This is an excerpt from an article that appeared in the Minneapolis Argus in 1963.

It was written by Jenny and Frank’s daughter-in-law, Elvira Jernell Betlach, Elvira married their son, Jesse.

Jenny Litera was 20 years old when her mother, Mary, gave birth to her 12th child. Mary died from an infection spread to her by a careless midwife. Jenny had already been married for four and a half years to a handsome lothario Francis Betlach, who came to the flats (Bohemian Flats-a section of Minneapolis on the Mississippi River where the Bohemian people lived) as it was on the circuit where he held his marionette show. He was handsome and charming. Instead of coming to Minnesota when his family came, he traveled for years the world over in merchant ships, spoke several languages and hand carved his puppets, written the scripts and did the speaking parts.

Jennie had gone with him on the road to take tickets and help where she could. Her first child died shortly after birth. Her husband worked when the season was over as a lather and made plenty to live on. Jennie had had experience with conserving money and managed well in the little house on 21st Avenue S.E. She sewed beautifully having helped a sewing woman on the flats for several years previous to her marriage, when she was not yet 16. Before Jennie's mother passed away, she gave birth to two healthy sons, Jesse and Frederick, much like their father in appearance, dark eyes and black curly hair. When her mother died, Mary took her baby brother home to raise it, but he did not survive and they opened his mother's grave and buried the child with her.

Jenny in the meantime had given birth to another son and soon was having difficulties. She put the three children into a nursery home and went on the road with Frank and his puppet show. The itinerary reached from Milwaukee to the West coast. So there was no way for news to reach them and Jenny learned when she got home that her baby son had died and was already buried. He contracted erysipelas at the nursery. That was the end of the road shows for her. Frank left alone for Chicago and found a young woman to take over Jennie's job on the road. He was gone for months and when he returned he demanded that she give him a divorce, he'd fallen in love with the give he'd met in Chicago. He left again, leaving Jennie without money when the boys were five and three. She got a job making 75 cents a day and kept the family going.

A year later, Frank returned to Minneapolis with the marionette show. He came to see her and invited her to take tickets for him at the show in St. Paul as his assistant had gone to Chicago to visit her family. He said he would give her half the receipts. Jennie went. They counted the cash, he swept it into a bag turned and laughed in her face and was off. The next year he returned and again asked Jennie to help with the tickets, she refused. In the middle of the performance a woman appeared on the stage addressing the audience. She had a paper; a marriage certificate. The show was halted. She wanted to know if anyone knew whether the man who ran this show had a wife and children. He had married her the first time she went out with him and now was it true the rumors she heard? Francis packed up his things hurriedly and fled.

The woman came to Minneapolis to find Jennie. She stayed several weeks, bought clothes for Jennie and the children, filled the cupboards with supplies and then went back to Chicago to her family. Her family was respectable and in good circumstances. The only time she saw Frank again was when an anonymous letter arrived at her address in Chicago saying that the show was in Nebraska and in a few days the man who ran it was marrying the daughter of a wealthy farmer at a big wedding ceremony. Again she appeared to face her betrayer with the certificate he married her with and told about the wife and sons he had deserted, but was still a legal husband. Again he fled and neither she nor Jennie ever saw him again. Jennie married again, a man named John Wittliff and had a daughter with him. She passed away in Little Falls, Minnesota on May 12, 1925.