1908 08 – Uncle Lou – Str. Huronic
1908 – Lewis M. Higgins – Str. Huronic
Postmark:
SAULT SAINT MARIE, MICH.
AUG 8 1908
5-PM
To:
Lewis M. Higgins
119 Myrtle St.
Manchester, NH
From:
Uncle Lou
Message:
Lake Huron, August 7. 9.15 AM
My bedroom last night. Delightfully cool and fresh air, No land in sight Shall sleep here three nights.
Uncle Lou
[AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is an imaginary interview that an imaginary student had with the real Lewis Merrill Higgins. Who, in 1908 received a postcard from his uncle which, 114 years later, I bought on eBay. This fictitious interview is like a mosaic tile floor. The tiles are the facts. The grout is the creative license I took to complete the story. The “interview” took place (when doesn’t matter) at The Ugly Duck Coffee Shop (real) in downtown Rochester. Petronella Higgins (a composition of two of my great-aunts), the interviewer, enters the coffee shop and looks for what she assumes will be an elderly gentleman. Spotting the only one in the shop, she approaches…]
NELL: Good morning, Mr. Higgins. Thanks for taking the time to meet with me. As I explained on the phone, my name is Petronella Higgins. Yes, it’s a strange family name. That’s why all my friends call me Nell. I am a freshman over at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and for my Creative Literature class, I need to submit an interview with someone that I find interesting.
LOUIS: Nice to meet you, Nell. Please call me Lou. Before we start, I do have a quick question. Why did you pick me and what makes you think that I am the least bit interesting?
NELL: I figured that would be your first question. Well, my dad collects vintage postcards. Especially ones with ships of the Great Lakes and that have been posted with a story written on them. As I was going through them one day, I came up with the idea of interviewing one of the individuals from these cards. Either the sender or the recipient. After some internet sleuthing, I was able to find you as the recipient of this card here and I also found out that the sender was your Uncle Lou. After a bit more sleuthing, I was able to hunt down your son Donald, and here we are. Before we start the interview, Lou, can I get you a cup of coffee or tea?
LOUIS: That would be great. I’ll just have a plain coffee, black.
NELL: Sure thing. Grab the booth over there and I’ll go get the coffee.
[As Nell gets the coffees, Lou Higgins picks a booth near the windows overlooking downtown Rochester. A view that has continued to change since he moved to Rochester in the 1920s.]
LOUIS: OK. Where would you like me to start?
NELL: The beginning is always a good starting point. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Where you’re from? When were you born? That sort of thing.
LOUIS:
OK. As you know, my name is Louis Merrill Higgins. This is an old family name. Louis is my mother’s older brother. He is the one who sent me the postcard. On the card, he claimed he spelt Louis with an “e” and “w” instead of an “o” and “u” on purpose so that the mailman wouldn’t get us confused. He liked to tease me like that. My middle name is “Merrill,” which happens to be my mother’s family name.
I was born on April 19, 1901., in Manchester, N.H.. I’m a bit of a history buff, and when I talk about dates, I like to identify other events that took place around the same time. I feel that this puts a little perspective on the discussion. A quick warning, I tend to ramble, so if I get too boring, or you start to drift off, just let me know.
For example, 1901, January to be exact, Queen Victoria died at the age of 81 years old after serving 63 years as the Queen of England. Up until that time, Queen Victoria was England’s longest-serving monarch. She was then succeeded by her son, the Prince of Wales, who was crowned Edward VII. Just eight months later, on September 6, President McKinley was assassinated by an American Anarchist, Leon Czolgosz. He was shot in the stomach and died eight days later. That very day, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was then sworn in as the 26th president. And just (8) weeks after that, Mr. Czolgos was identified, tried and executed at the Auburn Prison in Auburn, N.Y., using a new form of execution, the electric chair. Three jolts, 1,800 volts each, and he was dead in thirty seconds. I read that before Czolgosz was buried in an unmarked grave at the prison, his body was covered with sulfuric acid, causing it to completely disintegrate and all his belongings burned to avoid exhibitions of his life.
NELL: Wow. I didn’t realize that 1901 was that exciting. So, tell me a little about your hometown, Manchester.
LOUIS:
The area’s original inhabitants surrounding Manchester, like most early New England towns, were Native Americans, the Pennacock. They were a small Algonquian-speaking tribe and called the Amoskeag Fall on the Merrimack River in Manchester, Namaokeag, which meant “good fishing place”. The name “Pennacock” came from the Abenaki word, another local Indian tribe, that meant “At the bottom of the hill.”
Just like other towns and villages in colonial times, Manchester was settled near water for use as a power source and to facilitate transportation. So, in 1722, a fellow named John Goffe settled on Cohas Brook, which is a small creek between Pine Island Pond and the Merrimack River. Here, let me show you on this Google map. He later built a dam and a sawmill, dubbing the town “Old Harry’s Town.” Then in 1727, Massachusetts, because New Hampshire did not yet exist, granted a charter to the veterans that served in Queen Anne’s War under a Captain William Tyng and renamed the village “Tyngstown.” Unfortunately, this grant was ruled invalid when New Hampshire became a state and was separated from Massachusetts in 1741. The town was then reestablished in 1751 as Derryfield. In 1807, Samuel Blodget constructed the first canal and lock that would allow vessels to pass around the Amoskeag falls making Manchester a major transportation hub between the villages in northern New Hampshire and Boston to the south. Then, in 1809, Benjamin Prichard installed a water-powered cotton spinning mill. This would begin Manchester’s long and successful history in the textile industry. Production peaked around the mid-1800s when Manchester became home to the world’s largest cotton mill, Mill No. 11, which stretched 900 ft. long and 103 ft. wide. At about this time, the town was finally named Manchester, in deference to Manchester, England. Manchester would become known for more than just textiles. Other companies in the community manufactured items such as cigars, paper, rifles, sewing machines, fire engines, and locomotives, especially during the Civil War when shipments of cotton from the southern states all but dried up. The economy hummed along and grew until the 1950s and 1960s. This was when, like most industrial cities in the north, manufacturing moved south where there were less unions and cheaper labor.
NELL: OK. Now tell me a little bit about your family. Let’s start with your parents, Wilson and Anne, correct?
LOUIS:
Yes. Although my mom liked to be called by her middle name, Blanche. My father’s name is Wilson Freeman Higgins. He was born on February 6, 1866, or 1867. It’s funny, his actual birth year became a long-standing family mystery. Various records, censuses, marriage, and death certificates identify his birth year as 1867. Even his tombstone states 1867. He even had two birth certificates, one for each year. When you would ask him which year he was born, he would chuckle and say, “I don’t know, I was too young to remember.” Like me, he was born and raised in Manchester, spending his entire life there, including the day he died on April 10, 1948. But he did leave for a short period of time. In 1886, he attended college at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, 180 miles away as the crow flies, and graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. After graduation, he came back to Manchester, where he met my mother. They were married on November 22, 1898, and moved into my childhood home at 119 Myrtle Street. My father would live there until he died. He was self-employed for most of his career, served as a city representative, and taught metal working at the Institute of Arts and Sciences until his retirement in 1947 at 81. Shortly after retiring, he died of a heart attack on April 13, 1948. He was 82 years old.
My mom’s name was Anne Blanche. Her family name was Merrill. Thus, my middle name. She was also born in Manchester. Her birthday was November 9, 1866. My mom was quiet and genteel. She spent most of her 20s taking care of her ailing parents, my grandparents. My grandparents were Major Henry-Clinton and Diantha Merrill. Grandpa was a prosperous grain merchant, and they lived in a large Victorian house on Myrtle St. This would become my childhood home. He got the title “Major” because he served as commander of the Amoskeag Veterans of Manchester. I’ll talk about this a little bit later. Around 1891, my grandmother became gravely ill and died. She was not sick for long and was only 62 when she died. The doctors said she died from Pernicious Anemia. I guess that’s when the body cannot make red blood cells due to the lack of B-12. Today, it’s treated with a simple injection. Grandpa soon followed. He died a couple of years later, in 1893, at 67. This left my mom, who was only 28 at the time, with a sizable inheritance and the house on Myrtle St. But, at that time in New Hampshire, a single woman could not own a home. But with the help of her older brother, my Uncle Lou, who was seven years older than her, she continued to live in the house with their younger brother, Uncle Carl. But tragedy would strike again. In 1897, when he was just 28 years old, Carl died of kidney disease. So, in less than six years, my mother lost both of her parents and younger brother and found herself alone in that big house on Myrtle St.
On November 22, 1898, my parents married and moved into the Myrtle house. I soon followed in 1901. My younger brother, Carl Merrill Higgins, named after my mom’s younger brother, was born on June 17, 1905. Unfortunately, he would not live long. In early June 1907, Carl came down with what appeared to be a cold or the flu. After his condition worsened, my parents rushed him to a hospital in Boston, where he died a couple of weeks later from Tubercular Meningitis. He was laid to rest at the Merrill family plot in Pine Grove Cemetery, along with my grandparents and Uncle Carl. I don’t believe that my mom ever recovered from these losses. She suffered for twenty years with a heart condition; I felt it was a broken heart, and she died on January 21, 1924, from edema of the lungs. She was only 57 years old.
As I said, Uncle Lou was my mother’s older brother and my namesake. 1908, he took his family on a trip around the Great Lakes. I would have been around seven and a half years old at that time. I’m guessing the trip would have started in Buffalo, N.Y., and crossed Lake Erie, then up the Detroit River, across Lake St. Clair, then up the St. Clair River and Lake Huron, through the Soo Locks, and across Lake Superior and then back again. I imagine it would have taken around six weeks to complete. The postcard he sent me was postmarked August 8, 1908, from Sault Saint Marie, MI, where the Soo Locks are located. Because Lake Superior is 23 feet higher than Lake Huron, the locks are required for a ship to pass from one lake to the other lake. At the time he would have sent this postcard, there were just two locks: the Poe, which could handle ships up to 600’, and the Canadian Lock, which was for smaller freighters and pleasure boats. Reading the postcard, it sounds like he wrote it somewhere in the middle of Lake Superior and then mailed it when he reached Sault Saint Marie.
I had a typical childhood. My dad always wanted me to go to his alma mater, Cornell University. Colleges. At that time most colleges required students to be proficient in Latin and Greek. These were two areas where I needed to improve. So, in my mid-teens, he enrolled me in the Cascadilla School. The Cascadilla School is a college prep school founded in the late 1800s in Ithica, N.Y., where Cornell University is. So, after a couple of years at Cascadilla, I enrolled in Cornell in 1921. In college, my nickname was “Hig.” Being a bit older than my classmates, I never felt a need to join a fraternity. However, I was on the crew team, ran cross country, and joined the Masonic Club. In 1925, I graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
A year after my mother died and shortly after I graduated college, my dad and I decided to take a trip to Europe. We left in the early summer of 1925 and spent a couple weeks visiting England, Ireland, and the Continent. We returned on the RMS Homeric, leaving Southampton on August 24th and arriving in New York on September 2, 1925. The trip was memorable but not nearly as interesting as RMS Homeric’s history and a crossing that took place shortly before our trip.
She was initially launched in 1913 as the S.S. Columbus for the German shipping company Norddeutscher Lloyd at the F. Shichau shipyard in Danzig, Germany, which is now Gdansk, Poland. However, the construction stopped in August 1914, one month after the start of WWI, when the shipbuilder was inundated with German naval contracts. It remained there, partially built, until the end of the war. In 1919, as part of reparations for the war, England laid claim to the S.S. Columbus, who in turn sold it to the White Star Line. White Star renamed it the RMS Homeric. In 1920, work resumed under the watchful eyes of officials from Harland and Wolff, the same company that built the RMS Titanic. Work was slow due to material shortages and a reluctant workforce that was not too keen on handing the ship over to its former enemy. It was finally completed and launched in 1921. This is not where its’ colorful history ends.
In April 1925, just a few months before our departure, the RMS Homeric was on a routine run from Southampton to New York when it received a distress call from the Japanese freighter Raifuku Maru. The Raifuku was a freighter with the Kokusai Kisen shipping company transporting grain from Boston to Hamburg, Germany. It sailed into a heavy storm, and the cargo of wheat began to shift, causing the ship to take on an increasing list to one side. The Homeric immediately altered course and steamed 111 miles at 20 knots in a 55-knot gale with 23 to 32-foot waves to help the sinking freighter. Nothing could prepare the Captain, James Robert, or his crew for what awaited them when they arrived. The Raifuku was listing 60 degrees with members of its crew hanging from the high-side railing. With each passing wave, Raifuku’s smokestacks would dip into the on-coming wave, taking on more water and further increasing the list. The Raifuku crew tried to launch lifeboats, but they were immediately destroyed against the side of the ship. It took Captain Robert 20 minutes to bring the Homeric around to the lee side of the Raifuku, in an attempt to lower its lifeboats and save the Raifuku’s crew. Unfortunately, he was too late. By the time he got into position, the Raifuku capsized and sank, taking her eighty-eight crew members with her. Captain Robert searched for survivors, to no avail. He then had to make the difficult decision to abandon the search and continue to New York. Upon arrival, Captain John Robert was praised for his heroic efforts. However, there were several passengers who criticized him for not doing enough to save the crew of the Raifuku Maru. Some even insinuated that his lack of effort was racially motivated. Captain Robert was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing.
NELL: Wow. A very interesting childhood. Especially your trip to Europe so close after the sinking of the Raifuku Maru. I can imagine there were a ton of ships sinking during that time that were just overshadowed by the sinking of the RMS Titanic and Lusitania. So, at this point, you are around 24 years old, where did you go from there?
LOUIS:
Right. I was 24 years old, fresh out of college, and needed to get on with life. The first thing I wanted to do was marry my college sweetheart. Her name was Leila Warren Beaver. She was born in Verona, NY on March 18, 1904. Verona is a very small town in the middle of New York primarily known for its proximity to Oneida and supporting its china and flatware manufacturing. Harry Beaver, her father, was the town’s Postmaster. There were not a lot of women at Cornell in the early 1900s. In my graduating class, there were around 600 men and only 200 women. How we ended up together, I will never know. She was not only beautiful, but she was very intelligent. She was only 17 when she came to Cornell and graduated in just four years with a bachelor’s degree in arts and science. Quite the accomplishment for a woman from a small New York town in the 1920s.
The second thing I needed to do was to find a job. Here too, I was extremely fortunate. Shortly before graduation, I was recruited as a draftsman by the Pratt & Whitney Machine and Tool, which was a subsidiary of Niles Bement Pond, then the largest machine tool corporation in the world. This Pratt & Whitney is not the same as the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company. That spin-off would not be established for another couple of years. Unfortunately, the job was in Rochester, NY, away from both Leila and my family back in New Hampshire.
So, I packed up my belongings and moved to Rochester. I rented a small apartment at 1652 East Avenue, which was about fifteen blocks from my office. It is a doable walk but a little more challenging during the winter. Leila moved back to Verona to live with her parents. We wrote to each other, and I would take the train to visit her every couple of weeks. Fortunately, I did not have to do this for too long. On Christmas of 1925, I asked Leila to marry me. We were married on June 3, 1926, and she moved into my small apartment on East Avenue.
1928 was a big year. On January 17, our first child was born, Donald Beaver Higgins. I also was promoted from Draftsman to Engineer. The extra income allowed Leila and I to move from our apartment on East Avenue to a new house at 111 Kingsboro Rd. At this point, things were looking good. But, as the old saying goes, “What goes up must come down.” And it came crashing down on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the start of the Great Depression. What followed the market crash were massive layoffs across the country. And I was not to be spared. In late 1929, just before Christmas, I was laid off at Pratt & Whitney Machine and Tool. I was 27, unemployed, had a mortgage, and recently married with a 1-year-old child. What was I to do? Leila and I talked about moving back to Manchester to work for my father. But we liked the life we started in Rochester. So, we decided to stick it out. Fortunately, shortly after I was laid off, I found a new job with a local Real Estate company. Not my ideal job or what I went to school for, but it paid the bills.
I stayed with the Real Estate company until 1933. That year, I got a new job with an insurance company, and Leila and I moved to 111 Coniston Dr. in Brighton, a suburb of Rochester. I stayed with this job until 1936. That year, I made another career change, and Leila and I moved to the house next door at 119 Coniston Dr.. I had a friend named George Page. He and I decided to start a hardware company that wholesales hardware to local builders. I was to be President and Treasurer; George would be vice president, and Leila would be the Secretary. Given the difficult times, the business was pretty successful. But as any owner of a small company will tell you, it is a 24-hour-a-day job.
So, in 1940, I decided to return to my roots and get a job as an engineer. My first engineering job was with Wms. Lozier Inc. in the Lincoln Building on Gibbs St. in downtown Rochester. They are a civil engineering firm specializing in designing and building city sewer systems. With the war came new opportunities. The first was the development of the Seneca Ordnance Depot in Seneca, NY. It was going to be a munitions storage and disposal facility for the U.S. Army and was constructed on 11,000 acres between Seneca Lake and Cayuga Lake just south of Seneca Falls, NY. It would eventually store radioactive materials from the Manhattan Project, and during the Cold War, the depot held the largest stockpile of Army nuclear weapons in the country. Besides all this, it held the world’s largest herd of white deer. Now, these deer aren’t albinos; they have leucism, which is a genetic condition that carries a set of recessive genes for an all-white coat. The second project that I was involved with was a “secret” manufacturing plant in Kansas. I never really knew what the plant was for or what they did. I was told that these projects earned me my draft deferment.
After the war, I was ready to slow things down a bit. My next job was with Ross Engineering, a local manufacturing rep. They specialized in motors, gears, and pumps for power transmission. I was one of the application engineers who would travel to the various sites to ensure the product was properly applied. The owner of the company was Cleland Ross. I later found out that all six of his children served during the war: five sons and a daughter. His youngest son, Pfc. Cleland was captured during the Battle of the Bulge and was held at Stalag IV-B, the largest POW camp in Germany, until the end of the war. The prisoners were finally liberated by the Soviet Union but were held for an additional month before finally being released. I can’t even imagine the stress he and his wife must have endured. I would stay with the company until I retired in the early 1960s.
NELL: So, careers in engineering, real estate, insurance, wholesale hardware, and back to engineering. What was Leila doing during this period?
LOUIS:
Yes, Leila, thank God for her. During all of this, she was key in holding everything together. Her biggest challenge was managing me, Donald, and the various households. In addition to those challenges, she was the Secretary for our wholesale hardware company. During the hard times, she would pick up jobs as a counter clerk or a secretary in one of the local businesses. What she loved was being involved with the local community. When Donald was in school, she was very active in the PTA. But her passion was the Cornell’s Women’s Club. This was made up of alumni women from Cornell University. She served in various positions from 1938 on into the 1950s. The club would hold dances, music events, and dinners to raise money for local charities. She was heavily involved with all the preparations. Boy, did she love it.
NELL: Besides work, the family and Leila, any other memorable events?
LOUIS:
Oh, for sure. I experienced ups and downs as most people go do. Let’s see.
Donald graduated from Brighton High School in 1945. Thank goodness he was too young for the draft. Plus, at that time, it looked like the war was winding down. VE day was in May and VJ Day followed three months later in August. After graduation, he went on to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. I did not know that, although small and relatively unknown, RPI is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world. Older than MIT. He enjoyed college. Even joined a fraternity. Theta Xi, I think. He ended up graduating in 1950 with a degree in engineering. His first job out of college was with Bausch and Lomb in the production control department. In September 1951, he married Rosemarie. Her middle name was Theresa, I think, and her family name was Schnepf. She grew up in Rochester too. Her dad was a tool engineer. Nice guy and very German. I think his parents immigrated here from Germany. He had a rough go of it during the war. He lost his job and had a tough time finding a new one. After they were married, Don and Theresa lived with us until I retired. We sold them the house on Coniston when we moved to Canandaigua. More on that a little later.
Don did have a little brother. His name was Peter. For years after Don was born, Leila and I tried and tried to have more children. After a couple of years, our prayers were finally answered. On February 5, 1932, Peter was born. Sadly, our time with him was very short. He died a couple days after birth due to an underdeveloped heart. It’s something they can fix today with a minor operation. Leila was heartbroken. After Peter died, we just did not have it in us to keep trying for more children. We decided one was enough and focused our love and affection on little Don.
Let’s see. More life experiences. Oh, I was hit by a car once. It was before Thanksgiving 1946. I was leaving work, and I was crossing Main St. East at South Avenue. Honestly, it was my fault. I took off a bit early, before the light was entirely green, and got clipped by a taxicab. They took me to Highland Hospital down on South St. The injuries were relatively minor. Nothing was broken, just some heavy bruising to my right arm and leg.
A couple of years later, I got robbed. A young man came up to me asking for money. He said that he had a knife. I gave him the money I had, just a few bucks, and a watch that Leila had given me for our anniversary. He didn’t do anything. Once I gave him the money and the watch, he just took off. They quickly caught the guy, and I got the watch back—not the money. But I really didn’t care about that. I still remember him. Henry Brugger. He had a pretty rough go of it. Spent most of his childhood in St. Mary’s Boys Orphanage Asylum over in Broom County. When he got out of there, he was a patient at the Newark State School for the Mentally Defective over in Newark. During the war, he spent a couple of years with the New York Coast Guard Reserve. When he robbed me, I think he was staying at the Powers Hotel over on West Main and working at the Diamond Bar over on East Ave.. He did sixty days up at the Monroe County Penitentiary for stealing my watch. Yep, a rough go of it.
One of my worst memories is when I hit a young girl with my car. It was August 1960. I was driving home from work. I left a little early because I had a dentist appointment and was headed down Blossom Rd. The girl’s name was Donna Schwan. She was only 12 years old and was riding her bike to a local store. It was a warm summer day before school started. I’m assuming she was going to the store for some candy or maybe going to meet a friend. It was only a couple of blocks from her home. As I was saying, I was headed down Blossom Rd., when suddenly she darted out in front of my car. There was really nothing I could do. Fortunately, I was going slow and was able to stop quick enough to avoid any real damage. She did suffer a broken leg, and they took her to Genesee Hospital. I felt terrible. I visited her a couple of times in the hospital and brought her some treats. Met her parents. Really nice people. Yep. One of the worst experiences.
I guess those are the only memories that were really newsworthy.
NELL: Sorry to hear about Donna. That must have been traumatic. So, I assume you are retired. Talk to me a little bit more about that.
LOUIS:
Retirement? So, where did we leave off? Yes. I was still working for Ross Engineering. I was a Field Engineer, traveling to customers and ensuring they applied our products correctly. By the early sixties, we were ready for retirement. Leila and I had actually started planning for retirement long before I actually decided to retire. During the summers when Donald was young, we would drive down to Canandaigua, which is a small town in Ontario County located about 25 miles from Rochester and sits on the north end of Canandaigua Lake, which happens to be one of New York’s eleven finger lakes. We would spend the day on the lake: swimming, boating, and just plain relaxing. Canandaigua’s population was around ten thousand people, which gave it a small-town appeal. One of its claims to fame was the Susan B. Anthony trial of 1873. She was tried for illegally voting; only men could vote at the time; she was found guilty and fined $100. She never paid the fine.
I loved that lake and always wanted to live there. Retirement offered the perfect opportunity. Someone once told me that “Canandaigua” is a Seneca word meaning “place selected for a settlement.” So, in 1952, Leila and I decided to “settle” there and bought a house on West Lake Road. The house was just across the street from the lake. Since I was still working, we could only use the house during the summer months. But, in 1963, I retired for good, and we moved into the house full-time.
I’ve always loved boating. So, one of the first things I bought after we moved in for good was a brand-new Chris Craft Corsair. I debated between the Corsair, which had the “new” fiberglass hull, and an older model, which would have had a wood hull. Practicality won out, and I bought the Corsair. Wise call. I loved that boat. The second thing I did was join the Red Jacket Power Squadron. The “Red Jackets” are part of the U.S. Power Squadron. The main goal of these organizations is to promote boating safety through education. I really enjoyed planning, scheduling, and holding the different education programs not only in New York but in the surrounding states. In time, I achieved the rank of Lt. Commander and received an award from the Canandaigua Safety Council for arranging powerboat operating courses for more than three hundred young people.
Leila’s experience was a little bit different. She was born and raised in Verona, which is even smaller than Canandaigua. So, after spending more than thirty years in Rochester, Leila was a little reluctant about moving back to a small, quiet town like Canandaigua. She spent the first couple of years traveling back to Rochester to visit friends and socialize at the Cornell Women’s Club. But over time, she became more involved with the local community, especially the First Congregational Church of Canandaigua, and learned to love it as much as I did. I hadn’t mentioned it earlier, but for years, Leila suffered from multiple sclerosis. But she never let it slow her down. She was bound and determined not to let it define her or her last years. But eventually, that horrible disease caught up to her, and on October 17, 1968, I lost my beloved Leila. For forty-two years, she had been a constant presence in my life. Now, she was gone, and I found myself all alone.
At the time, I was sixty-seven years old and a widower. I never thought I would outlive Leila. I think most men think they will die before their wives. I was depressed for quite a while. Fortunately, I had Dennis, Rosemarie, and the grandkids to keep me distracted. My life became fairly routine: gardening, volunteer work at my church, teaching squadron classes, enjoying my grandkids’ activities, friends stopping by and enjoying the lake, etc… But I have to say, as time went on, the northern New York winters started to wear on me. Below-freezing four months of the year with a foot of snow on the ground. I was cold all the time and was starting to have trouble getting around. So, in the early seventies, I decided to buy a house in Florida and start to spend my winters there.
I didn’t know much about Florida at the time, but a friend recommended that I look at Salt Springs. It was a quiet, small town in the middle of the Ocala National Forest in central Florida, away from the hustle and bustle of both coasts. I went to visit once and fell in love. I didn’t want anything big, so I bought a small modular home in one of the newly developed retirement communities. It was nothing special. It was small enough for me but big enough for Donald and his family when they came to visit. When they would come to visit, they would go hiking, biking, and swim in the local swim holes that were spring-fed from what the locals called “boils.” The water from these “boils” is crystal clear. I also kept a small boat on Lake Kerr so that I could go fishing and take the kids water skiing. As luck would have it, Disney World opened in Orlando in 1971. Just an hour and a half drive from Grandpa’s house. Yet another reason to come down to visit me during those dark and cold winter months.
Well, I guess that about wraps it up for me. Thank you for bringing me this postcard. It surely has brought back some fond memories. Also, as I approach ninety years on this planet, it is kind of nice to look back and realize what a wonderful life I have had. I was raised by parents who loved me. I found someone to share my life and raise a family with. And I had a lot of time to share with my grandkids. I recently read a book. I can’t remember the name of it. But the main character had a quote that I will never forget, “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get.” I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed all the chocolates in my box. You know, they should make a movie based on that book.
NELL: Thank you so much for sharing your life with me. I’m glad I was able to track you down and return your postcard. But, before you leave, I wanted hear more about your Uncle Lou, the one who sent the postcard.
LOUIS:
In that case, I’ll need another coffee and to use the restroom.
Now, Uncle Lou was the only living relative I had on my mother’s side. Her parents and brother Carl all died long before I was born. I did have a couple of Uncles on my dad’s side.
Uncle George was my dad’s oldest brother. He was a successful lawyer in Boston and had four kids with his first wife, Aunt Mary. But, during the birth of their fifth child, she and the baby died during childbirth. It was something that wasn’t discussed. This all happened long before I was born. I never really got to know the older cousins. They were teenagers when I was born, and they lived in Boston. I do remember when I was around eight years old, my cousin James died of pneumonia. He was Uncle George’s second son and was only nineteen years old, very sad. That was one of my first experiences with death. A couple of years after Aunt Mary died, Uncle George remarried. I was much more familiar with his second wife, Aunt Ruth. George and Ruth went on to have five more kids. I was much closer in age to these cousins: Barb, Roger, Harry, and Richie. They had one more child, George Jr., but he died shortly after he was born. This was my second experience with death, and only a year after James died. Once they grew up, most of my cousins and Uncle George moved to the west coast. Oregon, I think.
Uncle Frank was my dad’s second older brother. He was about two years older than my dad. After graduating high school, he went to Harvard in Boston and never looked back. He became a successful surgeon and married Aunt Marion in 1895. She was from a very wealthy family in Boston. Her dad was Arthur C. Lawrence, founder and president of the A.C. Leather company located up in Peabody, Mass. His company was instrumental in making Peabody the “leather capital of the world.” I heard that when they were married, they invited more than one thousand people to the wedding. It is sad to say that it did not last long or end well. It must have been around 1908. I remember that was when my two cousins, Lawrence, we called him Larry, and Freeman, came to stay with us for the summer. She just got up and left the family. Went to live with relatives up in Greenwich, Connecticut. After a bitter battle, they were finally divorced in 1912, and Uncle Frank got custody of my cousins. Larry went to the Military Academy and retired as a Colonel in the Army. He died suddenly while visiting his daughter in New Zealand. Ended up buried in Arlington. I think Freeman moved to New York City and made a living as a liquor sales rep. Didn’t see much of them after I moved to Rochester.
So, back to Uncle Lou. He was quite a bit older than my mom—about 13 years older. After high school, he went to Dartmouth, up in Hanover (NH), and got a degree in Business. After college, he moved back in with my grandparents and clerked at Grandpa’s hardware store for several years. He married late. I think he was in his early 30s. So was Aunt Fanny. Once they married, they moved to Concord (NH), and Uncle Lou started up a Fire Insurance Agency, Straton, Merrill, and Co. Worked there for the rest of his life.
He and Aunt Fanny only had one child, Henry. I never really got to know him. Like Uncle George’s first four kids, they were all teenagers when I was born. And I never met Aunt Fanny. She died if skin cancer in March 1904, just a month before my second birthday. She was only 57 years old. The early 1900s were not great for my family; we lost Aunt Fanny, my brother Carl, and Cousins James and George. But what can you do other than keep moving forward?
Uncle Lou eventually remarried a couple of years after Aunt Fanny died in 1909. I remember because it was a year after he went on the trip around the Great Lakes and sent me that postcard. I would have been around nine years old. Her name was Elizabeth Conner. We called her Aunt Liz. She was a widow and quite a bit younger than Uncle Lou. Her first husband, David Conner, was also from Manchester. I assume that’s where they met. He died under unusual circumstances. I didn’t find out about it until I was a bit older. From what I understand, one day, he decided to kill himself by drinking a bottle of antiseptic and died of carbonic poisoning. He left Elizabeth a widow with a fourteen-year-old daughter, Mabel. In 1923, when I was a sophomore at Cornell, Uncle Lou died from pneumonia. Aunt Liz never remarried and died in 1946 at the age of eighty-one.
NELL: Wow. I find these stories amazing and humbling. Sorry. What I mean is, when I hear stories about my grandparents and great-grandparents, the times they lived in, and the struggles they faced, it puts my life and challenges in a humbling perspective. If you have the time, I would love to hear any more interesting stories you may have about any other of your relatives.
LOUIS:
I think I can spare some time. Let’s start on my mother’s side.
My great-grandfather’s name was Israel Higgins. He was born shortly after the Revolutionary War and died in the mid-1850s. He was born and raised in Manchester. As an adult, he lived on the east bank of the Merrimack River and worked for a shipping company taking boats and barges up and down the river between Concord to the north and Lowell to the south. They said he had more intimate knowledge of this route and river the any other man. In 1817, he was the first Captain to pilot a steamboat into Concord. He was described as imposing and fearless and rescued a lot of people from drowning in that river. Once the railroads were established and took over transporting goods from Concord to Lowell, he retired to a farm on Merrill Road and lived out his remaining days with his wife, my great-grandmother, Nancy. In total, they had eight or nine children. A couple of them died in childhood. My grandfather wasn’t the first Henry Clinton. His older brother was also named Henry Clinton. Unfortunately, he died the year before my grandfather. He was only five years old.
OK. A bit more on my maternal grandfather “The Major”. They called my grandfather Henry Clinton Merrill, “Major” because he was the commander of the Amoskeag Veterans of Manchester. The AVM was a civilian militia that dressed up in Revolutionary War uniforms and attended various civilian events, like parades, fairs, and summer picnics. Their most significant event came in 1855, when they travelled to Washington, D.C., to visit President Pierce, a fellow New Hampshirite. When it came to real military service, “Major” Merril was a bit less than enthusiastic. In 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, he was drafted into the New Hampshire militia. However, he did not have to serve. At that time, the U.S. Army allowed draftees the option of paying someone to serve as a substitute. So, “Major” Merrill paid Michael O’Brien, who was only 22 years old at the time, to serve in his place. O’Brien mustered into U Company of the 14th Regiment New Hampshire Infantry. It was during the later part of the war, so most of the action he saw were mild skirmishes in and around northern Virginia and the D.C area. He mustered out on July 8, 1865, a couple months after Lee surrendered to Grant.
Now “the draft” during the Revolutionary War worked a little differently. During the beginning of the war, given there was no central government, the states would draft able bodied men into their individual state militias. These “soldiers” received minimal training and had to supply their own weapons and uniforms. They served for limited periods of time and were only involved in local battles or emergencies. Once the battle was over, you essentially packed up your belongings and headed back to your farm. The state National Guards are a remnant of these local militias. This is exactly what happened to my Ggggf John Patton and his son, my Gggf, David Patton. They first enlisted in the 1st New Hampshire Regiment on September 30, 1775 under General John Stark and assisted in the Siege of Boston which lasted until early 1776. A little over a year later, on August 16, 1777, they enlisted again into General Stark’s regiment and fought at the Battle of Bennington. Although their service was only two months long and the battle was fought on a small New York farm ten miles outside Bennington, Vermont, this American victory was a key turning point in the war. As a result of this battle, British General Burgoyne not only lost a significant amount of his men, but he also lost the support of his Native American allies, horses, draft animals and provisions. These losses would lead to his eventual defeat at the Battle of Saratoga two months later. This victory galvanized the support for our fledgling Patriot cause and was a key role for bringing France into the war on the American side. France’s support was “the” key factor that led to an American victory six years later.
So, that covers about six generations of my family history. You know, I don’t think that I have ever sat down and outlined my life and that of my ancestors like that. It was an absolute treat, Nell. You are an absolute gem and you parents must be so proud. Please, when you have the assignment completed, I would surely like a copy. Thanks again.
NELL: Mr. Higgins, sorry Lou, the pleasure has been all mine. I found this conversation fascinating. The draft is due next week with the final submission due at the end of the month. Once I have draft completed, I will bring it over to you for any corrections.
LOU: Great. That timing works out perfectly. I’ll be staying in town until the end of the month, then heading back to Florida.
[AUTHOR’S NOTE: Louis Merrill Higgins died in Marion County, FL on May 4th 1993. Just past his 92nd birthday.]