A black Irishman

My dad was black Irish, undoubtedly through the Ulster ancestors on his father’s side. His mother’s ancestors were County Cork, the source of all the enviable red hair of his many cousins. Both sides left the old country in the first potato famine.

They tended to marry more Irish of their own persuasion, until his not strictly Methodist father married into his devoutly Catholic mother’s family.

I cannot imagine why George Marion Lytle married Mary Emma Hogue, almost two decades younger.  I believe she wanted to leave the chaos of a large family where she was the oldest sibling. George Marion took her back to his hometown in Pennsylvania.

Marriage did not suit Mamie; fatherhood did not suit George Marion. He deserted the family when Mamie was pregnant with the fifth child in seven years, and Mamie took them back home to Ohio, to her large family.

My dad’s childhood may have been little different than any other poor child of his generation. He was born in 1907, not a prosperous time for most, and certainly not the unskilled Mamie. Her domestic service wages bought little. My dad fed his little band of siblings from the pot of cold oatmeal his grandmother provided most mornings, and coffee soaked bread for supper. Coffee-sop, according to my aunt. He was ten years old.

Many things angered my father, probably as a child as well as thinking back as an adult.  The foremost was that his mother’s Catholic relatives and church did not care for the children. When the family did intervene, the children were sent to the Children’s Home and his sisters educated by Catholic charities. Aunt Laura was deemed secretarial material, Aunt Ruth convent material. Uncle Bill went to a state school for retarded boys. Dad was helpless against all. In fact, he and mother could not reclaim Uncle Bill from the State of Ohio until 1975.

Education was the ticket out, and dad started where many poor young men began. At the end of his sixteenth year he joined the Army. Stomach ulcers sidelined him; he was medically mustered out after six years, a non commissioned officer with a background in radio communication. He spent his mustering out pay on a year of college, where he packed in two years of physics and mathematics.

Money at an end, Dad took to the Great Lakes as a radio operator on freighter. A cable snapped in a storm, caught and broke his ankle, throwing him overboard in the process.  He was rescued, put off at the next port, made his way back to Cleveland, Ohio, where he met and married my mother and I wound up with the father I've written about from time to time.

A tall man, my dad came from the time when few young men carried extra pounds. The ulcer surgeries reduced his probably 160 pounds to 140, not much for a 6’2” frame. And so life went on, until my late teens, when dad developed a chronic cough eventually diagnosed as histoplasmosis, a deadly fungal infection contracted when he tore down the backyard chicken coop to build a patio. 

Two surgeries eventually removed all of one lung and part of the other. At the second surgery he refused to have the suspension sling that would allow his ribs to reform, again.  He likened it to rowing the Atlantic in a gale. With a set of ribs removed, his spine curved, his shoulders dropped. He left another twenty pounds behind at those surgeries.

Dad retired from Goodyear Aerospace at sixty five; he and mom vacationed and camped with children and grandchildren, but not for long. To add insult to injury, as it were, dad developed something called adult onset seizure syndrome. He called it falling asleep in his chair and waking up in the hospital. He hated it. His body was frail and his spirit gave up, too.  He did liken the process of dying, that subzero winter of 1978, to riding a train to Siberia, naked.

We used to remark when a parent became twice as old as a child. When mom was fifty I was twenty five. It came to me that dad and I surely had such an anniversary. Then I realized he died in a February, at seventy, and I wasn't thirty five until March.

This isn't a sad story. The parts my dad didn't like happened in a childhood he couldn't control.  He fulfilled his adult plan; he married and had a family. He remodeled our house, built a garage, took us on vacation, had a workshop for puttering about, enjoyed his grandchildren. He absorbed illness, until the end.  

He didn't talk about his childhood. He never admitted being Irish; I had to dig through the archives to learn it. That is too bad; he would have enjoyed knowing he was a black Irishman.

Dad and  brother Bill, 1910

On the patio that once housed a chicken coop, about 1956

First five grandchildren, early seventies

Genealogy research moves even more slowly than government

I can say that with authority, as I am deep in both. 

Way last year I wrote about my father and his brother and sisters in the Childrens’ Home, and included my Aunt Laura’s magnificent Chronicles.  I thought it a poignant story of events that happened more than a hundred years ago.  I had comments from several readers who had similar childhood experiences, or had listened to relative’s stories.

When the Childrens’ Home (now called Children Services) responded to my request with their records of my father’s stay at the Home, it was a scanty type written page transcript of records they had recalled from deep storage in another state.  The records were returned before I had opportunity to see them.  I did ask for and received a copy of the one record they identified in the transcript, a letter from Peebles County in Colorado notifying the Home that George Lytle, my father’s father, had died there.  But this avenue was quite the dead end.  The woman in the “Client Rights Office” was prompt to tell me these were not public records I was requesting and they had no legal mandate to help me, but she was doing as much as she could, short staffed and all.  Or, don’t bother her any more.

I took one nugget of the Home's information and ran with it.  “Our records indicate Mr. Lytle left the family in 1918.  He was located in Coalmont, Pennsylvania but did not appear in Court in Pennsylvania.”  Bingo.  Why was my grandfather required to appear in court?

I trolled the internet to see if I could find court records for an obscure hamlet in Pennsylvania.  I came across the historical society of Huntingdon County, where Coalmont is located and sent them an email asking if they could tell me what court to approach.  They replied with several suggestions, and concluded by saying that for a forty dollar donation they would go look for me.  You can believe that went in the next outgoing mail.

Within two weeks I had a packet from a genealogical researcher with copies of court records concerning George Lytle’s order of extradition to be turned over to the State of Ohio.  And an offer of further help, if requested.  I sent another forty dollar donation, the cost of the return tank of gas.  What a bargain.

I have written to the Summit County Clerk of Courts to learn what courts were in operation at the time of the order of extradition.  That has been two weeks; I may have to get another historical society involved.  I’ve pieced enough together, though, to have an interesting story to post tomorrow.

The sun is melting all the snow and seducing the cat. Jan quoted me the song Good Morning, Mr. Sunshine.

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

The Only Home They Ever Knew

I could not place the Akron Children’s Home location in my mind, so I went to the library and got a book.

It’s a rather dry little book, a post graduate thesis, actually.  But the facts and statistics are excellent.  It probably always was a good place with caring and honest trustees and staff.  The people of Summit County supported its growing needs at its inception and since, with tax levies and bond issues. That’s all the way back to the beginning, in the 1880’s. The location in the post card was purchased in the mid 1880’s; the buildings in the post card were begun in the 1920’s.  Even during the depression there was food, clean beds, caring house parents.  The children had chores; the premise of their upbringing was to teach them life and living skills.  The backgrounds of the children were so similar to my Dad’s:  Appalachian coal mining or farming backgrounds, whether Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia.  Families moved to Akron to work in the rubber plants.  Poor housing, no income when a father was hurt, a mother died or became ill. 
There were doctors and nurses on staff at the Home, and a clinic.  The Home was commended for inoculating its charges against smallpox ahead of the curve and not losing a child to an epidemic that went through the county.  In addition to orphans, the Home had “half-orphans”, and deserted children.  Dad and his siblings were the latter.  The Home also boarded children for a fee while a mother was recovering from an illness and a father from an injury.  The Home was very advanced in keeping records and in initiating foster care and home visits.

So, it was a statisticy little book, an hour or two’s read.  The wading pool/fountain I remember was mentioned.  It was most satisfying to read the children were cared for with love, and made lasting relationships with other children.  There was trouble, as in any family, and some children came with too much hurt.  As many children say of their parents now, “They did the best they could.”  The home operated as a home through the 1960’s.

The buildings today are the location of Summit County Children’s Services. Foster care seems to be the current goal.  Thinking back over Dad’s stories, I truly cannot remember one that referenced the Children’s Home.  Dad never told any stories about childhood things that could have happened, like fights with other children, or getting hurt as a child. I do know from Mom that Dad was very protective of his brother at the Home.  The little bald baby in that picture, my Uncle Bill.  Uncle Bill was, in the current vernacular, mentally challenged.  Back then he was just slow.  Maybe he came that way; maybe, according to family story, it happened when he fell from the attic through to the basement of a two story home under construction.  He was never sent to school; Dad taught him to read.  I’d say Uncle Bill was the mental age of a twelve year old.  When Dad left the Home, so did Uncle Bill.  He became a ward of the state and was sent to Orient State School outside Columbus.  Uncle Bill deserves his own post some day.  So does Aunt Laura, Dad's sister at the home.  And Aunt Ruth and Aunt Helen Rita, the “babies” who grew up with an aunt and a grandmother.

I am going to try to get my Dad’s records from the Home.  According to the little book, meticulous records were kept.  How fun to read them, if they still exist.  It seems it was what it was back then. Those five children grew up and got on with it.  And I still have no opinion on the quality of children’s services today as opposed to then.  It was a different world, more than a century ago, and everyone I know of did the best they could.

Children's Home

A woman in a group I was out with recently mentioned Christian Children’s Home in Cleveland.  I said my father had grown up in the Akron Children’s Home.  “Oh,” she said, “Don’t you think children’s services are so much better now?”

I answered I had no way of comparing.  We are both the same age;  maybe our parent’s were not. If I hadn’t been so startled visualizing the hundred year gap between today and my dad in the Children’s Home I might have asked her something more about then and now.  My dad was born in 1907.  I marveled he had been born with aeroplanes and motor cars and saw a man on the moon, and more.

My dad always seemed distant to me.  Mom, too, in a some ways.  They didn’t mess much in our lives.  They were the adults.  (Although, if you did something bad on the way home from school, your parent knew about it before you got home.)

My relationship with my dad was the stories he told, not the things he did.  He became physically unwell when I was eight years old and remained so for the rest of his life and mine.  That was just another part of Dad.

Dad told wonderful stories about sled riding down Sherbondy Hill.  His grandmother’s head touched the top of the door frame. He was jealous of his cousin who always got new shoes and every other cousin, himself included, wore hand-me-downs.  Uncle Taps, whom I never met, suffered a paralyzed leg from polio and always needed special shoes for his leg braces.  Dad told stories about the Sisters at school.  He told us stories about a man called Sarge who was a radio operator in the Army, who packed his radio equipment on mules.  He told us stories about another man called Sparks who was the radio operator on cargo ships on the Great Lakes.  We were enthralled.  Then the story would end and we went to do our homework or go out to play.

I’d heard all the stories by my teens; my brothers probably had, too.  I don’t remember any more then, old or new.  I wonder if Jan heard the stories?  I’ll have to ask.  When I was 17 my mom was teaching me to drive somewhere in Akron and said, “That’s the old children’s home where your father grew up.”

Talk about smacked up alongside the head.  I  remembered going to a “reunion” there.  I remember my younger brother was walking, but I don’t remember my youngest brother, so maybe I was four or five.  We waded in a concrete pool with a fountain in the middle.  There were lots and lots of children in standard underpants, wading.  I saw my brother face down on the bottom and picked him up.  He sputtered and snorted.  We kept on wading.  That is the small memory I had of the Children’s Home.  Mom said we attended reunions of the children in the 1940’s, but she didn’t recall that incident.  I know I was in my teens before I realized my Dad was Sarge and Sparks.

I got more information on Dad’s childhood, but from Mom.  He didn’t answer questions.  He told stories.  Dad was born in 1907, in Coalmont, Pennsylvania.  He didn’t have a birth certificate, but a handwritten letter, in pencil on lined paper, from the midwife who birthed him.  His father was a coal miner/schoolteacher.  When Dad was young the family returned to Akron to be near his mother’s family.  He was the oldest, then another brother, then three sisters.  Somehow his father wound up in prison.  The story is for not supporting the family.  Mom said Dad said it was engineered by the Catholic priests.  His father was out of prison eventually and left without a word.  He died of tuberculosis in the southwest; his family was contacted because of a faded and creased letter from his daughter, found in his wallet.

My Dad’s only stories in the first person were very early, before the Children’s Home.  Only one story included his father.  They lived in a small home in Coalmont, cooking and heat were the wood stove.  They had a wood pile.  Someone was stealing from the woodpile.  His dad augered a hole in a log, filled it with gunpowder, plugged it.  He instructed his wife, “Maime, see this log.  Don’t use it.”  Someone’s cook stove blew up.  No more logs were stolen.

My dad in the checked outfit, with his brother.  Probably about three years old, probably in Coalmont.  Probably a bandaged foot.

In Akron he lived in a house with his Mother, brother, and three sisters on Bisson Avenue, tucked in between houses with his grandmother and various aunts.  He went to Grace Elementary School.  We heard some stories about Grace, but not much about life on Bisson Avenue, except Taps new shoes.  His mother worked as a domestic, but just couldn’t keep the family together.

So, Dad grew up in the Children’s Home, together with his brother and the oldest sister.  The two youngest sisters were parceled out to relatives.  But, when you turned sixteen, you were too old for the Children’s Home.  He said he was eighteen and joined the Army.  He became a radio operator and rose to the NCO rank of Sergeant.   He was in the Army about fifteen years.  Ulcers and a failed operation that removed part of his stomach got him mustered out.  In the darkest depths of the Great Depression.  He found a job as radio operator on a Great Lakes shipping line.  When he was in port he didn’t have many meals unless he was in Cleveland and could take the trolley out to his sister and brother-in-law’s house in Independence.  Good garden eating out there. 

Probably in 1939 he took his accumulated savings and enrolled at Tri-State College in Terre Haute, Indiana.  He took as many courses as he could fit into a day.  All his college books I saw were math—algebra, calculus, geometry.  He did tell a story about a poor college student who was the captain of the basket ball team.  All the students on the team were poor fellows who knew they were better off studying, but on Friday nights they diagramed out their plays for next day’s game before they went to bed.  They knew how to play basketball, they just couldn’t.

By the end of 1941 his money was gone.  But he had lined up two job interviews, one with Babcock & Wilcox and one with Goodyear Aircraft.  He would get into Cleveland on  Christmas Eve and go stay with his sister and brother-in-law in Independence.  They knew he would get into town too late to take the trolley to Independence, so Uncle Frank asked a friend of his if his brother-in-law could spend Christmas day with his family and come on to Independence the day after Christmas.  Uncle Frank’s friend was my Uncle Hank, and that’s how my Dad met Uncle Hanks sister, my Mom.  There’s a great story there, too, but it deserves another post.

And that’s all I know about the Children’s Home and Children’s Services.