For St. Patrick's Day, my dad and his siblings

I did not know I was Irish until I was in college and someone identified my last name. My father was proud of neither his family nor his heritage. Abandoned by their father; neither his mother or her family able to support five more children, he and his siblings had a hardscrabble existence. 

Aunt Laura, the oldest girl, remembered the Akron Children's Home as a nice place, with all the books she could read and her only taste of birthday cake. My dad and my Uncle Bill, the oldest, didn't do well in the Children's Home. My dad turned 17 on August 28th, and by the next weekend was in the army.

Uncle Bill was sent to Orient State School, a mental institution, where he remained until my parents sprung him and took him in in the sixties. He was presumed mentally retarded, a good catch-all for institutionalization. Over his many years at Orient he taught himself to read, and read "to all the boys." When he died his collection of books was enormous. He had every Zane Grey ever published.

The two youngest, Aunt Ruth and Aunt Helen Rita, were eventually taken in by relatives. Aunt Ruth by an aunt, Aunt Helen Rita by her grandmother.  Aunt Ruth was trained to and became a nun, Aunt Laura was trained be a secretary. She met her husband in the course of her job and married. Aunt Helen Rita just eloped one day. All the marriages were long and happy.

Here are pictures  of them I've put together from several sources.

Dad and his little brother, Uncle Bill.

About 1911.

Dad at his wedding, 1942.

Dad and his beret, in the sixties.

Dad in the mid seventies.

Uncle Bill in the fifties. So few pictures of him.

Aunt Laura, aged 16.

The oldest of the three girls.

Aunt Laura in her fifties.

Aunt Laura at 72. 

She was the snappy, fun loving aunt.

My Aunt Ruth, in the sixties.

When her order adopted the less formal habit Aunt Ruth went for it.

She even dyed her hair so her students would not know it was pure white under there.

Aunt Helen Rita, the youngest sister.

She was quiet, demure, meek.

Aunt Helen Rita in her seventies.

The three sisters in the twenties.

Aunt Ruth, left, Aunt Helen Rita center, Aunt Laura right.

Three of the siblings at my sister's wedding, late eighties.

Standing, me (the bridesmaid)

My cousin Pat, who actually is my dad's cousin and another abandoned child of his Irish clan.

Next Aunt Helen Rita, by her daughter Elaine.

Next, Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bill.

Seated, my cousin Marge, Aunt Helen Rita's other daughter,

and her husband Tom.  

Mom in Las Vegas

Mom came by her wandering foot genetically.  She was born in 1918 and on her father’s vacation excursions.  Niagara Falls or the Pacific Ocean, all the same to him, from Cleveland, Ohio.  I wonder what my grandmother thought of lugging bedding for a family, and probably guests, from one set of tourist cabins to another.  I do recall Mom telling of one vacation in which she had cherry pie for breakfast every morning.

Travel and vacations were important when I was a child.  A trip of several days to St. Louis when I was about six or seven involved motels and hotels, and probably tipped my frugal mother (and father) into the camping mode, the accommodation I recall from my childhood.  Some of my first blogs recounted family camping, and especially a tent my dad fashioned of a parachute, marbles, and a tent pole.

Mom budgeted for the annual family vacation.  She had a shoe box with envelopes, each labeled with something she was saving for.  One envelope was the vacation fund and the figures would accumulate down the outside of the envelope.  On one very cold winter morning the engine block of the family car cracked.  But by cashing some bonds and using the vacation fund our family left behind the 1935 Dodge.  My brother Walt and I were not sorry to be sitting in the back seat of a 1948 Dodge.  No more sheet metal slicing the backs of our legs.

When we moved to this house Mom was seventy, and still travelling.  In the preceding decade she had visited friends and relatives in Missouri, Texas, Florida and points between, accompanied by friends or her sisters-in-law.  Camping days were over, but I know Mom looked for the best motel deal available.  I have mental images of her at a motel counter, with tiny, white haired Aunt Helen Rita, negotiating a better rate.

Our Uncle Hank retired after we moved here, and mom noticed him and Aunt Flo taking a lot of little weekend trips—by bus.  Their church senior group organized the jaunts and mom was welcome to join them, if there was an unsold seat left.    After missing a few trips she would have enjoyed mom took matters into her own hands and joined Uncle Hank’s church.

The senior group of the church organized tours that required air travel and although Aunt Flo and Uncle Hank could be off to Disneyland or Broadway, mom was not interested in those tours.  Until the trip to Las Vegas came up.  Her cousin Tommy and his wife Mary would be coming from Texas to join them for several days in Las Vegas.  Mom was so excited she bought a new suit case. 

It would be my mother’s first ever airplane trip and I said I would see her to her gate and wait until she boarded (1995). Well, she could figure that out by herself!  It’s a long trudge to the gates at Cleveland Hopkins, but she only allowed me drop her.  As I slowed down, knowing my mom, I handed her two dollar bills and said that the approaching man, the Sky Cap, would be carrying her bag, and please tip him, and everyone else who helped her.  That’s how they earned a living.  I could not get out of the car in time; she got her suit case and marched right past the outstretched hand of the Sky Cap.

When I picked her up a week later she handed me two dollars, announcing she had carried her bag herself.  Everywhere. She and Tommy had a wonderful time.  In my files I have a picture of others in the party facing their machines, pulling handles, but Mom and Tommy sitting shoulder to shoulder, backs to a machine, chatting like long lost cousins.  I may never find the picture to illustrate the story, but you can see it in your mind’s eye, I know.  Oh, yes, she didn’t waste any money on those casinos, either.

Mom and Uncle Hank on vacation, about 1931

Sherbondy Hill

My dad and his siblings were orphans, for all practical purposes.  For reasons I can’t know my grandmother married a man fifteen years older than herself, left home and lived with her in-laws while her husband travelled as a railroad man.  In every other year there was another baby, the oldest my father, until in 1915 my grandmother packed up her four children and came home to Ohio from Pennsylvania for the birth of the fifth.

My grandmother sued my grandfather, probably for desertion, and he posted bond in Pennsylvania guaranteeing his appearance in court to answer the charge.  Instead, he “jumped bond,” went west under an assumed name and died of consumption fifteen years later.  Letters from his daughters begging him to return were found in his wallet, revealing his original identity.

Were these not real people the story could be maudlin.   The family lived in the overcrowded childhood home of their mother, with her parents and those of her nine siblings still at home.  In her journal my Aunt Laura mentioned the terrible overcrowding that  sent them living in a succession of houses, moving when the rent came due.  Eventually four of the children were taken to the Children’s Home and from there our Uncle Bill was committed to Orient State School for the Insane.

My dad occasionally lamented the wasted potential of each of his siblings.  The absolute truth concerning my Uncle Bill, but the children, Bill included, played the hand dealt. 

   

Memories of the children’s’ lives during those years are scant.  My dad told one or two stories; Aunt Laura wrote about her brother Johnny as the director of the little band of children, feeding them bread soaked in coffee for their evening meal before bed, their mother absent. 

Aunt Laura set her hand to poetry, and I have a little self-published booklet of poems she dated from 1927 through 1964.  Most are love letters to her husband; she and Uncle Frank indeed were soul mates.

One of Aunt Laura’s poems, Their First Day Late, dated 1928, when she was seventeen, probably draws on a memory of her favorite brother and his favorite sister.

He with his wavy hair of brown,

She with her locks of gold;

They both stand at the schoolhouse door—

Each other’s hands they hold.

Her fresh white apron, her beauty displays,

But her face is bathed in tears.

The little fellow at her side

Cannot dispel her fears.

The big schoolbell had pealed its call,

The echo has died away.

The little maid and her brother

Are late, their first time, today.

They fear to enter the classroom

Where lessons have begun.

And they stand there on the threshold

Wishing the day were done.

Another poem Aunt Laura wrote in 1928 probably more accurately describes the schooling of her brother Johnny, and the uncles of the same age they grew up with.  “Pa” was her maternal grandfather, and a mean drunk from whom the women of the family hid the Four Roses bottle.

School Days

Johnny was a little boy

Who wouldn’t go to school.

He wouldn’t mind the teacher

Nor obey the Golden Rule.

He wanted to play hooky,

Like most the big boys did.

And got a spanking every night

When he was just a kid!

He used to go a-fishing,

Instead of going to school.

And when the days were long and hot,

He played in the swimming pool.

He’d come home late in the evening,

Scared and shivering, too!

Don’t you s’pose that you’d be scared

If “Pa” was up waiting for you?

Although he was spanked most every night,

And “Pa” warned him o’er and o’er,

Johnny scarcely set his feet

Inside a schoolhouse door!

John Lytle, my father, was born in Coalmont, Pennsylvania, in 1907. His mother brought the little family back to Akron, Ohio in 1915.  In 1924, days after his 17^th birthday, he left Akron a member of the United States Army. He spent nine childhood years in Akron, from the age of eight through sixteen.  They were rough and tumble years, deep in adventures with his uncles, his mother’s brothers his own age, and at the same time holding together the little family that was his brother and sisters.

Dad told of sled riding down Sherbondy Hill in the winters. The city was built on four hills, with many lesser hills joining the whole.  Sherbondy Hill, very near his grandparent’s home, leads up to a park today.  At the turn of the century it was paved in cobbles, the better for horses to navigate.  In the winter the snow covered road was impassible, except to sleds. The hill has a grade of almost thirty percent, with several turns.  In telling of their exciting rides down the hill Dad wondered that none of them were killed.  Of course they weren’t.   

Sherbondy Hill

“Mr. Lytle left the family in 1918”

Mary Emma Hogue Lytle, my grandmother, left her husband and returned to Akron and her family with her children.  Mary told one of her daughters the constant moving was the reason she left George Marion Lytle and took the children back to Akron. To what would be a childhood of neglect and poverty. 

Mary Emma was born in 1889, the oldest of 10 children.  Her last sibling, a brother, was born four short months before my father became George and Mary’s first child.

I believe Mary married George, fourteen years her senior, simply to escape home and the responsibility of tending to so many younger siblings.  There would have been endless loads of clothing to be scrubbed at the board, hung to dry, taken off the line, ironed. All those younger siblings to keep an eye on and keep diapered. The sheer drudgery is depressing to contemplate.

 She was seventeen when they married. Perhaps it was a love match.  I only say that because Mary Emma was from a staunchly Catholic family and upbringing, which shunned family members who strayed from the faith. George Marion’s religious affiliation is safely assumed in knowing he is buried along with his siblings and his parents in a Methodist cemetery.  But I think the most I can give Mary Emma is infatuation, and perhaps a bit of romance in leaving with a mining engineer to live in Pennsylvania.

My grandparents were married in 1906 and, like in the home she left, the babies arrived every other year.  When Mary returned to her parents’ home in 1915, after nine years of marriage, she was pregnant with her fifth and last child.

George Marion travelled because of his job.  But Aunt Laura, the daughter Mary told of leaving because of travel, also has memories of living with her paternal grandparents in Coalmont.  Parents may tell children whatever they wish, but Mary’s story of frequent moves isn’t that plausible.  I can’t see George moving from assignment to assignment trailing a wife and four children when he had a home base in Coalmont, where Aunt Laura said they lived until they moved to Akron. 

The record I was able to get from the Childrens’ Home contained the tantalizing line “Mr. Lytle left the family in 1918.  He did not appear in court in Pennsylvania.”  This is Mary Emma’s statement to the Childrens’ Home about 1921 when she placed her five children in the Childrens’ Home.  In the years after moving back in 1915, there was not enough food or clothing, or adult supervision, according to Aunt Laura.  She says her father did come one time, she thinks to attempt to reunite, but Mary refused.

I pursued ‘He did not appear in court in Pennsylvania.” Huntingdon County, where Coalmont is located, has a wonderful historical society that provided me with some information about that entry. A genealogical researcher located George Marion Lytle in the Plaintiffs Docket for 1921, where he posted a five hundred dollar bond guaranteeing he would be available for extradition to Ohio.  And when they went to pick him up in 1922, George Marion could not be found.

I looked for the entry on the other side of the ledger here in Summit County, where Akron is located, but the Clerk of Courts found nothing.  I assume Mary Emma filed some action against George, probably in domestic court, probably concerning support, that resulted in a judgment for George to be returned to the State of Ohio.  He jumped bail and disappeared.

The last bit of this puzzle also came from the Childrens’ Home.  In their records they had a letter from Peebles County, Colorado, informing them of the death of George M. Lytle.  He died of consumption, and known by a different name, but in his wallet they found letters from his daughters, pleading for his return.  The return address of the envelopes was the Akron Childrens’ Home.

George Marion died in 1930, a full fifteen years after the separation from Mary.  I have to assume he continued working; he was working when he died in Colorado.  Over that fifteen years his children grew up.  In extreme poverty.  Who left whom is not relevant.  I don’t know why Mary came home in 1915, but told the authorities in 1918 her husband deserted the family.  The order against him likely concerned support; the legal system was as eager in 1918 to see children supported by parents as they are today. My father didn't speak of the father who abandoned the children.  His three sisters, Aunt Laura, Aunt Ruth and Aunt Helen Rita, loved their father unconditionally to the end, and had no charity toward their mother.  AuntRuth, Sister Mary Pasqueline, said they were nobody’s children and they survived.

Another story from my family tree.

The three children who did marry and have children provided homes they surely wished for in their childhood.

My parents on their wedding day.  Grandma Lytle is beside my father; Grandpa and Grandma Rolf on either side of my mother.  The only pictures of Grandma Lytle are from that day.  She was the only member of my dad's family at the wedding.  My father had left the Catholic Church, my mother was not a Catholic.  Dad's many aunts, uncles and cousins did not attend because of this.

Few questions answered

The long anticipated transcript of records of the Lytle children arrived yesterday from Children’s Services.  There was not a lot of material, as the records officer had warned me several times in conversation.  Six very short paragraphs (three to six lines each) of information. But interspersing it with what I already know was interesting.

There are interesting tidbits.  Their records indicate that Mr. Lytle left the family in Coalmont, in 1918, and did not appear in court in Pennsylvania.  Interesting.  Children’s Services records indicate that some time after that he was located in Colorado Springs, Colorado and died there of tuberculosis in 1930.  Aunt Laura chronicled the children and their mother were back in Akron in 1915 and her father stopped at the home, probably in 1917 or 1918, asking his wife to be reunited and was turned down.  Perhaps some support action was filed in Pennsylvania, and George stopped in Akron and then kept going west.  Apparently Maime Lytle could keep her family together from 1915 to 1918.

Children’s Services records also show a letter from Peebles County Juvenile Court dated July 19, 1930 noted the passing of Mr. Lytle and indicated letters dated 1924 from his daughters Helen and Ruth were found in his possession.  So, all three daughters wrote to their father.  I cannot locate a Peebles County in Colorado (or even in the United States), so I will see if I can get a copy of that letter.  It would be interesting to know how a Juvenile Court would be involved in the death of a middle aged man.

The transcript says the family came to the attention of the Children’s Home in 1918, as Mrs. Lytle had difficulty in providing for her children alone.  She was not in good health and earned only nine dollars a week when she was able to do housework. She was a diabetic; the disease took her life at age fifty eight. The transcript says there was no documentation for the next several years, and does not say when the children were taken into the home.  Aunt Laura writes she was there at age ten, or 1921.  My newspaper account of Uncle Bill says he went from the Home to Orient at age 12, or 1921, so it seems he was already there, and probably my dad, too.  They could easily have been in and out, being cared for when their mother ran out of funds.   

Then, in March 1924, according to the transcript, the family was involved with Juvenile Court due to hardship and in August, 1924, my dad was placed in Charity Latch School and then readmitted to the Children’s Home several days later.  In September, 1924 he left the Home and joined the United States Army.  That supports the in and out theory, and since dad was 17 on the 28^th of August, 1924, I’m sure he was at the recruiting station shortly thereafter.  Charity Latch School!  I can only wonder.

In November, 1924, Laura and Ruth were returned to the care of their mother.  Aunt Laura was 13, then, and Aunt Ruth 11.  Aunt Laura writes that two weeks after her 14^th birthday, in January of 1925, she and Aunt Ruth were taken on a “picnic” and turned over to the convent school.  She lived there in Cleveland and graduated a two year vocational course while Aunt Ruth went to Cathedral Latin High School for a year before returning to another relative and then going on to a nursing degree.

From remarks of my mother during my childhood I understood my Grandfather Lytle had been in prison for non support of his family.  It does not seem to have been down to that, but it appears some action was afoot, as he did not “appear in Court in Pennsylvania”.  I do not know how long it takes a person to waste away from tuberculosis, but there was a span of fifteen years when he provided no support for his children.  There seems to have been plenty of blame to go around, Maime for leaving because she did not like moving and George not giving a damn when she left with four little children and one on the way, and she only twenty six years old. 

I’ve exhausted most resources I can imagine in unraveling my father’s childhood, and that of his siblings.  I’m still curious about Peebles County and Charity Latch School, both of which names could come right out of a Dicken’s novel.  If Maime did the best she could (and she probably did), Aunt Ruth was the most charitable in saying “Isn’t it tremendous what kids can live through.”  If George did the best he could, who knows.  He certainly kept the love of his daughters.

Aunt Helen Rita

Age 18

Things to follow up

I’ve finished re-typing Aunt Laura’s “Chronicles.”  Phew—13 pages.  It was good for me.  Back in college I studied for exams by typing my notes.  There seems to be a more direct link between my fingers and my brain than my eyes and my brain.  Some odds and ends that I will be researching more as a result of reading her chronicle:

The Lytle children, at least the girls, seem to have bounced from the Children’s Home to their mother and grandmother and back several times.  I’ve asked for the records of the children from Summit County and received a very positive call from a “records liaison.”    She said records of that age are on microfiche, stored in another state, but she has put in the request and they are being searched for.  She told me if the records can be found, I can expect to see the dates the children were in the home, school records, who visited them, that sort of stuff.  I expect to hear on this front in the next three to four weeks.

Aunt Laura makes a statement to the effect the three girls had to leave the Home because my Dad had to leave when he was sixteen and no longer age qualified.  I’d like to understand more of why his leaving caused their leaving.   I hope there's a hint in the Children's Home records.

Because I assumed the girls went to St. Joseph’s in Cleveland, which is run by Immaculate Heart of Mary, Aunt Ruth’s order, I wrote the Cleveland Catholic Diocese requesting available records.  But, have not heard one word.  Aunt Laura’s chronicle covers those school years very well, and she said she and Ruth were placed at the Good Shepherd Convent in Cleveland and finished school there.  So, that is settled.  As a footnote to Aunt Laura’s story of their high school years, I have a note from my cousin Marge, Aunt Helen Rita’s daughter, that says Aunt Gen took Aunt Ruth out of the Children’s Home in her teens to help Aunt Gen with her sons, so Aunt Gen could work.  Aunt Gen repaid Aunt Ruth by subsidizing nursing school for Aunt Ruth.  Aunt Gen is one of my father’s aunts with whom we were not close during my childhood; my dad accounted her one of the several relatives who steered Aunt Ruth firmly toward taking orders.  Dad always felt she deserved a better life; Aunt Ruth always felt she had a wonderful life.

The great-great grandparents of the five Lytle children were born in Ireland.  Aunt Laura places both husband and wife from Cork.  I have some genealogy work that shows John Maley from County Cork, but his wife, Elizabeth Mulholland from Kilrea Parish in Northern Ireland.  Given the geographical distance, the times (the potato famine in full sway) and the poverty of the country, I assumed they had met emigrating, or in this country.  Aunt Laura says Elizabeth Mulholland was an accomplished mid-wife and John Maley is believed to have been a doctor.  I hope to work this out in the favor of my dad, who was labeled a Shanty Irishman by my mother’s grandmother!  Perhaps instead of starving peasants they were young professionals of the age.  I am grateful that so many starving families were able to emigrate from Ireland and all of Europe as the stupidity of many governments caused death and destruction of millions.  But--wouldn't it be fun to know that superiority is as superiority does, grandma Troike!

Aunt Laura wrote over 8,000 words, and I decided not to edit any out.  I’ve always found a lovely Irish lilt to her phrasing.  We corresponded for years; both of us loved to write.  So, I will post her chronicle in several logical sections.  You won’t be disappointed. And no, none of her letters to me remain.  Too soon old, too late wise, as the proverb says.

Kilrea, County Londonderry, Ireland

From Wikipedia