First of all, thank you for your question. Frankly, Olea has been on my mind and a concern for me for quite a while now.
If you will go to the albums where the picture of Sara Bull is located, you will see many, many photos of Olea Bull Vaughan which were taken by Ralph Bartlett. Some of the information that I am finding is confusing, for instance, the newspapers of the time mentioned that during sometime in February 1911 Olea was hospitalized in New Hampshire for "her nerves." However, most reports claim that she died of tuberculosis in July 1911 just 6 hours before the verdict was handed down by the Courts in her favor (over her Mother's will.)
One report states that Olea died from "a broken heart"
but so many of the reports from the time are erroneous, so it is hard to find the truth.
Lizelle Reymond states that Olea committed suicide, but I cannot find another reference for that assertion.
Olea and Ralph Bartlett had a love child, Sylvea, which Sara Bull must have acknowledged (at least to herself) but Ralph and Olea never married...
That is all I know for the moment, but those pictures tell a great deal of the story....
Possibly last photograph of Sara Olea Bull Vaughan
This is possibly the last photo of Olea taken in the winter of 1910. Nivedita, perhaps, has been summoned or is on her journey from India, to be the trusted friend and bedside companion of Sara Bull, mother of Olea and also Swami Vivekananda's "American Mother."
For some reason, in the later photos taken by Bartlett, Olea no longer raises her eyes into the camera. Is she sick with tuberculosis in this photograph? She would pass away 7 months later.
From what I can tell from the Letters of Sister Nivedita, Olea went to Nivedita's mother in England in 1908 to give birth to this child.
I am surmising this only from the letters and reading between the lines.
Olea would later accuse Nivedita of bringing poisons from India to bring "undue influence" over her mother, Sara Bull.
Sister Christine asserted that this is what killed Nivedita, "there is no doubt about it" she says in a letter to Josephine Macleod, from India...
