Margaret Eliza Hodge

Margaret Eliza Hodge, eldest of the two children of Nathaniel Hodge and Grace Weingarth, was born 17 July 1898 in Pasadena, Los Angeles County, CA and went on to reside lifelong within that city. During her entire childhood, the family home was at 1266 N. Raymond Avenue, near where her grandfather Jacob Sylvester Hodge had settled upon coming to Pasadena in 1887, and amid homes of other “original Pasadena families” who had been part of the two big initial waves of settlers from Shelbyville, IN in the 1870s and from Oskaloosa, IA in the 1880s. The Weingarths had been part of the Indiana influx, the Hodges part of the Iowa influx.

Margaret experienced what could be described as an uneventful life, in great part because she was a semi-invalid due to some sort of chronic health condition. It is probable this was a weak heart, possibly caused by a case of rheumatic fever during childhood or some other contagious disease that would have been halted in its tracks by the medicines available to later generations. Family notes fail to shed enough light on the matter of that health condition to clarify it for posterity. One reference indicates she she was a victim of dropsy. This is a vague term used to describe edema, i.e. the failure of the kidneys to remove fluid from the body as fast as it should. Margaret’s death certificate does indeed show that edema must have been a symptom that plagued her during her final days, but the cause -- determined by autopsy -- was a cyst on one of her ovaries that had grown so large it had put pressure on her liver and kidneys until the latter could no longer function, leading in turn to heart failure. The attending physician, Mae Lorimer Dowlin (who as it happens was a third cousin of Nathaniel Hodge, though this may not have been something known to either Mae or her patient) estimated the cyst had been present for about ten years, meaning it developed in Margaret’s mid-twenties. If that chronology is correct, then the cyst would not account for Margaret’s long-term frailty. She was already debilitated enough by her teens that she graduated from Pasadena High School as part of the Class of 1918 rather than with her same-age peers, the Class of 1916. She then (apparently) made no attempt as an adult to establish a home for herself away from her mother. She never married. She had no children.

Because Margaret maintained such an insular existence, the “big events” of her lifetime consisted of changes in her immediate circumstances brought on by outside factors. The three most signficant of those developments were 1) the birth of her younger sister, Sarah Jeanette Hodge, in 1909, when Margaret was eleven and a half years old, 2) the death of her father in 1923, when she was not quite twenty-five, and then 3) the move in the mid-1920s to the only other home she ever knew. The latter was not a major relocation in terms of distance, only a matter of shifting less than a mile southward to 55 N. Pasadena Avenue, but may have taken getting-used-to for someone who always been a homebody.

(At right, Margaret at age seven. Above left is her photo from the 1918 yearbook of Pasadena High School, which must have been taken as she was not quite twenty years old.) Given her condition, Margaret remained dependent on her immediate family for support. Her only known job outside the home was in her early twenties when she helped out at the local public library -- surely a part-time position and perhaps one that did not even pay wages. A financial challenge rose up when her father fell ill in 1922 and then succumbed the following February, depriving the household of its breadwinner. This may account for the move to 55 N. Pasadena Avenue, which may have been an instance of downsizing to save expenses. Margaret was however strong enough to contribute in one way -- through music. The talent was a heritage of the Martin side of the family, but the direct influence was her own mother, who in her day had made a splash on the music scene in pioneer Pasadena. Margaret became adept at the violin. She conducted violin lessons from the family residence. Gradually, in the latter part of the 1920s, things became more secure as her little sister came of age and took it upon herself to be the wage-earner of the family by becoming a stenographer and a bookkeeper. Sarah altruistically set aside any plans for her own independence, and in fact did not gain that independence until the eventual deaths of her sister and mother.

Given that traditional medical practitioners had no cure for whatever blighted her existence through the 1910s and 1920s, it is understandable that Margaret sought other voices who might provide some hope. She chose to resort to prayer, and became a Christian Scientist. Whether this brought her comfort is impossible to say from the perspective of the 21st Century. Perhaps it did. As a medical strategy, it was ineffective. Margaret perished at thirty-five years of age on 6 September 1933. The event occurred at Altadena Hospital, which leads to the question, did Margaret at the end waver from her beliefs? The day of her admission was the fifth. It could be she had already slipped into unconsciousness and it was her mother who decided to seek out the help of standard doctors and nurses. A far more troubling question is, did Margaret inadvertently cause her own early demise? The cyst was not cancerous. Presumably it could have been operated on. Surgery was not as safe in the 1930s as it became later in the era of antibiotics, but anesthesia and sterile operating-room protocols were mature sciences by then, and Margaret would have had a decent chance of recovery if the operation had occurred before the cyst grew massive. Did she know about the cyst? Had she been told it was inoperable, and that was what caused her to resort only to prayer? Or did she adopt Christian Science at an early point in her life, and then refuse to see a doctor the whole time the cyst was growing inside her, until it was too late to deal with the threat? Her chronic condition may have been something that would not haved killed her until she was middle-aged or even elderly. Perhaps as time goes on a piece of correspondence or a published article of some sort will turn up that gives the answers to these questions.

Margaret’s remains were laid to rest at Mountain View Cemetery, Altadena, Los Angeles County, CA. Her grave is beside those of many of her close kin.

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