Book 1: Sarah Etta
Chapter 4: Love Found and Love Lost
It is difficult to tell this part of my story. After what happened to my Aunt Clarinda and witnessing my own parents’ divorce, I wasn’t sure that I would ever want to marry, never mind having children. The world just didn’t seem like a great place to try to bring up children, and I still felt that women had little power, especially married women. Although things had greatly improved since my aunt’s experience, it had been only twenty years since she had endured a marriage that was on the rocks and she was totally unable to extricate herself from that marriage and keep her children.
But affairs of the heart are not always easily controlled and, despite my determination to remain unmarried and totally in control of my life and finances, I met someone. He came to my place on Grand Avenue, as this was before I had purchased the place on Third Street. There seemed to be an instant attraction and we hit it off immediately. He came to see me week after week after week and we spent hours talking about his life, his work, and — yes — his family. He had left behind in Cuba a wife and one small child, as his wife did not want to leave. He insisted that he didn’t mind what I did for a living and, in fact, he admired me for being different and not just following traditional roles.
He had come to America to escape the war against Spain and continue making a living and send money home to his wife and child. Cuba was trying to get its independence from Spain and some Cubans left the country rather than live in a difficult situation. Personally, I didn’t care much for a cigar, although I smoked one occasionally — which is something women didn’t generally do. It is my understanding that the 1870s were like a “golden age” for cigar smoking, and this was primarily because of the war in Cuba.
Cuban men came to the United States and established cigar manufacturing places. My lover was one of those men, and he built a cigar-making company near my resort on Grand Avenue. Cigar factories seemed to be everywhere and they could be simply a person in a room rolling cigars or a factory of men and women making them. Kansas City seemed like a great place to establish a factory, just as I had seen it as a great place for me to make my own fortune. With businessmen and cowboys coming and going daily, it was easy to sell a lot of things, including sex and cigars. Obtaining the tobacco for the cigars was a bit difficult, as it had to be shipped to Kansas City, but he felt that the market was so good for selling them that it offset the cost of getting the tobacco there. Cuban tobacco was considered the best, and Cuban men who came to the US to sell Cuban cigars would advertise them as Havana cigars.
The war disrupted cigar production on the island of Cuba, resulting in more and more Cuban cigar makers moving to the American market. My lover and friend did not join the large Cuban communities in New York and Florida, but he was well known in Kansas City because there weren’t as many Cubans in the city. During the July 4th parade in 1878, many people marched, showing off all of the city’s successes, including those who owned and operated cigar factories!
One factory, operated by H. Tobner and Brothers, was one of the oldest in the city. They had establishments in three places along Grand Avenue — one of them very close to my first resort — and they made cigars as well as chewing and smoking tobacco. I was told by my lover that they employed over 45 people and they could make 80,000 cigars in a week.
I learned many things from this man and he became an important part of my day. Before long, he was coming to visit almost daily, usually in the late afternoon or early evening. The biggest problem I had after several months of his friendship was figuring out how to not fall in love with him. But I did anyway. I told myself that this was all a bad idea, that he might not stay, that he might return to Cuba, and that he was married and had a child. Still, the love grew stronger and our desire to be together became obvious to all who knew us.
In 1873, just two years before I arrived in Kansas City, Congress passed a law known as the Comstock Act. It defined contraceptives as obscene and illicit, making it a federal offense to disseminate birth control through the mail or across state lines. This was just, in my estimation, another way for men to control women, but the effect of the law was immediate. Medical advice books on anatomy, contraception, pregnancy, and childbirth were taken out of libraries. Druggists warned customers that small packages would be examined at post offices. Condoms and diaphragms became harder to find and ads for abortionists disappeared from newspapers.
After what had happened to my Aunt Clarinda, I wasn’t going to just sit back and let men, once again, tell me what I could do with my body. As a working girl, never mind after I became the boss, I knew about various techniques, and I taught these ideas to my girls.
Some of the things we could do included condoms or douching or both. I usually made condoms from linen for myself and my girls, and we often added an ointment, hopefully to prevent the clap or the pox. Believe it or not, there were laws against the use of them, and some clients didn’t like them, but my girls and I were willing to use them when we could. Douching had been used as a means of birth control for about 30 years before I even came to Kansas City. Sometimes solutions such as vinegar and alum were used with syringes. This was very popular with my girls because we could control it.
There were birth control devices, of course, despite the laws, including vaginal suppositories, syringes sold with acidic solutions for douching, and antiseptic spermicides. These were methods we could use without the knowledge of the men. Medical guides often recommended different types of teas that were typically used not as preventatives but as an early way to abort a baby. I had heard some terrible tales about this technique, including death if the herbs were misused, so I tended to discourage my girls from using them.
Perhaps one of the more common techniques was a simple withdrawal before the final moment. Not a lot of my customers liked that, so it was hard to control. The most popular method — for my mother, for me, and for my girls — was the rhythm method. We knew when we had had our periods and we knew when we would be the most fertile. The advantage of having numerous women in a resort is that some of them, on any given day, might feel that this was not a good day for them to take a chance on getting pregnant. I always told my girls that they could take days off to protect themselves from pregnancy.
At some point in my relationship with my lover, I got a bit too casual, and sometime in late 1878 I discovered that I was pregnant. At first, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but then I finally got my courage up to tell my lover what had happened. Much to my dismay and disappointment, he told me that he would not and could not marry me, that he was returning to his wife and child in Cuba, and that I would have to fend for myself. I did not expect him to desert me; I was devastated.
I wrote to my mother immediately and I will say that my mother was wholly supportive and willing to help. She had some choice comments to make about my lover, who was deserting me, but she would never have suggested that I give up the baby or abort the pregnancy. So we began to plot and consider just what I was going to do. I remained in Kansas City and continued to work and to run my resort, trying to keep my pregnancy concealed from as many people as I possibly could. That was pretty easy; I spent most of my time in my establishment and didn’t see many people.
When I could no longer hide my pregnancy at about 7½ months, I found myself ready to move north and stay with my mother in Faribault. It was actually a fun time. My sister, Julia, was still living at home, and her husband, William T. Larraman, was living there with her. Now at age 19, she and I had a lot in common to talk about. She had lost her baby a few years before and she wanted to see me carry mine to term. Also still at home were my brother Leonard (age 25), my sister Effie (age 13), and one of my father’s cousins, Mattie (age 23). As my due date got closer, Mother and I travelled down to Waseca to be with my brother, Samuel, and his wife, Martha. I gave birth to my little girl in August of 1879. I named her Grace, which originates from the Latin gratia, which means “favour,” “blessing,” or “thanks.” In my view, it has always been one of the more popular virtue names; it represents divine love, mercy, and elegance. I gave her the middle name of Cuba so she would have a hint as to who her father was.
Grace was my love child, the daughter I had always wanted, and someone I could give all my love to. It nearly killed me when I had to leave her behind with my brother and sister-in-law instead of taking her back to Kansas City with me. She never knew who her father was — and he never saw her, spoke to her, or supported her.