Mamie Alease Clarke Brock of Richmond, Virginia (1887-1945)

Mamie was described as a big, happy woman. She worked as a midwife and a seamstress, making many of her grandchildren's clothes. As a midwife, Mamie would deliver a child and look after its mother for two weeks. She would go and visit the new family everyday, doing laundry and other chores for a total of $l5.00. Relatives claim that Mamie delivered hundreds of babies, including several of her grandchildren, including my own mother.

Mamie was a selfless person and gave-up the love of her life to please her mother by marring Mr. Brock. She also traveled to England, during World War I, to retrieve her sick and missing brother, Tom Clarke. Aside from her brother, Mamie also cared for her dying and disfigured mother when everyone else abandoned her.

My mother can remember being taken to the park by Mamie as a little girl. She would push her around in a baby carriage and seemed to enjoy being a grandmother. My mother also remembers Mamie making her clothes. Her most interesting recollection about Mamie occurred after her death. One night, my mother claims that Mamie came to her as an angel, standing at the foot of her bed. Mamie asked my mother to go with her, but mom refused. Mamie went back to heaven and my mother went back to sleep.

One Christmas, Mamie had gone to the Brock farm to evict a tenant. However, when she got to the house, she discovered that the family had no food or heat. The woman's husband was an alcoholic and had bought his children only a single head of cabbage for Christmas. Mamie's heart would not allow this to happen so she went to town and bought food and toys for the children. She told the husband that she was only showing compassion for the children that he still had to get them out of her house.

A few months later, Mamie came back and this time the woman was in labor. She had to deliver the baby while the drunken husband stayed in the barn. After the delivery she went outside and told the man that he had better be gone in two weeks or she would call the law. The man did move his family, but he held a grudge. A few years later, the man's wife killed him because of the abuse that she suffered. Mamie testified as a character witness in her defense.

When Mamie was older, she developed cancer in her neck. The disease spread and strengthened, causing her muscles to weaken. Before she died, Mamie had become unable to hold her head up. To remedy this, doctors installed lead weights into the back of her skull to force the head upright. The weights worked, but it was not long after the surgery that Mamie passed away.