Oops

We were going to spend the day at our paternal grandmother’s house, along with our cousins.  We were staying at our maternal grandmother’s farm at the edge of town, so she picked up my in-town cousins first.  Then here she was, pulling into the driveway in her big old tan and cream Oldsmobile 98. I sat in the front with Grandma and all the boys sprawled across the back seat.  I was the oldest at about ten, and my brother and cousins ranged from about eight years old down to five. 

Lillian Carolyn Shaw Baker Adams (1913 - 2016) on the front steps of her mother's trailer at around the same time as this story

When we were all packed in, Grandma headed out of the driveway onto Hoffer Street, then south on U.S. 31.  We passed the Chrysler transmission plant to the west, then turned east on Lincoln Road past the Delco plant and almost immediately south on Albright Road.  This was one of the many “back ways” that were taken between the grandmas. 

Now, all that area is actually part of the city of Kokomo and houses are everywhere.  But back then as we got away from the Chrysler and Delco plants, we were pretty much out in the country.  About a mile and a half down the road was the cemetery where some of my ancestors are buried, and where my maternal grandmother would take us once a week while we were there, to water the flowers on the graves. 

But before that, a little less than a mile from where we entered Albright Road, we passed over Kokomo Creek.  It went under the road and you could see it on either side.  It was about that time that someone asked to play with the Etch-A-Sketch – memory is not serving as to which one of us.  It belonged to me and my brother, but it was one of the things we had brought for everyone to use.

No one could find it.  Before long, we heard a clunk sound, and Grandma remembered having set it on the roof of the car as we were all getting in.  She stopped the car and got out to look, but the Etch-A-Sketch had likely fallen off the road and into the creek, never to be seen again.

What boggles my mind is how did that thing stay on the roof of the car all that time?  Almost three miles, a portion of which was a divided highway!  Oops!

 

 

Education

Education has always been pushed at us as a great thing.  Later in life, I totally agree, and have made life-long learning one of the things I just do.  But as a kid, yes, I learned, but it didn’t seem that important to me.

After hearing snippets of my dad’s growing up years from him, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother, I finally understood why it was so important to him.  James Calvin Baker was born in 1934 in a tiny, tiny town in Indiana.  By fall of 1938, Jimmy and his younger brother Carol had lost their dad (my grandmother didn’t marry again until my dad was a senior in high school).  They spent their childhood in a small home with my grandmother or the short period they lived at my great-grandparents’ farm.

Young Jimmy

My dad helped supplement the family income in the summers by working on area farms.  And of course, he was an avid student the remainder of the year.  But in his free time, apart from playing the drums for a time and playing the e-flat flugelhorn (don't ask me) in his high school marching band, he loved to read.  He often talked of reading the entire set of used encyclopedias his mother had on hand, and he loved the Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley.

When he was old enough, he entered the Army, where he served in as a translator in Korea after the Korean War.  But when he came back, he used the G.I. Bill to start his college education.  In a period of about a decade, he had earned a Bachelor of Science (majoring in International Business and minoring in Finance, Marketing, Economic Development, and Applied Economic Analysis), a Masters in Business Administration (M.B.A.), and a Doctorate in Business Administration (D.B.A.).  His doctoral dissertation was titled The German Securities Exchanges: Origin, Operations, and Problems.

So, he had gone from a relatively poor farmhand to someone with the word Doctor in front of his name.  And that’s why education was so important to him.

James Calvin Baker - probably reading something to somebody

1935 - 2016

 

Out of Place

For quite some time, I had the given names of parents and children for my great-great-great-grandparents’ family.  I also had a few dates.  One was a really cool find that currently sits in a safe deposit box without having been scanned first (can you see my aggravated face?) – the death notice that family over there sent to family over here about my great-great-great-grandfather, Edmund John Harris.  So, I’ve had that date and place and the approximate birth and death dates of his child who is my direct ancestor, as well as the places of burial.

But that’s most of what I had for a long, long time.

When it became easier to obtain digital copies of birth, marriage, and death records from the General Register Office, I began voraciously looking for all of the ancestor records I could find.  And I found them, lots of them.

Now back to this family.  They had fourteen children between 1838 (in Belgium as English citizens) and 1867.  My grandmother in this family, Emily Fellows Harris, died on November 29, 1869 in the place they had settled, Hadley Hollow, in Shropshire, England.  I knew of thirteen of the children, and for some, I had more than just a name.  They had names like George and John, Mary, Ruth, Samuel, and Richard.  The only one with an out of place name (that I’ve known about for a long period of time) was Zillah, born in 1855.  However, Zillah turned out to be something of a family name for a while.  This may have been the second Zillah in a couple of generations, and there were definitely a few of them afterward – including someone I knew.  Her name was Zillah Catherine Curtis, and Edmund was her great-grandfather.

The Zillah in Edmund and Emily's Family

But now I’m rambling.  In my massive search for GRO records, I accidently found child number fourteen.  I had to look everything over a few times because I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.  In this family of relatively “normal” names (if you discount the ubiquitous Zillah), on April 13, 1862, Sheba was born.  She only lived until October 8, but her name was definitely out of place.  To my knowledge, there was never a Sheba Harris before her, and there hasn’t been one since.  

Sheba's birth record!

Favorite Photo

Sure, I have tons and tons of favorite photos – photos of those no longer with us, photos that evoke fond memories, photos that are just plain funny.  But this photo is right up there, and I don’t even know who she is.

I know she’s one of my many grandmothers.  But all that is written on the back is “Tom’s mother.”  That’s a lot of information, especially in a branch of the family that seemed to love the name Tom or Thomas. 

So, given the relative Victorian period partial mourning appearance of her clothing (in facts, she looks rather like the aged Queen), I’m going with the mid to late nineteenth-century.  I wish I could see the photo on the table beside her a little better.  I imagine it is a photo of her husband, most likely deceased.  I could say she is my great-great-grandmother Susanna Turner Goodwin Harris, mother of my great-grandfather Tom (full name David Thomas Goodwin Harris, born in 1870), but I have a photo of her, and this woman does not really resemble that photo of Susanna. 

It was in a large batch of family photos passed down through the Harris line, so I’m still looking at that branch of the family.  Susanna’s father was also a Tom, but he was born in 1814.  I suppose, if his mother was young enough, then in her older years, this could have been her, but earlier in the century than it would have been if it was Susanna (born in 1842).  So, this could very well have been Susanna’s paternal grandmother.  Unfortunately, I still don’t know who she is.  I don’t yet have a name for Thomas Goodwin’s parents.  What does the future hold for this aging photograph?

 

I’d Like to Meet

…my great-grandfather, David Thomas Goodwin “Tom” Harris. 

 

 "Tom" Harris in the orchard lane with his dogs (the one in back is Molly)

Tom near the garden pergola 

He was born on 18 January 1870 in the district of Wellington, county of Salop (now Shropshire), England, the oldest son and oldest child of Susannah Turner Goodwin and Richard Harris.  He had five sisters and one brother.  However, two of the sisters died (one at the age of six and the other at three months) before the family came to  the United States.  He died on 2 December 1950 in Kokomo, Howard County, Indiana.

In between, he was many things.  He grew up in iron country in Shropshire.  According to the History of Howard County, at the age of thirteen, he began working in a rod and wire mill.  After four years, he emigrated to this country.  He first worked at a mill in Howard, Pennsylvania for about a year, then moved on to Joliet, Illinois, where he married my great-grandmother Edith Bell Chesnut on 10 December 1891. 

After a short time, they moved to Anderson, Indiana, where their three sons were born:  Thomas in 1893, Robert in 1895, and Ralph in 1905.  While living in Anderson, Tom was head roller in a local rod mill.  In 1901, he became established at Kokomo Steel and Wire as superintendent.  This company later became Continental Steel Corporation.  The family moved to Kokomo after the birth of Ralph.

They moved into a rambling farmhouse that they dubbed Grange Hall Farm.  On retirement, Tom helped his grown sons Thomas and Ralph in farming, particularly of a flock of Cheviot sheep that had been brought from Scotland.

Sitting in the “Sitting Room” at Grange Hall Farm with his only granddaughter, Jean Harris

He also doted on his granddaughter (my mother) Phyllis Jean Harris – Ralph’s child with Ola Ruth Sutherland. 

Through the years, several generations lived in the house he purchased in Kokomo.  All of the photos here were taken in or around that house.  At one time or another, his mother lived there with them, and his wife’s mother also resided there.  I even spent the first four years of my life living there and have such fond memories of roaming the farm and exploring cabinets and bookshelves until it was torn down in 1981.

Yes, I would like to meet so very many of my ancestors.  But the biggest reason I would like to meet my great-grandfather would be to ask him about a piece of family lore.  His children and grandchildren for many years were told – by him – that he came over from England by himself at the age of seventeen.  Then a year or so later, the rest of the family joined him.  This was a story that had been told to so many people that, for years, I had it on the back burner as far as research.  I hadn’t had much luck with passenger records for any family branch, and I figured it was probably true, since the pertinent person had told it (sure, right?).

Then I went through a really long period trying to find him in ancestry on a passenger list with no luck.  It wasn’t until I decided to find out when the rest of his family came over that things turned around.   I looked for his oldest sister and found her right away.  But imagine my surprise when I looked at the actual passenger list and found them all – including my great-grandfather.  All on the same ship, same list, same trip.  Yes, he was seventeen, but he was not alone!  The reason it took me so long to find him was that, although the name on the ship’s list clearly reads “David T Harris,” it had been transcribed in ancestry as “Dorw S Harris” (and still is that way now, even though I’ve put in numerous corrections).  So, now that I’ve found him, I just want to know why he told everyone he was alone.  And watch him smile.