Helen Gladys Robertson Verhoek: The Last TB Death

Scattered Stones › The Women Who Stayed › Episode 6 : Helen Robertson Verhoek

Scattered Stones  ·  The Women Who Stayed

Episode 6  ·  The Last

Helen Gladys
Robertson Verhoek

The Face That Reappeared  ·  The Disease That Followed

1907  —  1942

Brooklyn  ·  North Caldwell, New Jersey

She was born in 1907 with the face of a grandmother she never met. She died in 1942 of the disease that had killed that grandmother fifty-eight years earlier. Between those two dates, she was orphaned at sixteen, buried an infant daughter at twenty-three, and raised two children into a childhood she would not live to see finish. Her mother, grandmother, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all died of the same thing. She was the fifth generation to carry it and the last to die of it.

Born with a Face

August 29, 1907  ·  808 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn

Helen Gladys Robertson was born on August 29, 1907, at 808 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn — the second daughter of Joseph Robertson, a clerk, and Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson. Her older sister Lillian Josephine had been born two years earlier at 125 Ryerson Street. Helen was the second child, the middle child for most of her life, the only one of her siblings who would not live past forty.

Primary Source  ·  Certificate and Record of Birth — Helen Robertson, August 29, 1907

Certificate No. 36480. Helen Robertson, female, white, born August 29, 1907, at 808 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn. Father: Joseph Robertson, age 24, clerk, born U.S.A. Mother: Mary Robertson (née Mary Kenny), age 23, born U.S.A. Number of previous children: 1. Number now living: 2. Signed by Edward Anderson at 612 Bedford Avenue. Filed with the City of New York Department of Health.

Helen's birth certificate — August 29, 1907, 808 Marcy Avenue. A face already formed.

She would not realize it for herself until long after she could do anything about it, but she had inherited the face of her maternal grandmother — Margaret McKenny Kenny, who had died of pulmonary consumption twenty-three years before Helen was born. No one living had seen Margaret as she looked in the 1870 tintype from Nichols Studio on Broadway. Her own daughter Mary Agnes had been two years old when her mother died and had no memory of her. Helen would grow up carrying a face that nobody in her immediate family recognized as an echo.

The Little Misses Robertson

1907 – 1920  ·  A Brooklyn Childhood

Helen spent her earliest years in the Brooklyn of her mother's family — the Kenny-McKenny neighborhood that ran from Kent Avenue to Walworth to Park Avenue. The family moved frequently: 125 Ryerson Street (1905), 808 Marcy Avenue (1907), Queens Ward 29 by 1910, back to Brooklyn Ward 24 by 1915. Joseph Robertson, her father, was working his way up through clerk to salesman to manager. Mary Agnes, her mother, kept house.

Family Photograph  ·  Lillian and Helen Robertson, c. 1910

The Little Misses Robertson — Lillian Josephine (left, c. age 5) and Helen Gladys (right, c. age 3) — posed together in a Brooklyn photography studio in matching embroidered white dresses. This is the earliest known studio portrait of Helen. The image would surface decades later in a Brooklyn Eagle society note reporting that Miss Marie MacKinney of Eleventh Street had accompanied "the little Misses Lillian and Helen Robertson" to Saugerties, N.Y. for several weeks' vacation — a sign of how closely the Kenny-MacKinney aunt network stayed involved in the Robertson girls' upbringing.

The Little Misses Robertson — Lillian (left) and Helen (right), c. 1910. Sisters at three and five, matching dresses, identical posture.

The 1910 federal census caught the family in Queens — Joseph as a salesman in hardware, Mary at 26, Lillian at 4, Helen at 2. Five years later the New York State census found them at 220 East 4th Street in Brooklyn with Joseph listed as a salesman, Mary at 31, Lillian at 9, Helen at 7. The 1920 census records a third child for the first time: Joseph Jay Robertson Jr., born January 9, 1920, at 68 East 5th Street. Helen was twelve when her brother was born. He was the baby she would help raise — and, as it turned out, the brother she would help orphan four years later.

Family Photograph  ·  Lillian, Infant Helen, and Cousin on Brownstone Steps, c. 1908

Brooklyn, c. 1908. Lillian (left, approximately age 3) and a possible Robertson cousin (right, similar age) stand on the carved brownstone steps of a Brooklyn row house. Between them, in a wicker stroller, Helen — approximately one year old — sits wrapped in white. The photograph is the earliest known image of Helen, taken within her first year of life.

c. 1908 — Helen as an infant in a wicker stroller, Lillian at right. The earliest known photograph of her.

12 Elm Road, North Caldwell

c. 1922 – 1924  ·  Brooklyn to New Jersey

Sometime around 1922, Joseph Robertson moved the family from Brooklyn to 12 Elm Road in North Caldwell, New Jersey — a stone's-throw suburb of Manhattan reached by the Erie Railroad. He commuted to the Coston Supply Company where he managed the block department. Mary Agnes was already ill. The country air of North Caldwell may have been intended as a remedy; Mary Agnes's own death certificate would later state that her pulmonary tuberculosis had been "contracted in Brooklyn" and had lasted one documented year.

Helen was fifteen when they moved. Lillian was seventeen. Joseph Jay was two. The photographs from 12 Elm Road — the 1923 lawn photo with its five figures and two children — show a family at the edge of its brief New Jersey chapter, one year before everything collapsed.

Family Photograph  ·  12 Elm Road, North Caldwell, c. 1923

Standing, back row, left to right: Elizabeth "Aunt Lillie" Kenny Corbett (Mary Agnes's older sister, approximately forty-three); Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson at center, approximately forty; and an unidentified woman on the right. Kneeling in the foreground: Helen Gladys Robertson, approximately fifteen, her arm around her younger brother. Standing beside Helen: Joseph Jay Robertson Jr., approximately three years old, in a dark sailor suit. Lillian Josephine Robertson does not appear in this photograph. Taken approximately one year before the deaths in January 1924 that would orphan Helen and Joseph Jay. Of the three women standing, Mary Agnes would be dead within a year; Elizabeth would live to 1950. Helen — kneeling on the grass — would outlive her mother by eighteen years, her "Aunt Maime" by eight, and die of the same disease that killed her mother.

12 Elm Road, c. 1923 — Helen kneeling in the foreground, her arm around her younger brother. One year before.

The Face That Reappeared

Three Generations  ·  Fifty Years Between the Photographs

One image holds Helen's entire biography. Not the 1907 birth certificate, not the 1942 obituary, but a photograph taken around 1870 — thirty-seven years before she was born, fourteen years before her grandmother died, in a Brooklyn tintype studio at 697 Broadway where a nineteen-year-old Irish-American girl named Margaret McKenny sat for a portrait with her hands folded and a brooch at her throat. The girl in the 1870 tintype looks like Helen in the 1923 lawn photograph. Margaret McKenny was Helen's grandmother. The resemblance is the whole story of this episode.

The Three-Generation Comparison

A Face Across Fifty Years

Margaret McKenny Kenny

1851 – 1884  ·  Tintype, c. 1870

Margaret at approximately nineteen — the grandmother Helen never met. She died fourteen years before Helen was born. Nichols Studio, 697 Broadway, New York.

Helen Gladys Robertson

c. 1923  ·  12 Elm Road, North Caldwell

Helen at approximately fifteen or sixteen, kneeling in the foreground, her arm around her young brother Joseph Jay. Margaret's granddaughter. Taken approximately one year before the deaths of January 1924.

The Resemblance

The same oval face. The same strong cheekbones. The same direct bearing, the same eye placement, the same carriage of the head. Margaret died of pulmonary consumption in 1884. Her daughter Mary Agnes died of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1924. Helen died of tuberculosis in 1942. The McKenny face and the McKenny disease traveled together through three generations.

Orphaned at Sixteen

January 14 – January 26, 1924  ·  Twelve Days

Helen was sixteen years old on the Monday her father died and sixteen years old on the Saturday her mother died. Twelve days, in the same house at 12 Elm Road, one parent at each end. Her father Joseph Robertson died January 14, 1924 at Mountainside Hospital in Glen Ridge of cerebral hemorrhage, age 39; his wake was held in Brooklyn, and he was buried on January 18 at Green-Wood Cemetery in a Robertson family plot. Her mother Mary Agnes died January 26, 1924 at home in North Caldwell, of pulmonary tuberculosis, age 40, and was buried three days later from St. Aloysius R.C. Church at Immaculate Conception Cemetery in Upper Montclair. Between her father’s Brooklyn funeral and her mother’s North Caldwell one, Helen crossed the Hudson twice in eleven days. The full story of those twelve days is told in Episode 5: Twelve Days. Here, what matters is what happened to the children the two deaths left behind.

Lillian was eighteen. Helen was sixteen. Joseph Jay was four. They did not leave 12 Elm Road. The 1924 Caldwell City Directory — compiled only months after the January funerals — lists the two older Robertson sisters still at the address, both already employed: "Robertson Helen, steno, res 12 Elm rd NC" and "— Lillian, steno, h 12 Elm rd NC." Their parents are not listed. The directory is, by its own mechanical logic, a roll call of the household's heads. In January 1924, the household's heads had become the two teenage daughters.

Primary Source  ·  Caldwell City Directory, 1924

Caldwell (1924) Directory. "Robertson Helen steno res 12 Elm rd NC" and "— Lillian steno h 12 Elm rd NC" — listed as separate entries on the same line cluster, both at 12 Elm Road, North Caldwell, both working as stenographers, both under 20 years old, neither parent listed. The abbreviation "h" marks Lillian as the head of household; "res" marks Helen as a resident. The directory was likely compiled in the spring or summer of 1924, after Joseph Sr. and Mary Agnes had both died in January.

1924 Directory — Helen and Lillian listed at 12 Elm Road without their parents. The two orphaned sisters, already stenographers, holding the household together.

Two teenage stenographers, one four-year-old brother, and an address where their parents had both just died. 1924 Caldwell Directory

Helen as a Young Woman

c. 1925 – 1929  ·  Stenographer, Bride

Two portraits survive from the years between her parents' deaths and her own marriage — images of Helen as she moved from orphaned teenager to young working woman. In the first, a studio portrait from approximately 1925, she wears a cloche hat embroidered with a thick patterned band and a dark fur wrap at her shoulders; the modeling of her face matches the tintype of her grandmother point for point. In the second, a full-length photograph probably taken for her wedding or at a wedding reception, she stands with a bouquet almost as large as her torso, a wide-brimmed white hat tilted above her face, looking sideways at the camera as the photographer's painted-backdrop staircase curves behind her.

Helen  ·  c. 1925

Cloche hat and fur wrap

Helen  ·  c. late 1920s

Marriage portrait

On November 6, 1926 — according to the New Jersey Index of Marriages — Helen Gladys Robertson (initials H R) was married to a man recorded with initials L V, volume 38, page 368. On the 1930 federal census less than a year later, the record is clearer: "Verhoek Leslie, head, 25, salesman, Bldg Supplies; Helen, wife, 22; Leslie, son, 1 1/12; Joseph Robertson, bro-in-law, 10" — her husband Leslie J. Verhoek, born September 17, 1904, Newark, working in building supplies; their first child Leslie Jr., approximately fourteen months; and Helen's little brother, Joseph Jay, age 10, still living with her, now formally recorded as her brother-in-law in the government's ledger.

Primary Source  ·  1930 Federal Census, West Caldwell Borough, Essex County, N.J.

Enumerated April 19, 1930. Dwelling 142, family 241. Verhoek Leslie, head, age 25, salesman, Bldg Supplies; Helen, wife, age 22; Leslie, son, age 1 year 1 month; Joseph Robertson, brother-in-law, age 10. Helen has taken in her younger brother; the 1924 pattern of the teenage sisters holding the family together has simply matured into the 1930 pattern of the adult sister holding the household together. Joseph Jay had spent the late 1920s splitting time between Lillian's and Helen's homes.

1930 Census — Helen's household. Her husband, her first child, and her brother Joe, now ten years old and still with her.

Janet

August 1930 – March 3, 1931  ·  Six Months

The 1930 federal census line for the Verhoek household is also a window into a moment the family did not know was about to close. Helen was pregnant at the enumeration on April 19, 1930. Her second child — a daughter, Janet Verhoek — was born in August 1930, approximately four months after the census. Janet lived six to seven months. She died on March 3, 1931.

Janet was buried at Immaculate Conception Cemetery in Upper Montclair with her grandmother Mary Agnes — specifically in the same plot, Block-WEST, Tract 19, Grave 58, position 1B, seven years after Mary Agnes had been interred in position 1A. Janet did not die of the disease that had killed her grandmother. But when Helen and Leslie made the decision about where to bury their infant daughter in March 1931, they chose the ground that already held Helen’s mother — the cemetery choice that made Immaculate Conception, for a while, a place the Robertson women shared.

Primary Source  ·  Death Certificate — Janet Verhoek, March 3, 1931

Janet Verhoek, infant daughter of Leslie J. Verhoek and Helen G. (Robertson) Verhoek, born August 5, 1930, died March 3, 1931, aged approximately six to seven months. Cause of death: broncho pneumonia; contributory, second-degree burns — possibly from a home poultice treatment, a recorded hazard of 1930s pediatric home medicine. Buried at Immaculate Conception Cemetery and Mausoleum, Upper Montclair, Essex County, New Jersey. Plot: Blk-WEST, Tr-19, Gr-58, position 1B — the same plot as Janet’s grandmother Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson (position 1A, buried January 29, 1924). Find a Grave Memorial ID 206009245.

Death Certificate — Janet Verhoek, March 3, 1931. She joined her grandmother at Immaculate Conception.

Helen had now lost her father, her mother, and a daughter. She was twenty-three years old.

The Family She Built

1931 – 1940  ·  Mountain Avenue, North Caldwell

The Verhoeks moved after Janet's death to 254 Mountain Avenue in North Caldwell. A second daughter, Mary Catherine Verhoek, was born around 1932. Leslie Jr., her son, was approximately three at Janet's death, eight at Mary Catherine's arrival. Life reformed itself around the children who had lived.

Primary Source  ·  1939 Caldwell City Directory

"Verhoek Leslie J (Helen G) slsman h 254 Mountain av NC" — Leslie, salesman, at 254 Mountain Avenue, North Caldwell; wife Helen G. Standard working-class suburban listing, the same entry pattern the family would keep until Helen's death three years later.

1939 Directory — the Verhoeks at 254 Mountain Avenue, North Caldwell.

Primary Source  ·  1940 Federal Census, North Caldwell, Essex County, N.J.

Enumerated 1940. Household 254: Verhoek Leslie, head, age 35, salesman, Bldg Sup; Helen, wife, age 32; Leslie, son, age 11; Mary, daughter, age 8; Robertson Joseph, brother-in-law, age 20, apprentice plumber, Plumber & Heating. Joseph Jay, now twenty, is still living in Helen's household — sixteen years after his parents died. The pattern Helen and Lillian had set as teenagers in 1924 had never ended.

1940 Census — the family sixteen years after the twelve days. Helen is thirty-two. She has two years left.

Two undated family photographs from these years show Helen living the life she had built. In one, she stands with her husband Leslie and her sister Lillian against the clapboard of a North Caldwell house, the three of them arm in arm in summer clothes — Helen on the right, in a striped dress, smiling. In another, a 1936 extended-family photograph, she stands beside Leslie in the back row while in front of them the next generation gathers: her nephew Leslie Jr., her niece Lillian Marie O'Brien, her daughter Mary Verhoek, and her nieces Jeanne and the infant Barbara O'Brien in Lillian's arms.

Family Photograph  ·  September 8, 1936

Back row, left to right: Lillian Josephine Robertson O'Brien holding infant Barbara O'Brien (approximately nine months old); Leslie J. Verhoek Sr.; Helen Gladys Robertson Verhoek. Front row, left to right: Leslie Verhoek Jr. (approximately 7); Lillian Marie O'Brien; Mary Verhoek (approximately 4); Jeanne O'Brien. The two sisters, their husbands, and the next generation of cousins — photographed six years before Helen's death, twelve years after the twelve days.

September 8, 1936 — two sisters, two husbands, five children. Six years before.

Named on the Registration Card

Leslie John Verhoek  ·  World War II Draft  ·  1942

On his World War II draft registration card in early 1942, Leslie J. Verhoek wrote Helen's name as the person who would always know his address. Serial number 894. Name: Leslie John Verhoek. Residence: 254 Mountain Avenue, North Caldwell, Essex, N.J. Age 37. Date of birth: September 17, 1904, Newark, N.J. Employer: Curtiss-Wright, Clifton, Passaic, N.J. — the aircraft manufacturer that was about to ramp up its wartime production. Field 7, the person who will always know your address: "Helen G. Verhoek — same address — wife."

Primary Source  ·  World War II Draft Registration Card — Leslie John Verhoek

D.S.S. Form 1, revised 1-1-42. Serial No. 894. Order No. 10192. Leslie John Verhoek, 254 Mountain Avenue, No. Caldwell, Essex, N.J. Telephone: Ca 6-0470J. Age 37. Date of birth: September 17, 1904. Place of birth: Newark, N.J. Employer: Curtiss-Wright, Clifton, Passaic, N.J. Person who will always know your address: "Helen G. Verhoek — same address — wife." Leslie's signature at bottom right. This is one of the last documents in which Helen appears alive. Within months of his signing this card, Helen would be dead.

Draft Registration, 1942 — Leslie names Helen as the person who would always know his address. Months before she would not.

Tuesday, July 21, 1942

North Caldwell, New Jersey  ·  Age 34

Helen Gladys Robertson Verhoek died on Tuesday, July 21, 1942, in North Caldwell, New Jersey. She was thirty-four years old — not thirty-five as some obituary accounts stated; she was twenty-two days short of her thirty-fifth birthday. The cause was tuberculosis. She left behind her husband Leslie J. Verhoek (age 37), her son Leslie John Jr. (age 13), and her daughter Mary Catherine Verhoek (age 10).

The disease she died of had been carried in her family for seventy-two years. Her great-grandfather George McKenney had died of phthisis pulmonalis in 1870. Her grandmother Margaret McKenny Kenny had died of pulmonary consumption in 1884. Her grandfather John Kenny had died of pulmonary phthisis in 1888. Her mother Mary Agnes had died of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1924. In 1942, Helen died of tuberculosis — the same disease, the same family, the same pattern of lungs filling and young women leaving the children behind. She was the last generation to carry the disease. She was also the last to die of it.

Obituary  ·  Brooklyn Eagle, July 22, 1942

"VERHOEK — Of North Caldwell, N.J., on Tuesday, July 21, 1942, HELEN GLADYS ROBERTSON, wife of Leslie J. Verhoek and mother of Leslie John Jr. and Mary Catherine Verhoek. Funeral will be held at the Home for Services (Arthur K. Brown, Inc.), 77 Roseland Avenue, Caldwell, on Thursday at 8:30 o'clock; thence to St. Aloysius R. C. Church, where a requiem high mass will be offered at 9 o'clock." The Brooklyn Eagle obituary identifies her by her maiden name — "Helen Gladys Robertson" — the form that mattered to the Brooklyn family she had been born into, rather than the married name that would appear on her tombstone.

Brooklyn Eagle, July 22, 1942 — her death returned her, in the paper's record, to the maiden name of the Brooklyn family she came from.

The service was at the Arthur K. Brown funeral home on Roseland Avenue, Caldwell, at 8:30 Thursday morning, and then at St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church for a requiem high mass at 9:00. Eighteen years and six months earlier, Mary Agnes's requiem high mass had been offered at the same St. Aloysius Church — Tuesday morning, January 29, 1924, at 9 A.M. Mother and daughter were buried out of the same church eighteen years apart.

Gate of Heaven Cemetery

East Hanover, New Jersey  ·  Mother and Son

Helen was not buried with her mother. Mary Agnes lay at Immaculate Conception in Upper Montclair, where Helen's infant daughter Janet had joined her grandmother in 1931 — two generations in Block-WEST, Tract 19, Grave 58. When Helen died in July 1942, her family took her instead to Gate of Heaven Cemetery in East Hanover, New Jersey, and interred her at Section 40, Section C, Tier G, Grave 10, Depth 1A. Sixty-eight years later, her son Leslie John Verhoek Jr. — who had been thirteen when his mother died — joined her there on May 24, 2010.

The women of the McKenny line, in the end, did not gather into one plot. They scattered into three. George McKenney alone at Holy Cross Brooklyn, Section SOUT, in 1870. Margaret, her infant, her mother Ann Lynch MacKinney, her sister Mary F., her husband John Kenny, and the next generation of Kennys and Corbetts all together in Holy Cross Lett Row L Plot 336. Mary Agnes and her infant granddaughter Janet at Immaculate Conception Upper Montclair. Helen and her son at Gate of Heaven East Hanover. Five people died of the disease. They lie in three cemeteries in two states.

Immaculate Conception  ·  Upper Montclair

January 29, 1924 — Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson, age 40, pulmonary tuberculosis. Interred Blk-WEST, Tr-19, Gr-58, position 1A.

Immaculate Conception  ·  Upper Montclair

March 4, 1931 — Janet Verhoek, infant, age approximately 6–7 months. Interred Blk-WEST, Tr-19, Gr-58, position 1B. Find a Grave Memorial ID 206009245.

Gate of Heaven  ·  East Hanover

July 23, 1942 — Helen Gladys Robertson Verhoek, age 34, tuberculosis. Interred Section 40, Section C, Tier G, Grave 10, Depth 1A.

Gate of Heaven  ·  East Hanover

May 24, 2010 — Leslie John Verhoek Jr., age 81. Interred with his mother.

Cemetery Record  ·  Gate of Heaven Cemetery, East Hanover, N.J.

Gate of Heaven Cemetery burial record. Helen Verhoek, burial Section 40, Section C, Tier G, Grave 10, Depth 1A. Additional deceased in plot: Leslie John Verhoek Jr., burial May 24, 2010. The cemetery database records Helen’s burial date as 7/23/1943, one year after her July 21, 1942 death; the 1942 Brooklyn Eagle obituary confirms the funeral was held Thursday, July 23, 1942, indicating a likely transcription error in the cemetery’s digital index.

Gate of Heaven Cemetery — Helen and her son Leslie Jr., mother and son, sixty-eight years apart.

The Plot Today  ·  Gate of Heaven Cemetery, East Hanover

Helen’s unmarked grave at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Section 40, Section C, Tier G, Grave 10. No individual headstone. Her son Leslie John Verhoek Jr. joined her here in May 2010. The plot has never been marked. Leslie Jr. was thirteen years old when his mother died of tuberculosis in 1942. He was eighty-one when he was buried with her.

Gate of Heaven — the unmarked ground. Mother and son.

Cemetery Record  ·  Immaculate Conception, Upper Montclair, N.J.

Cemetery index for the family plot Helen was not buried in. Mary A. Robertson (Block-WEST, Tract 19, Grave 58, position 1A, died January 26, 1924) and Janet Verhoek (same plot, position 1B, died March 3, 1931) — Helen’s mother and Helen’s infant daughter, interred together at Immaculate Conception Upper Montclair seven years apart. Helen could have joined them. She did not.

Immaculate Conception — where Helen’s mother and infant daughter lie together. Helen did not join them.

The Plot Today  ·  Immaculate Conception Cemetery, Upper Montclair

The unmarked plot at Immaculate Conception where Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson (1882–1924) and her infant granddaughter Janet Verhoek (1930–1931) lie. No individual headstones. The photographer’s shadow falls on the grass where Helen’s mother waited for a daughter who was buried three towns away.

Immaculate Conception — grandmother and infant granddaughter together. Helen's name is not here.

The Last of the Line

What Ended with Helen

Streptomycin — the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis — was isolated by Selman Waksman and Albert Schatz at Rutgers in 1943, one year after Helen died. Clinical trials began in 1944. By the 1950s, antibiotic combination therapy had begun to turn tuberculosis from a fatal disease into a curable one. Helen was born in the last decade in which a young American woman could still die of the disease that had killed her mother and grandmother and great-grandfather. She died in the final American generation for which this was still a reasonable ending.

Her children — Leslie Jr. and Mary Catherine — would grow up in a world that no longer required the McKenny pattern. Neither of them would die of tuberculosis. Neither of Lillian's children would die of it. Helen was the last. Margaret McKenny Kenny 1884, Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson 1924, Helen Robertson Verhoek 1942 — three generations of women, each dead before her children were grown, all of the same lung disease. The line broke with Helen because medicine finally caught up with it. She did not live to benefit from that change. The four years between her death and the first effective treatment of her disease is the exact measure of how close she came to living.

The last of the TB line. George McKenney (1870), Margaret McKenny Kenny (1884), John Kenny (1888), Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson (1924), Helen Robertson Verhoek (1942). Five deaths, seventy-two years, one family, one disease. Helen was the last. One year after her death, researchers at Rutgers isolated streptomycin — the first antibiotic that could stop what the McKenny women could not.

Helen Gladys Robertson Verhoek

Vital Statistics

Born	August 29, 1907, 808 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. Certificate No. 36480
Parents	Joseph Robertson (September 7, 1884 Brooklyn – January 14, 1924 Glen Ridge, N.J., cerebral hemorrhage, age 39); Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson (February 8, 1882 Brooklyn – January 26, 1924 North Caldwell, N.J., pulmonary tuberculosis, age 40)
Siblings	Lillian Josephine Robertson O'Brien (July 9, 1905 – September 9, 1991); Joseph Jay Robertson Jr. (January 9, 1920 – August 22, 1991)
Grandparents	Maternal: John Kenny (c. 1846 – 1888, pulmonary phthisis, age ~42) and Margaret McKenny Kenny (1851 – 1884, pulmonary consumption, age 33). Paternal: David Paterson Robertson (Edinburgh – disappeared in Georgia swamps February 1910) and Elizabeth Gray (1844 – 1902, cerebral hemorrhage, age 58)
Orphaned	January 26, 1924, age 16, by deaths of her parents within twelve days of each other
Married	Leslie John Verhoek (September 17, 1904 Newark, N.J. – October 21, 1945 Verona, N.J., age 41), on November 6, 1926, in New Jersey. New Jersey Marriage Index 1920–29, vol. 38, p. 368. Leslie remarried after Helen’s death to Estelle Kupchik; she and her son Donald Nitus lived with Leslie Sr., Leslie Jr., and Mary at 53 Grove Avenue, Verona, until Leslie Sr.’s death three years and three months after Helen’s. Leslie Sr. is buried at Prospect Hill Cemetery, Caldwell, N.J. — not with Helen. Find a Grave Memorial ID 239977445.
Children	Leslie John Verhoek Jr. (June 23, 1928 – November 27, 2009), married (1) Marilyn Boag with three children — Leslie John III, Wendy Verhoek-Oftedahl (Brown University), Nancy Verhoek Miller. Janet Verhoek (August 5, 1930 – March 3, 1931, age ~6–7 months). Mary Catherine Verhoek (c. 1932 – ?), legally adopted in 1945 after her father’s death by her paternal aunt Roberta (Verhoek) Hoffman and Frank Hoffman of Cedar Grove, becoming Mary Hoffman; married Gerald “Jerry” Bradley; three sons — Bob Bradley (US men’s national team soccer coach), Scott Bradley (MLB catcher; head baseball coach, Princeton), Jeff Bradley (sportswriter).
Residences	808 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn (1907); 220 East 4th Street, Brooklyn (1915); 68 East 5th Street, Brooklyn (1920); 12 Elm Road, North Caldwell, N.J. (1922–c.1929); 254 Mountain Avenue, North Caldwell, N.J. (c. 1929–1942)
Occupation	Stenographer (documented 1924 Caldwell Directory, age 16). After marriage, at home
Died	Tuesday, July 21, 1942, North Caldwell, Essex County, New Jersey. Age 34 years, 10 months, 22 days
Cause of death	Tuberculosis
Funeral	Thursday, July 23, 1942, 8:30 A.M., Arthur K. Brown Inc. funeral home, 77 Roseland Avenue, Caldwell, followed by requiem high mass at 9:00 A.M., St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church, Caldwell — the same church where her mother Mary Agnes had been buried from in January 1924
Buried	Gate of Heaven Cemetery, East Hanover, New Jersey. Plot: Section 40, Section C , Tier G, Grave 10, Depth 1A — Her son Leslie John Verhoek, Jr would be buried there in 2010. No individual headstone

Researcher's Note

Helen Gladys Robertson Verhoek was the grand-aunt of the researcher. Her older sister Lillian Josephine Robertson O'Brien was the researcher's grandmother. Many of the photographs in this episode — including the c. 1910 studio portrait of the "Little Misses Robertson," the 1936 family gathering, and the surviving portraits of Helen as a young woman — were preserved in the family archive passed from Lillian through Lillian's daughters, Lillian O'Brien Ambrosio and Barbara O'Brien Hamall. Helen is buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, East Hanover, New Jersey, Section 40, Section C, Tier G, Grave 10, Depth 1A, in an unmarked grave. Her son Leslie John Verhoek Jr. was interred with her on May 24, 2010. Her mother Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson and her infant daughter Janet Verhoek are buried together at a separate cemetery, Immaculate Conception Upper Montclair, Block-WEST, Tract 19, Grave 58, positions 1A and 1B. Gate of Heaven plot information was confirmed directly with the cemetery; Immaculate Conception information was confirmed through the cemetery index and cross-referenced with Find a Grave Memorial ID 206009245 for Janet Verhoek. Judy Robertson Apicella provided many of the documents and additional photos. The three-generation tuberculosis thread — George McKenney 1870, Margaret 1884, Mary Agnes 1924, Helen 1942 — is documented across five death certificates and will be the subject of a forthcoming companion piece, Five Deaths, One Family, Seventy-Two Years. Helen’s children Leslie John Verhoek Jr. (age 13 at Helen’s death) and Mary Catherine Verhoek (age 10) lived with their father Leslie J. Verhoek Sr. and his second wife Estelle Kupchik at 53 Grove Avenue, Verona, from 1942 until Leslie Sr.’s death on October 21, 1945. After his death the children were separated and sent to different Verhoek-side households: Leslie Jr. to his paternal grandparents Oscar J. and Catherine “Kate” Gasewind Verhoek of Verona; Mary Catherine to her paternal aunt Roberta (Verhoek) Hoffman and Frank Hoffman of Cedar Grove, who legally adopted her. Mary was raised thereafter as Mary Hoffman. Their cousin Judy Robertson Apicella preserved the account, recorded in Leslie Jr.’s own words, that he and Mary were “raised more as cousins than as siblings.” Leslie Sr. is buried at Prospect Hill Cemetery, Caldwell; Find a Grave Memorial ID 239977445. Research by Mary Hamall Morales, 2018–2026.

Scattered Stones  ·  The Women Who Stayed

Continue the Series

Six generations of women who stayed, kept, and remembered. One Brooklyn family, 1810–1942.

Return to Series Index Episode 5: Twelve Days Companion: The First Loss

Document Gallery

Primary sources documenting Helen Gladys Robertson Verhoek (1907–1942)  ·  Click any image to enlarge

1907 — Birth Certificate

808 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn

c. 1908 — Infant Helen

Brooklyn brownstone steps

c. 1910 — Little Misses

Lillian and Helen, matching dresses

The "Little Misses"

Society clipping, Saugerties

1910 — Federal Census

Queens — Helen age 2

1915 — NY State Census

Brooklyn — Helen age 7

c. 1923 — The Lawn Photo

Helen kneeling with young Joe

1924 — Directory

Helen age 16, stenographer

c. 1925 — Helen, Cloche

Studio portrait

1929 — Marriage Index

Helen & Leslie Verhoek

Marriage Portrait

White dress, bouquet

1930 — Federal Census

Helen, Leslie, Les Jr, Joe

1931 — Janet's Death Cert

Age 6 months

Sept 8, 1936 — Family

Two sisters, five children

1937–42 — The Sisters

Lillian, Uncle Gus, Helen

1939 — Directory

254 Mountain Ave, NC

1940 — Federal Census

Two years before

1942 — Leslie's Draft Card

Helen named as wife

1942 — Obituary

Brooklyn Eagle, July 22

Gate of Heaven Cemetery, The Unmarked Plot

Two Graves, no headstones

1942 Gate of Heaven Cemetery Record, Helen Verhoek

East Hanover, New Jersey

Gate of Heaven Cemetery Record

1942 Helen Verhoek followed by 2010 Leslie Verhoek, Jr