Stone Gardens: Early 20th century "scandal" doesn't keep teenager from being buried close to her people
- Dennis McCaslin
- Jun 16, 2025
- 2 min read
On September 5, 1926, just one day before her 18th birthday, Ruth Frances Osborne Simmons died in Clyde, Kansas, while giving birth to her only child. Her son, Earle Francis Simmons, lived only briefly before passing in her arms--or perhaps never took a breath at all.
Together, mother and child were later returned home to Alma where they lie side by side in the quiet grounds of Newberry Chapel Cemetery.
Ruth, born in Missouri in 1908, was the youngest daughter of Frank and Hallie Osborne. In July 1926, she married 19-year-old Clinton Webster Simmons--a union that lasted just six weeks.
That narrow window of time, coupled with the tragic outcome of the pregnancy, suggests an undercurrent that rural families of the 1920s often kept private: that Ruth was already expecting when the vows were exchanged.
In a time when societal expectations could be merciless, especially toward young women, the suggestion that Ruth was sent to Kansas to deliver the baby away from prying eyes holds weight.
Clyde was near her maternal relatives, distant from the gossips of Alma, and might have seemed a safe place to weather the storm.
It may have been a plan hatched in love, or in quiet desperation.
But when both she and her son died, the family did not keep them hidden.
They brought Ruth and her infant son back across two states--a poignant and likely arduous journey in 1926--to lay them to rest in the foothills of the Ozarks.
Newberry Chapel had long been the burial ground of Ruth’s people dating back to the mid -1890s. Her mother, Hallie B. Osborne, was buried there; her father, Frank, would later join them from across the country.
Even in a moment heavy with loss and unspoken sorrow, the Osbornes drew Ruth and her baby back into the family fold.
Clinton would remarry and raise a family in Missouri, yet he kept Ruth’s photograph among his treasured possessions all his life/
After his passing, it was safeguarded by his second wife and passed along to his oldest son==proof that memory outlasts even tragedy.
Ruth's was a short life, marked by love, heartbreak, and perhaps scandal—but in the end, she came home.
And beside her rests Earle Francis, the child she never got to raise but who remains, even now, part of a story that won’t be forgotten.
