My cousins and I loved visiting our grandparents flat at 39th street and Flad in St. Louis. Coming up the stairs was a huge hall area with an old skylight showing its age: the glass was more "frosted" than clear and often had leaves resting on it. We immediately got to the top of the steps and looked around to see if our other cousins were there. If not, then we sat quietly reading a book or playing with Uncle Ron's old toys.
But, if the cousins were already there, the race began! Our favorite game began---CHASE! The boys (Bob and Steve) usually led the chase but sometimes I did which occasionally resulting in injury for my taller cousins: I was able to run under tables they were too tall for. It was a great game running through the butler's pantry into the kitchen, into the dining room sometimes waiting under the lace table cloth, waiting for my victims. But sometimes they saw me and the race was on again out to the huge hall, through the pantry, kitchen and dining room. We were a happy, but noisy trio of cousins.
Our parents tried to slow us down fearful that someone (Steve) would get hurt. But, nothing slowed us down until we heard the Westminster chimes of the church across the street: St. Margaret's of Scotland. Our grandmother Vivian Maupin Long loved to hold us to listen to the chimes. She had us try to repeat them and on the hour, count the chimes to know what time it was. To live across the street with chimes going off every 15 minutes, she must have loved them.
To this day those chimes are soothing to me: I sit back and can feel myself relax as the chimes bathe over me. Once after the chimes, I looked outside and saw all of these people going to church and asked my grandmother why we didn't go there to church. She explained that we weren't Catholic but Methodist. Our church was Lafayette Park Methodist Church which we needed to take a bus or a street car to get to. I wanted to just step inside to see what the church was like on the inside, but she told me I couldn't because I wasn't Catholic.
Years later, after I'd retired, Dave and I drove through that old neighborhood . My grandparents flat was still there with the balcony my grandmother was afraid would collapse. Then, I looked across to St. Margaret's and was happy to see it is still a bustling active congregation.
Imagine my surprise to find that St. Margaret of Scotland was my 28th grandmother (she's the 30th for my grandchildren). With some research I found that she was a Saxon princess who married King Malcom (the Great) of Scotland. As the Queen of Scotland, she was loved and revered by many for her pious ways and her generous nature.
I found a historical fiction book about her marriage to Malcom and her life as Queen of Scotland: Queen Hereafter by Susan Fraser King. In that book I discovered Lady MacBeth was her contemporary. I checked and can say we do NOT descend from Lady MacBeth. I am very proud to have St. Margaret of Scotland as one of my ancestors.
I keep thinking about my grandmother (her 26th granddaughter) living across the street from a church with her ancestor and she never knew it. Grandma was the kindest and most generous woman like her ancestor Margaret. Maybe those chimes were a voice from her distant past tolling in sisterhood.
