writer for Bee Culture, Mrs. Chaddock was considered peculiar and was not always politically correct. When writing, she would speak her mind and not worry about how she would say things. Mrs. Chaddock wrote an article, The Other Side Of The Story, in Bee Culture, basically letting the readers know that “the bee business is hard work for women and many women could lift a 75-pound box with a 40-pound honey box on top and carry it away so that the returning bees don’t find it. They might as well go out with an ox team and break prairie sod and make money faster.” She said many good women who wanted to keep bees were like those who came by years ago wanting cheap bees because her bees died. Mrs. Chaddock said she would sell them as cheaply as she could. She paid two dollars a bee herself, but she wouldn’t charge for each bee. She would sell the women a good hive for $7.00. A women continued to tell Mrs. Chaddock how she turned two swarms into six and how successful she had been. Then Mrs. Chaddock asked, “And how many have you now?” The woman replied, “OH! I haven’t any: they all died this Winter, but I think I had real success in making six swarms out of two.” Mrs. Chaddock wrote: “I did not sell her any” (Gleanings, 1882).
She had upset some readers, and there were complaints about her. Mr. Root thought she had a peculiar way that enabled her to do what you and I and everybody else would fail at. Mrs. Harrison wrote telling how generous Mrs. Chaddock was, what a good friend she was and what a fair woman she was. Mr. Root thanked her for letting the readers know her as her friends did.
In 1876, she accompanied her sister-in-law to a sanatorium in Dansville, NY. She made her way to Philadelphia, where she made the acquaintance of Clara Barton at her home on the hillside. Clara Barton was a philanthropist and founder of the Red Cross. Mahala was thirty-one years old when she made the acquaintance with Clara Barton. Eleven years later, Clara Barton asked Mrs. Chaddock to assist in helping the flood victims down the Mississippi. Mrs. Chaddock joined her on the steamer, “The Mattie Bell” in 1882. Clara Barton called Mrs. Chaddock “Her little nature child.”
Mrs. Chaddock also wrote an article in the Ladies Department Gleanings 1882. She told readers that European women are more robust than American women! Her claim: American women had consumption, were weak and had heart failure. Mahala was the youngest among her friends and the first to pass away at forty-five in 1890. From what I gather, she was very opinionated and set in her ways and she was proud of her descendants. Hardworking women who didn’t have hired help in the beeyard would later write that her friends Mrs. Harrison had the Irish to help her, Mrs. Axtell had hired help and a girl to clean house and Mrs. Julian St. Thomas of New Orleans had women help her! Mrs. Chaddock felt the cards were not always in her favor. She felt some people are just born lucky!
As I was looking for more information on Mahala. I found she had a great-nephew living in Canada. I then contacted him, and he wrote:
“Mahala was one of my grandfather’s sister-in-law’s in Ipava, Illinois, in about the 1860s. As far as I can discern, she only married John C. Chaddock, with whom she had three children. She was a poet and avid beekeeper as well as a humanitarian.”
Jeffry Allen Stoker
Nina Bagley
Ohio Queen Bee
Columbus, Ohio
