Marie (Mayme) Ruth - 1879-1958

Mayme was the oldest of the Ruth girls.  Judging from her clothes and pompadour hairdo, these photos appear to have been taken about 1910.  She was working in Milwaukee’s 16th ward for Charles and Barbara Mueller as a servant then.  It isn’t known if these photos were taken in Milwaukee or when she went back to Clintonville for a visit.  The upper photo shows her with a huge basket full of gorgeous flowers.  As well as her lovely dress she also wore spatterdashes, commonly called spats, covering her shoes.  In the lower left photo she wears a lovely hand-embroidered dress with a hat over her pompadour hairstyle.  Smaller hats were just starting to gain popularity in 1910 and they were an integrated and complementary part of the hairstyle.  In the lower right photo, she sits on a lovely wicker chair, very popular at that time.  Her lovely pompadour hairdo can be seen very well in this photo.  If this 1910 date is correct, Mayme would have been about 31 years at this time.  She was a very pretty lady.

Aunt Mayme Ruth in Her Middle Years

Aunt Mayme’s hair is in a finger wave here, so popular in he late 1920s and early 1930s.  She would have been 50 years old in 1929 and she looks to be about that age on this photo.  Her lovely, large eyes ran in the Ruth family.  She looks a bit sad here but she still has a sweet smile on her face.  Perhaps she was already having a problem with the infections that plagued her body for years after.  She had weeping sores that she kept wrapped up so she wouldn’t spread the infection to others.  She didn’t believe in going to doctors.  Without modern antibiotics it’s hard to know if the doctors could have helped her or not anyway. Health care was very different then from what it is today.