Chapter 17: Home at Last
Home is Where the Heart Is.
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Release Date: October 15, 2024
As part of the 1931 agreement, Mary Martha paid Aimee $6,000 to purchase a home, but of course, there were stipulations: Aimee could select the home, but it needed to be “situated in or near the City of Washington DC”, and she was required to occupy it. The agreement also forbid Aimee from selling or otherwise disposing of the property “during the joint lives of the parties of the first and second parties.” 1
On March14, 1932, three months after signing the agreement, Aimee purchased Lot 16 of a new Arlington, VA subdivision known as Boulevard Manor from L.R. and Mabel Eakin for $10,000. She paid cash. The covenants of the subdivision included that no dwelling costing less than $5,000 could be erected on the property, and the property could not be “sold or leased to a negro or person of negro descent”. 2
The corner lot on Montague Street was one of the biggest in the subdivision, and within a year, Aimee had constructed a modest three bed, three bath Spanish-style dwelling which she’d call home for the next three decades. 3
Given the control Mary Martha had imposed on Aimee's purchase of the property, however, it’s possible that creating a truly happy home there was a challenge.
The house was a constant reminder of the reality of Aimee’s relationship with Mary Martha—one based on control and transactions, not love or support. As a result, what should have been her sanctuary may have felt like an extension of the emotional prison in which Aimee had spent her whole life—a space dominated and controlled from afar by Mary Martha.
Four months after purchasing Lot 16, Aimee filed a Deed of Trust transferring title of the property to Robert G. Whittor and Arthur B. Warfield, trustees representing Homer F. Carey. Homer had been a member of Aimee’s legal team during both the lawsuit against John and the one against Mary Martha, and it appears Aimee still owed him $2,100. The property was used as collateral to secure the debt, suggesting Aimee’s financial situation was shaky at best, and a good reminder of the financial sacrifices she had made in an attempt to get Mary Martha to recognize their relationship. 4
On January 26, 1934, John Morecroft passed away in Fontana, CA. He was just 52. According to his obituary, John had contracted pneumonia while watching Columbia University play Stanford in the Rose Bowl, and had been hospitalized since January 9. 5
It’s not known what kind of relationship – if any – Aimee and John had following their contentious 1928 court case, however, the court had ordered him to pay her $200 a month in alimony, and those payments ended with his death.
As to the relationship Aimee had with John Jr, that, too, is unknown. John was a 19-year-old college student at the time of his father’s death, and was pursuing a degree in electrical engineering in California. Although it’s possible Aimee and her son reunited at some point, it seems unlikely – years later, there was no mention of John JR in Aimee’s obituary.
If Aimee was looking for peace when she signed the 1931 agreement with Mary Martha, she seems to have found it in the person of Frank Henry Mishou. Born in Caribou, ME on May 16, 1903, Frank was the only child of Harry and Cathy (Smith) Mishou. Frank’s mother passed away when he was a child, and his father, a conductor on the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad and later a sales manager for Swift & Company of Bangor, remarried when Frank was 11.
By all accounts, and in contrast to Aimee, Frank had a happy childhood.
After graduating from high school in Houlton, ME, Frank attended Columbia University, earning a BA in history and later an MA from George Washington University in Washington DC. In a strange coincidence, Frank was at Columbia at the time Aimee and John were involved in their very public divorce and lawsuit, and both he and Aimee lived in Arlington, VA, at the same time, as well. It’s not known how long the two were acquainted, or how they met, but sometime in 1934, it appears their relationship became serious.
The following spring, Frank joined the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, and was posted at Stevens Village, Alaska Territory, where he served as a teacher at the government sponsored native school. Located on the north bank of the Yukon River some 90 miles northwest of Fairbanks, Stevens Village was home at the time to an estimated 100 Kutchin Natives and a handful of whites.
On June 15, 1936, Aimee and Frank were married in Fairbanks. She was 44 and he was 33. Paperwork for their marriage license noted it was Frank's first marriage and Aimee's second and that her previous marriage had ended with the death of her husband in 1934. No mention of Aimee's 1927 divorce from John appeared in the paperwork; in fact, the section on the dissolution of marriage by divorce had been crossed off completely.
It's not clear if Aimee lived year-round with her husband in the frigid Alaskan wilderness immediately after their marriage or not, however, on March 2, 1937, an article in one of the regional papers seems to suggest she did not:
“Mrs. Frank H. Mishou is a visitor to Juneau from Washington DC, enroute to Stephens (sic) Village to join her husband, the government teacher there. Mrs. Mishou arrived in Juneau last week aboard the steamer Northwestern from the South, and expects to complete her journey to the Interior by air, flying with the PAA plane to Fairbanks tomorrow. From Fairbanks, she will charter another plane to Stephens (sic) Village.” 6
Whatever their initial living arrangements were, it seems clear Aimee came to embrace the Alaskan frontier and the simple lifestyle she shared with Frank.
After a lifetime of seeking a loving home, she had finally found one.
Aimee and Frank were active in various community events and functions, and spent much of their time learning about the local people, culture and wildlife. They also gathered an impressive collection of museum-quality indigenous artifacts, crafts and artwork, including Eskimo dolls and handmade parkas and mukluks, a walrus tusk cribbage board with scrimshaw, a rare Chilkat apron and a miniature dog sled.7
During Frank’s tenure (1939-1941) as the Government Teacher at Ekwok, a village in Alaska’s southwest interior, he also served as Superintendent of the region’s reindeer herd under the US Department of Interior — a common second job for government teachers at the time. In that role, it was his responsibility to work with the native herd managers to ensure they had the necessary training, equipment and supplies, and also to keep track of and report on herd size and health.
Official correspondences of the day between Frank and Alfred J. Opland, Reindeer Service Unit Manager for the Southwestern District, suggest something was always going on with the herd, with the herders or with both. 8
For example, in a report from April 1939, word was transmitted that one of the herds under Frank’s supervision, the Stoyajak herd, was “quite scattered or lost and killed”, and another herd, the Kokwok-Wood River herd, had been collected, “but no roundup [would] be made [until] they mark fawns in June.” To further hamper the seasonal movement of the herds, Frank reported that all the herders in one district “were out trapping beavers”.
The following December, Frank was approached by U.S. Government. Chief Herder, Andrew Krouse, concerning a threat to another of the herds under his supervision, the Kokwok Herd.
“The herders inform me that the wolves are so numerous and vicious, and so difficult to trap or shoot, that they have decreased the herd to an estimated fifty deer…To this end, the herd has been driven to within five miles of Ekwak…for the protection of the remaining deer.”
Soon after, a team of predator hunters was dispatched to handle the wolves, and the beleaguered herd was saved. At least for a while.
In 1941, Frank took a one-year leave of absence, and he and Aimee returned to Arlington, staying in the home she had had built in 1932. There are some indications the leave was prompted by Frank’s health, however, the dates also coincide with the publication of a book on Native education which Frank authored titled, "The Development of Federal Schools for Natives in Alaska 1885-1941”.
As a reflection on his ongoing passion for history, not to mention his deep curiosity, Frank also completed a number of unpublished manuscripts, including "The Tinneh Indians of Interior Alaska: A Survey of their Sociological Status and Education Needs", "Comments on 'Coming of Age in Samoa' by Margaret Mead", "Heroic Lives in the Frozen North", and "Rural Community Leadership”. 9
When the couple returned to Alaska in June of 1942, a newspaper article noted that both Frank and Aimee were employed as government teachers, and would be spending the next school year in Tetling, a native village of just 66 people located 230 miles southeast of Fairbanks. 10
It was there Aimee received the news that Mary Martha had passed away on June 2, 1943. It’s likely that Aimee’s first call was to her attorneys.
Copyright 2024 Lori Olson White
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Chapter End Notes
1 1931 Mishou Agreement
2 Deed Book 331, Arlington County Land Records, P. 526-528, Arlington, VA.
3 Anna Belle Lane and The Arlington Historical Magazine, Vol. 8, No 3, October 1987) Rev. Sept. 1998 (https://www.boulevardmanor.org/civic-association/history/)
4 Deed Book 1114, Arlington County Land Records, P. 34, Arlington, VA.
5 “Authority on Radio is Dead”, The San Bernadino County Sun, San Bernadino, CA, January 28, 1934. P. 12.
6 “Here from Washington to Join her Husband,” The Daily Alaska Empire, Juneau, AK, March 2, 1937, P 8.
7 Estate Auction, June 2, 1982
8 Frank Mishou Superintendent Reindeer Herd 1939-1944
9 The Frank and Aimee Mishou Collection, The University of Alaska Archives.
10 “Indian Service Teachers Pass Through Juneau,” The Daily Alaska Empire, Juneau, AK, June 5, 1942, P. 6.
I also thought it might be Acadian French. Maybe given by the clergyman at her baptism?
I didn't expect this turn of events. What an interesting twist to her life story. Alaska!