This is what I know about my maternal grandmother: nearly
nothing.
Elizabeth died young – 2 months past her 26th
birthday –likely from deep vein thrombosis, as she she had been in the hospital
lying in bed for 8 days after delivering a stillborn baby girl in Tracy,
California, in August 1940.
My mother was only 4 at the time, and her only real memory
of her mother was the day she came home from the hospital. Her memories, as she’s told them to me, are
like snapshots: My grandmother was helping my mother wash up for bed when she
slumped over; the next thing my mother remembers is her own grandmother, Hazel,
yelling to her, “Go get your father!”
And, finally, she remembers her father bringing her into the bedroom,
where Elizabeth’s body was laid out on the bed, and was told to kiss her mother
good-bye. She didn’t want to – her
mother was so still, with her skin growing cool. It was scary.
And in the years afterward, no one talked about it. No one.
Not her dad. Not her grandmother
Hazel, who buried her only daughter. Not
her granddad Charlie. Not her uncle
Bill, or uncle Sonny, who survived their sister. That’s life, we can’t change the past, let’s
move on. You didn’t know her, how can
you mourn?
The mystery of my grandmother’s existence – what was she
like? Who were her people? -- was what drove me to genealogy.
Elizabeth May Holst was the middle child and only daughter of
Charles and Hazel (Englehart) Holst, born on 25 June 1914, in Healdsburg,
Sonoma, California. Her brother Charles
Junior (aka “Sonny”) was 5 years older, and her brother William (“Bill”) was 9
years younger. There was a fourth
child – a girl – stillborn in 1928.
Elizabeth’s parents referred to her as “Honey”; in her later
years, her brother-in-laws would call her “Betty”. (“Betty” is how I think of her, too, since I
knew my grandfather’s brothers, and never knew her as a grandmother.)
The girl circled in yellow is my grandmother, in the 6th grade.
Betty attended Healdsburg High, graduating in 1932. I know she took Home Economics, as my mom has
a bound set of handwritten notes and recipes Betty wrote down from class.
She may have taken music classes; in the above photo, taken in November 1930, she is playing the mandolin (third from right).
This is Betty's mandolin, currently in my mom's possession, on a rocking chair which belonged to Betty, and resting on a quilt Betty made.
She may have acted in school plays; she did so in grammar school.
Here is Elizabeth at 17, her senior picture:
And this is her high school graduation day. She is at the ranch off Dry Creek Road, near Healdsburg.
It was in high school that Betty met James Diamantini, a
first-generation American, whose parents were Italian Catholic immigrants from
the Marche province of Italy.
They got married on 22 November 1934 in Healdsburg. Elizabeth converted to Roman Catholicism prior to their marriage, and took the confirmation name of Catherine. The strong Protestant heritage of my grandmother was something new I learned in my research and may explain why my great-grandmother did not attend her daughter's wedding.
My grandparents on their wedding day. I believe this is in front of the family's ranch house.
My grandparents moved down to Tracy, California, where they ran a gas station.
It was in Tracy where my mother was born about 16 months after my grandparents were married.
This is my mom with her mother.
My grandmother got pregnant a second time in 1940; unfortunately, the baby girl was stillborn in August 1940 in Tracy. Sadly, my grandmother passed away a week after the stillbirth, the day she came home from the hospital. She was only 26 years old; my mother was just 4.
Elizabeth is buried in Oak Mound Cemetery, in Healdsburg.
