Aunt Charlene, Harold Hawes' sister, wrote two notebooks about her parents and other relatives, one for her father Ross, and another for her mother Laura. These are transcribed below.
Family History as Told To Me - Fact or Fiction? Pops had a terrific sense of humor!
Once upon a time, three brothers named Haws, a sept of the Campbell Clan, left Scotland and settled in Virginia, date unknown. One, “Red Ike”, went to Missouri where he was later hung as a horse thief. One settled in south-eastern Ohio, Guernsey County. This man was our ancestor. He and his neighbors established “Old Harmony Christian Church” (a) (Disciples of Christ). The church cemetery contains graves of dad’s parents, grandparents, and possibly his great-grandparents. This cemetery is on the National Register as it also has the grave of a Revolutionary War soldier.
Dad’s brother James was an evangelist for the Christian Church. He traveled extensively preaching, singing, and accompanied himself on a small portable organ. He also wrote many hymns.(b) (If you’re interested, I have a picture of this little church combined with a photo of Uncle James’ song “Old Harmony”. It’s yours if you like.)
Sometime (when I don’t know) dad’s grandfather moved to Illinois in order to farm better land. Dad mentioned a large farm 200/300 acres. But this guy became homesick for the “god-forsaken” hills of SE Ohio and sold this farm. This land is now part of the university campus at Evanston, Illinois.(c)
Dad was the youngest of seven or eight siblings.(d) There were five or six girls. All but one died before they were adults – death caused by TB, pneumonia, or other respiratory diseases. Dad was born in a log cabin. Very soon after his birth, the family moved to the “big” white house on the hill. In the early (19)60’s, Jerry (McMahon) and I took mom and dad to “Old Harmony” to attend a family reunion. At this time, both houses were occupied. The log cabin had electricity. The “big white” house was big only by comparison. It was two storied. (I don’t remember the floor plan.) The tree dad used to leave the house out the window after going to bed was still there.
Mother told me the following as dad never talked about his early childhood. Dad’s mother told her. When he was about three, he fell into a kettle of rendering fat (outside open fire). His mother pulled him out of the boiling fat (lard) and put him into a barrel of flour. As a result of the burns his right leg was shorter than the left. He compensated by placing his weight on the right leg and bent his left knee. Mom said his buttocks were horribly scarred. In mom’s button box were buttons from the pants he was wearing at the time. They were small, black and trimmed in gold. Mom had a pieced comforter which had a piece of the pants dad was wearing. As I remember they were navy blue serge.
Then, when he was six, he developed spinal meningitis. He was the only one of seven cases in the neighborhood who survived. His “Uncle Doc” curtailed his practice to care for him. At one time the top of his head touched his back. I did talk to dad about this and he told me there was snow on the ground when he became ill. The next time he was “awake” the apple trees were blooming outside his window. Mother didn’t know what medications were used, if any. The only treatment she knew of was his being wrapped in warm, wet wool blankets. Mom had one of them – they were hand-woven. I don’t know what happened to it. “Uncle Doc” was, I believe, Robert Hawes, who practiced in Cambridge City (Ohio).(e)
As a result of both of these (illnesses), dad learned to walk three times.
The only incident I remember about school before college is that one teacher promised a prize for the student who “parsed” a difficult sentence. I have the prize – a copy of “Paradise Lost” bound in red Moroccan leather. Grandfather Hawes was a school teacher. I don’t know at what level or whether dad had his father as a teacher. I met one of his teachers at “Old Harmony” reunion – she was 90 and recognized me as “Ross Hawes’ daughter”. I looked like dad’s sister Elizabeth.(f) (I wasn’t with dad when she came up to me).
Uncle James had a church at Ada, Ohio where Ohio Northern (now University) was located. Dad stayed with his brother and enrolled as a pre-med student. After one year, his father died and he had to return to the farm. I don’t know when he returned to ONU, but there wasn’t enough money for med school, so he elected Civil Engineering. He was excellent in math.
Sometime, I’m not sure, dad had the fastest team of horses in Guernsey County – I remember the story that they were matched greys. One Sunday afternoon he had one hitched to a buggy and took a girl for a ride. When he took her home, something started the horse, and he bolted. A hub of a wheel caught the girl’s skirt and tore it off! There she was sans skirt. She never spoke to dad again, and her father ordered him never to return as his daughter was disgraced.
Then in 1909 or 1910 he was to build a bridge at Fredericksburg, Indiana. He was invited to an Epworth League (a young-peoples group of the Methodist Church) and he met mom – she was 15 or 16 years old and that was that! They were married 15 Jan (19)14 – dad said he had to wait for mom to grow up. Mom said her mother wouldn’t let her marry until she was at least 20.
While dad was building the bridges and courting mom, he and Andy Roll (the school teacher of all eight grades + mom’s teacher) met at the local livery station. They proceeded to drink a jug of the local “white lightning”. When he showed up for his date, he told mom he and Andy Roll had been buying and selling white horses. Grandma told him to leave. From then on, when a man had too much to drink, it was said he was selling white horses.
I have a snapshot of dad with a derby perched on the side of his head and with a silly grin on his face – and without question kinda inebriated. That was the day I was born and the last drink dad had until after his kids were grown. He was 36 at the time.
Dad was a bigger “kid” than either of his two. He was the one who selected that perfect “too large” Christmas tree. If it wasn’t, somehow he picked some extra branches and nailed them into the “bad” side. He was the one who filled our Easter baskets – no hollow chocolate bunnies for him – ours were solid. He bought firecrackers for us and night “works”. We had sparklers – dad shot off the rest. Mom said she spent her birthday, July 5th, cleaning up the trash left over from the Fourth.
One of my fondest memories – on Sunday we always had dinner (noon) in the dining room – linen tablecloth, good dishes, etc. One Sunday we had watermelon for desert. While mom was in the kitchen, Dad showed us how to spit watermelon seeds so they would stick to the ceiling. Mom returned and got so tickled, we showed off more until she told us to stop. Of course, none of the seeds stuck – they were all over the table and floor.
Mom told me that dad wanted us to have a much better childhood than he had. He never had a Christmas tree and other “special” days were ignored. On my fourth Christmas, our tree was stolen. On Christmas Eve dad walked all over downtown for four hours in sub-zero weather until he found one – a scrawny one, but a Christmas Tree.
Incidentals:
As a child, dad remembered the sky becoming dark with the migrations of passenger pigeons. The last one died at Cincinnati in 1914. I have dad’s diploma from college. It’s yours if you’re interested. The family attended dad’s 50th anniversary at Ohio Northern. (I think *** was with us.) Each 50th member of the class spoke – some very successful in their fields. Pops bragged not about his financial success, but about his family and his children – both Army officers.
In looking back, dad must have been quite a sophisticate. He was knowledgeable about music, drama and literature. I’m quite sure he took us out of school to see/hear John Phillips Sousa, Houdini and Thurston. He loved movies – we saw Lon Chaney in “Hunchback of Notre Dame”, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. movies, John Boles in “Desert Song”. We saw most of the operettas at the old English Theater – “The Red Mill”, “Merry Widow”. He took us to see the Rainbow Division’s welcome after WWI. There was a Victory Arch on Meridian Street.
Dad had a beautiful baritone voice; couldn’t read a note of music, but had perfect pitch and an instinctive feel for music.
The Allen family came to this country from England – when I don’t know. According to a “word of mouth” story, one of my ancestors was an admiral in the British Navy. Some place his ships captured a pirate ship. One of the pirates’ captives was a Japanese princess. The admiral took her back to England, fell in love, and married; therefore, we have a wee bit of Japanese blood!
I know nothing of the Allens until just before the Civil War. My great-grandfather(a) had a woolen mill in Salem (Indiana). During the Civil War when Morgan made his raid through southern Indiana, he paid Morgan $500.00 not to burn his mill.
My grandfather ran away to join the Union forces when he was 16. He was returned home by the army. A year later he ran away again and this time he was permitted to stay. I think he was a bugler with an Indiana outfit. I saw his discharge papers once. (Grandma Allen drew a widow’s pension.) Butch(b) may have the discharge. He was injured – had shrapnel in his legs that were not removed.
When he returned, he started a grocery store in Salem, married, and had 3 sons – Clarence, Robert, and Fred . After his wife died, he moved to Fredericksburg and married Sarah Shanks. This marriage produced five children – Harry, Jason, Laura, Lillian, and Robert who was born unable to hear. (He attended the School for the Deaf in Indianapolis.) Mother told me she never knew her father to have a “well” day. The shrapnel wounds never healed and the dressings had to be changed daily. He died when mom was ten. Fred (mom’s half-brother) and Harry took over the store. When Jason was old enough, he went into the store. Eventually the two brothers bought out Fred who moved to Louisville and started another grocery.
Harry had two boys – Frederick (M.D.) and James Douglas, an attorney. Jason had two children; Ruth by his first marriage, and Russell by his second. Fredericksburg was flooded many times by the Bleu River (now part of which has been declared “wild river”). Harry had died, so Jason and Russell moved the store to Palmyra where it is still in operation.
Lillian and Robert never married. Lillian worked for an Indianapolis real estate developer who in the 1920s developed Hollywood, Florida. Lillian went with the firm to Florida. She was Secretary/Treasurer of the firm, made scads of money, invested in real estate, and bought a car. (She drove back and forth Hollywood-Indiana. How she ever did it, I’ll never know – she was a miserable driver.) She lost everything when a hurricane hit Florida. All the buildings were destroyed although she still owned the land. Many years later she sold it at “fire sale” prices. She had two love affairs; the first her boss in Florida and the second when she was working in New York. Auntie said he looked like Edward G. Robinson. I always thought Auntie was in love with dad and she was jealous of mom. I was the peace-maker between the two of them for years.
Grandma Allen was a Shanks – English I think. I heard the family came from Virginia and came by flat boat down the Ohio (River) to southern Indiana. How many there were in the family is unknown. Grandma’s great-uncle was a circuit rider for the Methodist Church and I was told he started a school which became DePauw University. Another Shanks (not kissin’ kind) was an army general. Camp Shanks, N.Y. was named for him. Camp Shanks was important in WWII. When I first went into the army, an article on leadership, written by General Shanks, was part of the “Officers Guide”. After he retired, he researched and wrote a Shanks’ genealogy. (Butch has a copy.)
Laura Lucille Allen Hawes
She was quite a gal! I not only lover her, I liked her as a person and admired her. She had an 8th grade education, but knew more grammar than I ever learned – she helped me. (Auntie went to business school in Louisville.) She worked as a telephone operator in Trotter’s Grocery Store until she married. As a kid, we always had relatives living with us – mostly Allens. Grandma Hawes, then Ruth while she went to high school (Tech), Auntie in between jobs, and Robert during the depression. Grandma Allen was with us also. The old rocking chair (lightwood) was a wedding present for mom and dad. Both grandmothers died sitting in that chair. Butch also claimed that chair and he now has it. I remember it in the dining room as a child and mom would rock both of us at the same time. Dad also used the chair to read to both of us!
I remember mom standing at the stove getting dinner and tears were running down her cheeks – her (feet) hurt so much. She never had had proper-fitting shows for her first 60 years, but she was very, very careful that we kids had the best fitting shoes available.
Our family always talked after dinner while still at the table. We kids could ask anything and dad would try to answer it or tell us where we could find the answer. Dad was a well-read man who remembered what he read. (I inherited this trait of memory.) One night while mom and I were doing dishes, she again had tears in her eyes. She believed she lacked the education and intelligence to keep up with her family. I suggested she take time away from housework and start reading, and boy did she ever. Until the last two months of her life she read two newspapers a day. On the day she died, when I walked into her room, she was sedated and under oxygen. She said “shun” – she wanted to know the outcome of the election the previous day. She then said “russ”. I figured out she wanted to know the outcome of the IU-Russian basketball game the night before. She loved horses and was an avid baseball, basketball, and ice-hockey fan.
Mom basically was a stoic. Outside of her feet, she never complained – she once told me her father complained constantly and she never knew him to have a “well” day. At 79 she had a colostomy which merely irritated her by the length of time involved daily.
To repeat – she was quite a gal, and this gal was blessed by having wonderful parents.