American author traces her ancestors love story through letters

A North Carolina-based author relies on a trunk full of letters from 1920s India and Google Earth to reconstruct a love story of her ancestors for an upcoming book

I smiled at the name Winslow, scrawled in fancy letters on an old trunk. I'd written that myself, back in the 1970s, when I thought that the suitcase was cool. I wanted to claim it to store my stuff. But I knew it was stuffed to the gills with musty documents given to mom when her parents [Gladys Gose Pearce and J Kenneth Pearce] passed away. However, I never looked at the papers inside it," writes Laurie Winslow Sargent in a blog post titled, Adventures in the Attic.

It was only last year when Sargent scooped out the heap of correspondence—postmarked between the 1920s and 1930s from India—that she realised it was the discovery of a lifetime.

Nearly a century has passed since Gladys, a young American woman living in India, wrote these to her family in Walla Walla, Washington. And now Sargent, her granddaughter, is writing a book inspired by them, titled Tigers, White Gloves, and Cradles. "After my mother Jillian passed away in 2017, all her stuff ended up in the attic of our North Carolina home. Last year, I braved it out and opened some trunks. This was when I found a particular suitcase with a belt wrapped around it. One after the other, I unearthed thousands of artefacts, ranging from documents, photographs and maps of India, diaries and letters. They all belonged to my grandmother, Gladys," says 63-year-old Sargent, an author, adding that her grandparents lived in Southern India and the Andaman Islands for seven years.

The suitcase Laurie Winslow Sargent found with Gladys' letters inside

Gladys and Kenneth met in high school in Walla Walla. Kenneth, who was a year younger to Gladys, bumped into her again in college. After they graduated, he often wrote to her, hinting at his attraction for her. In 1923, the British government hired Kenneth to introduce mechanised logging techniques at elephant lumber camps and supervise building of sawmills in South India. "He continued to write to Gladys from India. You can see the progression of their romance through the letters. He then made a brief trip to the States to meet her. He had grown from a young boy to a man with a moustache. She fell in love," Sargent narrates. Three years later in 1926, Gladys sailed to India. "Soon after she deboarded, they married in a church in Madras [now Chennai]. And thus began their honeymoon jungle tour of Kerala, by train, car and foot."

They started at Olavacot [Olavakkot] and Tipu Sultan Fort in Palghat [Palakkad]. From Sappal, they crossed streams with their car on ferries made from bamboo platforms on dugout canoes. They went on to the Nilambur Teak Forest, in Nedangayam [Nedumkayam], where Kenneth worked in the elephant lumber camp. "Gladys was taught to beware of scorpions and centipedes hiding in shoes, and to avoid cobras. She took an elephant ride through the jungle and they enjoyed playing with a baby elephant, who would later outgrow her welcome, busting down doors looking for treats," shares Sargent.

Next they visited the Forest Rest House at Beypore, on the Malabar Coast of the Arabian Sea, where Kenneth supervised construction of the first sawmill built in South India. "The honeymoon lasted for about one month from what I understand from the photographs. All these photos and letters carried detailed information about the trip. Gladys, who was a physical education (PE) teacher in the States, knew she wanted to publish these some day. So she made an honest effort in writing everything she saw in India."

Kenneth and Gladys's daughter Pamela was born in Ooty

Kenneth and Gladys finished their honeymoon with a hike through Silent Valley, where few women had ever been. In one funny story, Gladys wrote: "I had been looking forward to some needed exercise on this trip. But word had gone ahead that Ken, the Chief Engineer Sahib, was bringing his Memsahib. So when we arrived at the end of the road to meet the coolies, we found that the Indian ranger had arranged to have a chair provided to carry me. Two long bamboo poles had been lashed to an office chair and four husky coolies stood by."

Sargent says, "In her letters, Gladys mentioned how she did not need servants to take her around. This kind of hierarchy and casteism, which was prevalent in British India, was new to an educated American like her. But her husband convinced her to sit on the chair eventually."

From 1926-1928, the couple lived in Madras, with many invitations to Government House from Lord Goschen, Viscount and Governor of the Madras Presidency. At an elegant banquet for Lord Linlithgow (1887-1952), who would later become Viceroy of India, Gladys's dinner partner was the beloved Sir Ganga Ram, (1851-1927), an Indian civil engineer and architect. In one of the letters, Gladys wrote of him: "He's done much for India by building dams and reclaiming millions of acres of wasteland to gift them unselfishly to the people of India. He's been knighted for his outstanding service to India."

Gladys was able to use her experience as a teacher for a year, when the government of India hired her to tour and assist physical education programmes in Indian schools in the region. Then the couple moved to Ooty [Oodagamandalam] and lived in a house they affectionately called Braemar. "They were so cute, they even wrote letters to each other while living in the same house," Sargent laughs.

Gladys Pearce was a physical education teacher, who moved to India in 1926

In 1929, their daughter Pamela was born. In 1930, Kenneth was hired to work in the penal colony of the Andaman Islands. "The couple lived at Interview Island's remote logging camp [where Gladys was the only woman], Port Bonnington, Port Blair [home of the infamous Cellular Jail], and at Ross Island [now with vines twisting among crumbling buildings, that island is reminiscent of scenes from The Jungle Book, with few hints of its former opulent life]. They lived in the Andamans until 1933."

Gladys and Kenneth then moved back to America. Although it was in the middle of the Great Depression, the University of Washington hired Kenneth and he became a beloved professor there for decades. In 1935, they had their twins, John and Jillian [Sargent's mother]. "When I was in my thirties, I was working on some magazine articles. Gladys told me she wanted to get her journey in India published in a book. But the content she provided did not seem satisfactory. I wish I had found these letters back then, maybe her dream would have come true," Sargent shares, adding that after being married for 64 years, Kenneth died in 1991 and Gladys in 1994. They had three children, eight grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, and now four great-great grandchildren. A total of 27 descendants so far.

Laurie Winslow Sargent

For the past one year, Sargent has been trying to find the missing pieces. "I use historical documents online, Google Earth and YouTube to procure information so that I can add the exact dates to the book," she says, hoping to release the book next year. But her big dream is to trace her grandparents' home in Ooty. "I have heard that there are many old structures still standing in Southern India. Who knows, I might get lucky to see where this beautiful, funny and smart woman had lived once upon a time."

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