“As soon as the incident is forgotten, so are you”
This line, written by my great-uncle Jim Estall to my father, was from a 1933 letter found among my dad’s mementos.
Excerpt from James Estall Kent letter of 1933. [Click on image for full letter.]What’s the story?
Prior to finding this letter I didn’t know about James Estall, my grandmother Bessie’s brother.
Bessie’s family broke apart after her mother died in 1899. James, her youngest brother, was adopted out in 1900 at the age of two when the rest of the family headed for the poorhouse.
Jim’s adoptive parents were a brass scale maker and his wife, John and Ellen Kent, from London’s East End. The family moved to Enfield, a small town north of London, and a decade later also adopted Jim’s sister Rosie after she was released from the poorhouse system as a teenager.
With good parents and now his sister in the fold, Jim’s life was looking pretty sunny as he headed into his teens. But war clouds were gathering. Clouds that, as it turned out, would darken the life of his generation over two successive wars.
The Great War.
Jim, who’d adopted his parents’ surname, was on the cusp of his 17th birthday when England declared war on Germany in August of 1914. As soon as he turned 18 he volunteered with the Royal Field Artillery and was sent to France. The National Roll of the Great War 1914-1918 summarized his four years of service thusly:
Shiny medals are nice, but Jim found they turn dull when the country recovers from war and gets on with life. As he indicated, once the battles are forgotten, so are the veterans. Jim was relatively lucky — he was among the 1.6 million British soldiers injured rather than among the 750,000 who died. But he developed a jaded outlook which he shared with his nephew while trying to dissuade him from joining the military service in America.
Two years after his return from war, at the age of 24, Jim married sweet Rosetta “Rose” Webb. Their wedding photo looks prototypical British, the ladies posing in their bonnets and the gentlemen in their vested suits and starched collars. Most of the guests were from Rose’s family, as Jim didn’t have any of his own.
Their wedding day photograph vaguely reminds me of the Sgt Pepper’s album cover.
Jim wrote that Queen Elizabeth I regarded the area around Enfield as a ‘happy hunting ground’ and that one of her palaces was in the centre of the town. He explained, tongue in cheek, that his wife Rose, a town native, “was not connected with Queen Elizabeth, although perhaps some of her relations may at some time [have] done a bit of washing for her.”
Jim was a motor driver, “a position that makes me travel the country,” which he used to advantage by visiting historical sites, particularly those associated with great English authors like Shakespeare and Milton. [This makes me, an English Lit grad, appreciate Jim all the more.]
He seemed to have a sunny outlook, as his wife wrote that “if he wasn’t laughing or passing some joke, I should think he were ill.” Together they raised two sons, Jimmy and Jeff, born in 1922 and 1930 respectively.
The 1939 England Register lists him as an “undertaker’s chauffeur,” which probably kept him closer to home so he could spend more time with the boys. But the man who helped transport the dead to their graves was to suffer another war-time loss of his own.
The Second World War
His older son Jimmy, like his dad before him, volunteered for service when the country went to war and he came of age, this time during World War II. Jimmy joined the Royal Air Force, the group that Churchill famously referred to in a 1940 speech: “never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
The personnel of No.15 Squadron in June 1942. Jimmy was undoubtedly among those pictured.
Jimmy was with the 15th Squadron, a heavy bomber unit which delivered their loads over the Axis powers on the continent. He went missing in September of 1942, and his dad unfortunately never even had the opportunity of transporting and burying his own son.
Jim treasured his long-lost family, proudly signing his letter to Leonard as “your loving uncle.” Of Jim’s two sisters in the United States, Bessie made initial contact by mail after WWI and Lily went to visit him in 1962 when they were both getting on in years. I can only imagine his happiness at the reunion.
And now, all these years later, we’re happy to meet him vicariously through his letter to my father.
“To have a nephew of his very own makes him real proud,” wrote Aunt Rose
Jim passed away in 1965. Rose followed in 1983.
Now, as we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I — optimistically called the “war to end all wars” — we remember the sacrifices made by Jim’s generation…
…and of his advice regarding the glorification of war. “It’s all rot.”
My name’s Duncan Campbell from the shire of Argyll I’ve traveled this country for many’s the mile I’ve traveled through Ireland, Scotland and all And the name I go under’s bold Erin-go-bragh
— First verse of a 19th century Scottish song (from Wikipedia)
The buzz in the genealogy community last week was about a new effort to reconstruct many of the records lost in a fire that destroyed the Public Records Office of Ireland in 1922. The records included the Irish censuses of 1821 through 1851 and over half of the Church of Ireland birth/marriage/death registers.
Though most of my mother’s side of the family traces its lineage to Scotland, one of her ancestors, Jane Hannah, was from County Antrim in northern Ireland. The Hannah family came to America in 1835. Records of the family in Ireland prior to their emigration don’t appear to exist and were undoubtedly destroyed in the fire.
There is some hope that traces of their lives may now be resurrected through the “Beyond 2022” initiative, an effort to reconstruct seven centuries of Ireland’s lost history. An informative and entertaining video concerning the initiative is at Trinity College’s “Beyond 2022” web site.
There’s also hope that additional information concerning my wife’s Brown family ancestry will surface. They, too, were from County Antrim.
In the interim, and in sober memorial of our Irish—albeit northern Irish—heritage we’ve bought a case of Guiness stout to toast the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day celebration and cheer on the Beyond 2022 effort. Sláinte!
I had a nice conversation yesterday with a distant cousin from Kalamazoo. I jotted down notes as he related stories of his grandfather and great-grandfather, and of himself and his family. Two things struck me about the conversation.
First, as he related the stories of his great-grandfather (who crossed the ice-bound St. Clair River as he moved his farm equipment and animals from Canada to Michigan in winter) and his one-armed grandfather (who ran a large farm in the Thumb area of Michigan despite the handicap of having blown his left hand off in a shotgun accident), I realized these are the stories that bring our ancestors to life. They are also the stories that get lost if nobody writes them down. I hope my cousin takes the time to commit the stories to paper. We only know our history – as humans or family – through the writings of our scribes. What’s not captured may as well not have happened. “I ink, therefore I am.”
On the topic of ink, I was taking notes with a fountain pen I’ve had for a few months. The pen is a beauty to hold and behold (a Pelikan M800 in burnt orange) but the darn thing was a terrible writer: hard starting, skipping, dry, and scratchy. Despite multiple cleanings, tunings, and different inks it was still a lousy writer. Yesterday I decided to try yet another ink, and voilà, the pen began writing with the grace and surefootedness of Kristi Yamaguchi. Writing with a fountain pen is like that, it takes trial and error to find a good match between pen and ink, but once they meet, there’s something magical.
My cousin mentioned that he and his wife will soon celebrate their 60th anniversary. I guess people are a lot like pens: if you find the right match everything in life works smoother and looks better. Congrats to him and his wife.
I seem to come from a family of lovers, not fighters.
Few of my ancestors served in the military, and fewer still saw combat. In the American Civil War a Rebel family member lasted a week in the Confederate army and a Yank three months in the Union’s before they were discharged.1 In the British Army of the 19th and early 20th centuries, one of my kin was discharged for being unfit, one committed suicide, and one deserted.2
In short, my family was more likely to pass mustard around the dining room table than to pass muster in the Army.
Malcolm MacKellar ca. 1918
So it was with some surprise I found a picture of a World War I doughboy amongst the piles of family photographs. Who was this outlier, I wondered, and what was his story?
The soldier, Malcolm Livingstone MacKellar, turned out to be my mother’s cousin, and he served in a U.S. Army field artillery regiment in France during World War One.
Malcolm, or Mac as he was called, was born in 1892 on a farm outside of Alvinston, Ontario, the youngest of three children of Duncan and Maggie (nee Livingston) McKellar.3 Malcolm was named for his paternal grandfather, who according to a family note, was not a “church person” and used rough language.4 However the grandfather was “industrious and smart,” traits that Mac apparently inherited.
Mac’s boyhood home at corner of Old Airport and Carolinian Roads in Mosa Township. Photo taken in 2015.
Mac had a somewhat rocky start in life. His mother died of blood poisoning before he was three — which, incidentally, was the duration of her illness, one apparently contracted during pregnancy or childbirth. His father died of uremia when Malcolm turned eight. As a consequence, in 1900 the three orphaned farm children were taken in by their maternal grandmother Sarah Livingstone who was living in Detroit with her daughters.
Some of Malcolm’s adoptive family ca. 1912. His grandmother is second from the right. His sister Katie is closest to the photographer. My grandmother, Malcolm’s Aunt Sarah, is on the far right.
The grim reaper wasn’t done with Malcolm’s family, though, striking down his sister Sarah with pulmonary congestion (possibly TB) and heart disease in 1907 at the age of 16. Only two of the original five MacKellar family members were left: Malcolm and his older sister Katie. But they were surrounded by a supportive family. The 1910 census shows the 18-year-old Mac living in a household that included his sister Katie, his grandmother, four aunts, an uncle, and a cousin. The Livingston clan was a tight-knit bunch.
The Maturation of Malcolm
Mac did well in the schools he attended. He was apparently smart and sociable, evidenced by his election as president of his eighth-grade class at Amos school, and president of his senior class at Western High School. A newspaper article mentions him addressing his high school graduation in 1911.
The decade after high school was a time of growing maturity for Mac and his city. Detroit became an industrial powerhouse as the emerging automobile industry set up shop there, and Mac rode the wave to become a chief clerk at the Anderson Electric Car Company, whose factory was located a few blocks from the Livingstone home. The year 1917—when he was age 25—was a particularly pivotal year for Mac: In April he applied for naturalization in his adopted country; in June he registered for the newly instituted military draft; and in October he married a 22-year-old stenographer, Edna Persinger, likely a co-worker at Anderson.5
Lead Up to War
Clouds were building on the eastern horizon as Europe was embroiled in a war that began in 1914. The U.S. had remained a non-combatant heading into 1917, but declared war in April of that year as Germany ordered its U-boats to sink American supply ships heading to Britain. American conscription was authorized and Malcolm’s draft registration card showed he was in the process of becoming a citizen, was of medium height and build, had blue eyes with dark brown hair, and was working at Anderson.
Malcolm’s Draft Registration Card from June 1917
Over the next two years the Army inducted 2.7 million draftees. Mac ended up as a corporal in Battery C of the 329th Field Artillery Regiment, 160th Field Artillery Brigade, 85th Division (the National Army of Michigan and Wisconsin). The regiment was mustered in and trained at the newly constructed Camp Custer near Battle Creek, Michigan. Mac joined the unit a couple of weeks after his marriage, arriving just before Thanksgiving of 1917.
Can you pick him out of this photo of Battery C? My guess is top row, second from the left. [Click to enlarge]
Horsin’ Around
On December 12th the battery received their horses — “164 of the wildest, head shy, hard kicking and sharp biting, four-legged animals that ever graced (or rather disgraced) the name of horse,” according to Sgt. Menzies, a chronicler of his battery. [All of the following war-time quotes and most of the photos are from the book All The Way with the Boys of the 329th Field Artillery.] The winter was snowy and cold, making the conscripts’ lives an endless cycle of “shovel snow one day, coal the next, stable police, then kitchen police, afterwards guard (oh, those terrible 22 below zero days on which to walk a post) and between times … we drilled and drilled and physical cultured and went to various specialty schools.”The battery, at a strength of about 185, had only a few more men than horses. Though many of the Detroit conscripts were more familiar with automobiles than horses, the Army found the animals were still more reliable than vehicles for traveling through deep mud and over rough terrain and they were used for pulling artillery.6
Valentine’s Day in 1918 was the first time Battery C hitched their horses up to the artillery pieces and caissons and actual drill practice began. April brought pistol practice and shortly thereafter artillery firing on the range, first with sub-caliber shells for short distance, then regulation 3-inch shells at normal distance. In early May “rumors of leaving for overseas were becoming more pronounced and drill periods were made harder and longer.”
Battery C left Camp Custer on July 16th, traveling by train to Camp Mills on Long Island, New York, a “city of tents” where they arrived at midnight in a drizzling rain and stayed until the end of July. They boarded the British Steamer Maunganui for their overseas transport on July 30th, 1918.
The Girl They Left Behind
Their ship was part of a convoy, a “spectacle as it sailed down the harbor of New York, out into the sea … out past the girl every man left behind…the good old Statue of Liberty.” The convoy “assumed a formation protected by a British cruiser and an American destroyer which took the lead, small sub-chasers describing a circle around the convoy, and two seaplanes circling overhead.” Thus began their 12-day journey to the Old World, disembarking in Liverpool on August 11th amid whistlings and cheers of the gathering crowds and embarking on a train to Southhampton on the southern English coast.
The following day they sailed to Le Havre, France, lying in the harbor all morning waiting for the tide to come in. It was the first of many stops in that war-torn country. It was outside of Le Havre they got their first dry wash: “a brisk massage of the entire face and body with the dry hands was considered to be enough to give us the semblance at least of cleanliness, and in after months it turned out to be sufficient as we really had no means of bathing.”
Key areas are the training Camp Cöetquidan (located at yellow symbol on the left) and the site of their front line experiences (red symbol on right near Metz). Locations were plotted on Google Maps from narration in the All the Way book.
They traveled through the French countryside on their way to Camp Cöetquidan, an historic French camp used for military training since Napoleon’s time. The battery spent two months training at Cöetquidan “in all branches of artillery work with the French 75’s and the last few weeks before we left we were simulating actual conditions at the front.”
Mac took advantage of the training time to send a picture home to his aunt (my grandmother Sarah Livingstone [later McCrie]) with a message on the back revealing his sense of humor:
Aunt Sarah: Taken Oct. 6/’18 Somewhere in France. Guaranteed Hole proof hats. My partner has a gas mask enclosed in the satchel and as you will note we are both equipped with burglar alarms.With best to yourself and family. Mac.
Malcolm MacKellar, on right, at Camp Cöetquidan in western France
He also wrote a letter on the 11th to his aunt Belle (nee Livingstone) Duffy in which he expressed optimism for an early Allied victory.
Mac’s letter from Camp Cöetquidan to the Duffy family in Detroit
Battery C was issued its complement of supplies, horses, and materiel and left on October 23rd by train for the front. Again crossing much of France, they arrived at Domgermain on October 30th, where the rest of their trek would be on foot. “Since then our artillery has been on foot and has seen a bit of France at that. After detraining we marched about two miles towards Toul and camped out in our pup tents. The next morning our shelter halves were so stiff with frost we could hardly roll our packs.” Apparently the field soldiers, like in Civil War days, each carried half a tent and paired off with a fellow soldier for the night. It was near Toul they saw their first air fight, as a German plane “came over to do some observing, but hundreds of shots from anti-aircraft guns drove the Boche (German) high up into the air where he could not see anything of advantage to him.”
The regimental headquarters was likely located in the town of Thiaucourt during the battle
The Sights and Sounds of War
Moving northeast toward Metz, “the roar of the guns kept getting sharper and we realized we were drawing nearer to the front.” That sensation was reinforced when passing through the badly shelled towns of Bernecourt and Flirey, where there was “hardly a wall left standing.” On November 1st they reached Mort Mare Woods (Bois de Mort Mare), where they stayed a few days. A network of German trenches and dugouts, reinforced with concrete and iron, showed the Germans had planned a long occupation and only weeks before had abandoned their ammunition, machine guns and supplies as they pulled back. The action wasn’t over, though.
On the 5th of November Battery C moved out. “We were not exactly scared but a queer feeling came over us, as we were marching along in the darkness, not knowing whether we were going right into action, or not.” The next night “we went forward under cover of darkness, scheduled to pass through Thiaucourt, a large city which had recently been held by the Germans but recaptured. But the Boche was favoring the town with a harassing fire of gas shells, and it was necessary to take a circuitous mud road around the place. … The first night was a night of uneasiness to most of our valiant warriors, as the shells were falling around us all night and it was our first experience under real shell fire.”
The ammo dump was a few kilometers away from where they took up position, and troops sent to resupply the guns saw a German plane fly over, and shortly thereafter “shells began flying all around the dump, but luckily not one burst near the ammunition. The entire trip back was one continual round of explosions and the road was bright as day from the bursting shells.”
The French 75 gun and ammo rack (on left) being worked by the regiment’s field artillery soldiers.
The next night was worse. “This night we experienced a heavy bombardment with gas and the night being foggy, the valleys were loaded to the brim for hours.” The battery was ordered to dig in the next day, which they spent all day doing, and on the 9th “the firing data, including a range of 4,000 meters, was sent down, and when the command to fire was given, our first message to the Boche was sent hurling over in the form of shrapnel.” On the evening of the 10th “as it grew dusk all the guns of the battery started to fire, and one session followed another in rapid succession throughout the night.” They stopped at 7 a.m. on the morning of the 11th of November.
The war ended that day at 11:00 a.m. — the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month — but “at just five minutes to eleven, two big shells came over from Fritz and landed alongside our positions, a parting farewell, as it were.” And that was that. Mac and his battery saw about a week of action on the front.
The Return Home
The battery spent the next three months in the nearby town of Pont-à-Mousson on the banks of the Moselle River, reflecting on their experiences and, on Thanksgiving Day, offering up
“a prayer truly of thanksgiving that we had been brought safely through these months of the most terrific warfare the world will ever witness, and that this old earth will ever in the future be a safe place for all humanity to live in and enjoy the fruits of its labor.”
If only.
The regiment celebrated Christmas in Pont-à-Mousson, decorating the walls “with views of Detroit, the Statue of Liberty, Uncle Sam,” and holiday greetings.
The regiment began their trek back to America on February 11, 1919, by boarding a train in Dieulouard and wending their way through France. “The valley of the Loire was particularly interesting—many chateaus, rugged hills and beautiful woods appearing before our eyes. We passed through many towns on our way eastward, as it seemed we were always bound to wander across a great part of France, apparently the French way not being to go from one place to another in the most direct route.” They finally ended up in Brest on the west coast, and on March 26th boarded the Leviathan, an aptly named ship carrying 12,274 soldiers and a crew of 2,000 for her cross-Atlantic cruise. “We…passed that beloved old girl ‘Statue of Liberty’ about nine o’clock on the morning of…April 2nd. Such rejoicing as we passed up the harbor!”
The Leviathan, with an escort of welcoming boats, glides by the Statue of Liberty (at top) on the way to port.
Homecoming article from the Detroit Free Press, Thursday, Apr 3, 1919
They left Camp Mills in New Jersey on April 17th and arrived in Michigan the next day. A half-hour stop at the Michigan Central station in Detroit was a short, joyous homecoming before continuing to Camp Custer. On April 23rd his military stint finally ended, and Mac became a civilian again, on his way back to Detroit and his wife Edna.
After the War
Malcolm returned to his job at the Anderson Electric Car Company, now working as a cost accountant. He and Edna started a family, with son Glenn born in May of 1923 and Donald in July of 1926. About the same time Mac switched gears from accounting to sales, now working as a representative of Yates Woolen Mills.
Photo of Mac from Oakland Press article
According to a 2016 article in The Oakland Press, in 1923 Malcolm established MacKellar Associates, “representing two woolen mills and selling woolen body cloth, upholstery and headliners to the automotive industry. Customers included Packard Motor Company, Studebaker, and the ‘Big Three.’ The original office was located in the historic General Motors Building in Detroit. It continued as a one-man sales operation and secretary for 20 years. Then, Malcolm’s sons, Glenn and Don MacKellar joined the company and they expanded their product line with injection molded plastics and decorative metal parts.” The family-owned company continued to expand and is now in its fourth generation of MacKellars.
A family note states that Malcolm, who had a summer home in Boyne City, was an “executive type organizer, free spender, money maker, expansive.”4 Mac’s wife Edna was also apparently socially adept, becoming the president of the Rosedale Progressive Club in 1945 as reported in the Detroit Free Press.
Article about Edna’s selection to president of the Rosedale Progressive Club
Mac passed away in January of 1957 at age 64, following a heart ailment. His wife survived another twenty years, passing away in August of 1977. Malcolm’s remains were buried in Grand Lawn Cemetery in Detroit. His older sister Katie, who died in 1986 at age 97, is buried nearby.
Mac’s story is an interesting tale, one reflecting its time and country: an immigrant orphan raised by his grandmother, aunts and uncle; who rose to the top of his class in public school, served overseas in a World War, started a small business, and made a good life for himself and family in his adopted land. It could serve as a model for the nation in our current era.
Mac was a guy who passed Army muster, passed through mustard gas, and undoubtedly passed the mustard across the family table. As they’d say in the Army, he seemed pretty squared away.
Endnotes:
1 Hugh Ronald joined the North Carolina infantry in 1861 and was home on extended sick leave a week later. He was separated after a few months when it became clear he was not returning. Barney Anthony joined the New York infantry in 1863 and trained for 3-1/2 months before being rejected for physical disability (old age) as his unit was preparing to deploy. 2 William Estall was discharged from his regiment, being found unfit for further service in 1879 after his extensive visits to the infirmary. His step-son Thomas committed suicide while stationed in Eqypt in 1910. Andrew Templeton deserted the Gordon’s Highlanders infantry unit in 1864 shortly after joining and fled from Glasgow to Canada. 3 Sarah (nee Campbell) Livingstone, Malcolm’s maternal grandmother, had a penchant for adding vowels to surnames. When she married into the Livingston family, she added an “e” to the end of the name, making it Livingstone. When she took in her orphaned grandchildren, she added an “a” to their name, going from McKellar to MacKellar. 4 Characterizations of the MacKellar family are from family history notes left by Margaret (nee McCrie) Mead, a cousin of Malcolm MacKellar. See Livingston Family History at http://genealogy.thundermoon.us/history/livingston%20family%20history.pdf 5 Edna Persinger’s father worked as a foreman at an auto company, and her sister worked as a clerk at Anderson Electric Car Company. It is probable that Edna, a stenographer, also worked at Anderson. 6 “Horses in World War I,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_World_War_I
“…came to America. Married girl from South. They visited Hamilton, Ontario, during Civil War but lost contact with Canadian relativesafterward.”
This snippet written on a hand-drawn family tree aroused my attention. Who was this unnamed McCrie kin? When did he arrive in America and where did he settle?
A note on the McCrie Family Tree from Margaret (nee McCrie) Mead
I set out to put some flesh on this skeleton. Then I discovered a surprising twist to his story — he enlisted in a Confederate infantry regiment at the start of the American Civil War.
The Civil War has stirred considerable interest in recent months. Confederate statues and flags have fallen out of favor as symbols of Southern pride, now being viewed by many as symbols of white supremacy and slavery. Finding a Rebel in the family? That seemed like a real outlier for my family … a family that has its roots in the north.
As background, this “Reb” Hugh Ronald was the first-born son of Andrew Ronald and Katherine McCrie — Kathy being the sister of my great-great grandfather William McCrie. Hugh was born in 1832 in Old Cumnock, Scotland, at a farmstead where his father apprenticed as a millwright.
Entry in the Old Cumnock parish register of 1832
When Hugh was three his family moved to Glasgow where his father practiced his trade by the River Clyde. When the family subsequently moved to Ireland in around 1840, Hugh was left in the care of his grandparents back in Old Cumnock, appearing with them in the 1841 census. Some time later his family returned to the Glasgow area, and in 1851, Hugh, age 18, showed up in the census with them working as a flesher (butcher).
In 1858 Hugh emigrated to America. It’s unknown where he first settled in his adopted country. There is only one Hugh Ronald I could find in the American 1860 census, and that was a 25-year-old Scotsman living with a Canadian-born wife and working as a clerk in Buffalo, New York. I can’t find anything to corroborate that this is our Hugh, but the country of origin, age, and occupation fit his profile. If it was him, however, it begs the question of what became of the wife and how to explain the next chapter in his life.
Hugh next appears in Warrenton, North Carolina, where as a salesman he enlisted for a 12-month hitch in Company F, North Carolina 12th Infantry Regiment, on April 18, 1861. North Carolina was moving in the direction of secession in early 1861, but the Confederate attack on Fort Sumpter on April 12th seems to have inspired the state to take over three U.S. forts and an arsenal. A month later the state adopted an ordinance of secession, becoming the tenth Southern state to do so.
In a time of conflict young men’s souls seem to swell with patriotic fervor and martial stirrings. Hugh—in his late twenties—may have been caught up in the frenzy. At least that’s a natural assumption when seeing that he enlisted the week after Fort Sumpter fell. The evidence is more nuanced, however.
Company rolls show that he mustered into service as a Private on May 17th, but within a week was “absent on furlough from sickness.” Subsequent muster rolls show he never returned and at the end of the year was “discharged for sickness” effective New Year’s Day 1862. Hugh may have put some of his persuasive salesman skills to work here.
Hugh remained in the South for at least a couple of years, marrying the Carolinian native Catharine Baker in Warrenton, North Carolina — in the Piedmont region just south of Virginia — in May of 1862, when they were both 29. They had a daughter there, Kate McCrie Ronald, in October of 1863. However by the time they had their next child, Andrew, in 1866, they had moved north and were living in New York state. Considering the note on the family tree that “they visited Hamilton, Ontario, during [the] Civil War,” it’s likely they left North Carolina before the war’s conclusion in 1865.
Marriage Certificate for Hugh Ronald(s) and Catharine Baker issued in Warren County, N.C., 1862
Hugh and his family, which grew to four children (although one, John, died early) lived primarily in Jersey City, New Jersey, with a two year stint across the Hudson river in East Harlem, on Manhattan. He reported his work variously as a clerk and a salesman of dry goods.
There are a couple of intriguing items in the federal censuses. In the 1880 census — when he and his family were living in New York City — his wife Catharine is noted as having “Nervous Debility.” This fell under the column “Is the person sick or temporarily disabled, so as to be unable to attend to ordinary business or duties?”
In the same census, their daughter Kate McRay [sic] Ronald, at age 16, is checked off under the column headed “maimed, crippled, bedridden, or otherwise disabled.” Kate subsequently never married, was never employed, and died at age 40.
Catharine’s younger sister was living with them, as she had in the previous census. She was probably helping to tend to the children and run the household, as the earlier census listed her as a domestic servant rather than a family member.
The 1890 census had a schedule showing “Surviving Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines, and Widows, Etc.” Although Hugh is listed, none of the columns were filled out. The federal government was only interested in Union soldiers, many of whom were eligible for pensions. The individual Southern states were responsible for their own veterans. Hugh was probably ineligible for that too. In fact, given his week’s actual time in service (probably spent in-processing), I’m surprised he self-identified as a veteran.
Hugh lived to see two children get married — at least one was a home wedding — and to enjoy two grandchildren, including his namesake Hugh. He’d been married 38 years when he passed away in 1901 at the age of 69 in Jersey City, near the piers. He left behind his widow and his daughter Kate at home. His son Andrew (with wife Nellie) and daughter Minnie (with husband Alfred Houliston) were raising children in their own homes in the city.
A son of Scotland, and a long-time resident of Jersey City, Hugh’s unlikely and short-lived spell as a soldier in the Confederate army seems an anomaly. It’s open to speculation as to the nature, or legitimacy, of the “sickness” that generated a soldier’s wages without its hardships. Equally mysterious is his presence in North Carolina during the Civil War. There are just some chapters of family histories that remain mysteries.
Hugh is one of those skeletons in the family closet — unnamed, slightly scandalous, and bare boned. Despite our best efforts to put some flesh on his remains, we’ll probably never get a full picture. But at least now we know of another McCrie family branch that immigrated to America … and hope that some day we can reestablish the contact that was lost during the Civil War.
In my pre- and early teen years I spent my summers with my grandparents at their cottage on Halfmoon Lake in Michigan.
Bessie with a granddaughter in 1959
Most evenings my friends and I played canasta with my grandmother Bessie. She was in her element— animated, competitive, joking, story-telling, and smiling. Those evenings spent playing cards at the table in the knotty pine-paneled dining room are probably the clearest images I have of her, and they are wonderful warm memories.
I’ve covered Bessie in a few previous posts on this blog. This time, I’m introducing the pen I’ve named for her, and it’s a jolly good match.
The pen is the Parker Duofold Centennial “Big Red.” It’s name and color harken back to pens the company made in the 1920s, the premier pen in their lineup at the time. And it’s still the flagship pen of the modern incarnation of the Parker Pen Company.
The Parker Duofold Centennial “Big Red”
The nib of the pen is engraved with an ace of spades. There couldn’t be a better homage to Bessie than a pen that when capped literally has an ace up its sleeve. Bessie would have loved the symbolism. She occasionally joked that one of us was holding one up ours when a card game was going against her. Conversely we’d tease her when she gleefully laid down a run of high-scoring aces.
The vivid color of the pen reminds me of Bessie’s outgoing personality. She loved to be around people and she enjoyed being the center of attention. Most of my pens are staid, but this one is eye-catching. Bessie would have approved.
Interestingly, the pen company seems to trace the arc of Bessie’s life migration, albeit in reverse. Bessie was born in England, of a family she was convinced was of French extraction. In her mid teens she relocated to Canada. Five years later she moved to America to marry my grandfather, and spent her adult life there.
By contrast, the Parker Pen Company was born in America (in 1888, three years before Bessie), established one of their plants in Canada, and moved their company headquarters and manufacturing operations in the late 20th century to England. In 2011 the company again moved its headquarters and pen production, this time to France. This reverse arc can be seen as complementing or even closing the circle of Bessie’s own journey through life.
So now that I have Bessie in hand, how does she stack up with other pens in my collection? Well, given that the Parker Duofold falls into about the same price range as the Pelikan M800 series pens, and that its length and girth are similar to the M800, and that they both have 18 caret gold nibs, I’ll limit my comparison to those two pens.
Bessie fits well in the hand as does the Pelikan M800, which many people consider to be an ideal size. She has a longer grip section which gives her a bit of an advantage over Pelikan’s surprisingly short section, though both are comfortable for writing.
Bessie is an eye-catching color and gets points for splash. She’s engraved with old-style Parker Duofold branding on the barrel that echoes predecessors from the 1920s, giving her a retro, classy look. Between her color and her styling she has both sass and class, much like her namesake. The Pelikan is more classically styled by comparison, but is the epitome of refinement and design. Looks wise, I call it a toss-up.
Bessie has a cartridge/converter ink supply system. This is where she looses points to the Pelikan, which uses a piston-fill ink system. The converter holds less ink, is noticeably lighter in weight than a piston filler, and doesn’t have the same robust construction as the Pelikan. Some people might like a lighter pen, but I like the heft of the Pelikan and the balance the extra weight provides. I also find the Pelikan to be easier to fill.
Pens are not normally rated on sound, but I can’t help but notice the difference in both pitch and volume when capping and uncapping the pens. Weird, huh? Bessie sounds metallic and tinny when waking her up or putting her to bed; the Pelikan is extremely quiet, and what little noise it makes is low pitched when threading or unthreading the cap. Bessie’s high-pitched voice may lead to the impression she is less solid and uses lower quality materials than her avian brother, though I have no way of knowing if that’s true.
The 18-karat gold nib, made in-house by Parker, is a smooth writer and worked well right out of the box, something that not all of my pens have done. (Two of my three Pelikan pens required some polishing and tuning to achieve a good writing experience.) The Parker’s broad nib lays down a wet, smooth line with absolutely no pressure required. It rarely skips or hard starts, making it a solid writer. Pelikan pens also make their own nibs in house, and they too are reliable writers. On the whole, the nibs are very similar, both in size and performance. The Pelikan’s broad nib makes a somewhat finer line and provides a bit more feedback than the Parker, making the writing sharper and cleaner. Whether the smoother, wet line of the Parker or the sharper, drier line of the Pelikan is preferable is a matter of personal taste. I like them both.
Bessie’s nib has a unique profile: the feed on the back of the nib doesn’t have fins like other pens in my collection. This gives Bessie a slimmer, flatter nib profile, something that the human Bessie would have envied. (Does this nib make me look fat? No? Whew!) The lack of fins doesn’t affect ink delivery to the paper—it’s a juicy writer. Her profile is another way Bessie stands out from the crowd.
The pen is expensive, commensurate with it’s flagship status, but can be obtained from overseas sources at about two-thirds of the U.S. asking price. I bought mine at Appelboom (in the Netherlands) on Fountain Pen Day and received a 17% discount. During the rest of the year one can use the “friend” discount code to get a more modest 10% off. Another benefit of buying overseas is that the nib selection is wider, coming in Extra Fine, Fine, Medium, and Broad points whereas American retailers offer only Fine and Medium nibs. I got the broad nib to make my Bessie unique from her American cousins and to give my writing some flair. After all, I wanted to keep the pen’s personality in line with my grandmother’s.
The pen is a nice addition to my collection, something to pick up when I’m looking for a little color in my hand or pocket, or if I just want to think about Bessie and break out in a smile. It’s my “ace up the sleeve.”
(As an aside, I recently came across an email in which my cousin recollected Bessie “telling her that in the orphanage in London [where Bessie spent six years] they ate oatmeal for breakfast, got a cube of brown sugar to put on top, and that she would wrap the sugar in her hanky for a treat later in the day.” I like that story. A child can find comfort and happiness in the simplest of things, even in the face of adversity. I need to embrace the child in me more often.)
I’ve found an editor that makes working with PDF (portable document format) files a snap. The free, downloadable program is PDFill.
The screen shot below shows the many functions this editor can perform. I particularly like its ability to add, delete, and rearrange pages in a PDF file, and to convert JPG images into a PDF or vice versa. I also like its ability to add source information or other notes into PDF file properties/descriptors.
I download a lot of image files from sites such as Ancestry.com. Many of them, such as related pages in a book, census, or directory, need to be combined into a single file. PDFill makes that task fast and easy.
A couple of tips that work for me are:
• If there are a lot of images to combine, store them in a separate subdirectory (folder) on the computer since PDFill has an option of importing all images in a folder.
• Click the “Use Image Size to Decide Page Size with DPI:” button to create pages that automatically resize for different sized images or for documents that include both portrait and landscape modes.
The program (for Windows operating system only) can be downloaded at the PDFill web site. I’ve had no issues with adware or spyware.
Is the snark and snarl of Twitter getting to you? Does the daily reporting of misogyny and misbehavior have you down? If so, it may be time to indulge in a little Twinkie therapy.
Yep, that’s right, skip the news stories and turn to the comics pages. This week they seem to be featuring Twinkies—that gooey cream-filled snack—to bile it down a notch and put a smile on our faces. When we’re laughing, particularly at ourselves, it’s hard to be angry at someone else.
In cases of extreme distress, when all you can think of is lashing out at feckless politicians or your fellow man, unwrap a Twinkie and stuff it in your mouth. The calming sweetness might just release some endorphins, and let’s face it, you can’t really yell at someone if you have a fistful of Twinkie in your mouth.
So in these troubled times, remember what your mother said: “if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything.” Or as Calvin put it: “we’d probably be dead now if it wasn’t for Twinkies.”
My mother, Jean Campbell (nee McCrie) Schutze, lived her whole life in one house. The only exception was when she and my father, who worked for the Department of the Army, lived in Washington, D.C., during World War II.
She was born, raised, and married in the house at 3087 14th Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. Her mother gave birth to her at home (on the kitchen table according to family legend) in 1917, and she was married in the living room of the house in 1941. Although she died in a hospital in 1970, she had lapsed into a diabetic coma in her bedroom from which she never woke.
I, too, was raised in this house on 14th Street — it was apparently demoted from an avenue by the time I came along in 1949 — and lived there until I was in my mid twenties.
The house, long ago demolished, is still very real in my mind. I can walk through each room, point out where the family members sat at the table, see my mother and grandmother canning vegetables in the kitchen, smell the flowers growing in the back yard. It’s where I spent my formative years with many of the people I’ve loved most in life.
Betty Schutze in front of house on 14th Street, 1950
I’ve often thought it would be interesting to research this home that’s so full of memories. So with Detroit street directories and federal censuses in hand, I began to trace the house back into the past, all the way to 1890 when it first appeared in city directories.
The building was similar to its multi-story, multi-family neighbors: a two-story structure with a complete set of living quarters on each floor and separate entrances for the downstairs and upstairs families. In some years there was only one family living in the house, in other years there were two, and sometimes boarders besides.
The owner of the house was James Miller McCrie, my mother’s grandfather, who moved to Detroit in 1882 from western Michigan with his wife Anna and their two children James Wellington McCrie and Jennie McCrie. James Miller McCrie bought the lot between 1885 and 1889 from the Godfroy family that had previously farmed the area. He intended to use it as a rental property.
The first occupant was Richard Shekell, owner of Shekell & Son, a flour and feed store at the corner of Grand River and Cass Avenues. His sons Clyde, Lee, and Percy lived with their widowed father. Richard died by 1893 and the sons moved out.
Rev. Andrew Wolff
Mrs. Wolff
In 1893 the Reverend Andrew Wolff, from Franklin, Indiana, was installed as pastor of the Calvary Presbyterian Church at Michigan and Maybury Avenues.1 In his two year tenure he ruminated on sermons in the home on 14th Ave while his wife Satiah took care of the more temporal concerns. He left at the end of 1894 to assume a pastorate in South Dakota. “As an orator he had few equals in the pulpit, and he was a thinker and a pleasing preacher, capable of expressing in beautiful form some original gems of thought.”2
In 1895 a widow, Elizabeth Hayes, moved in for two years. Her boarder was a young physician, Hugh McEachren, who stayed on to become the primary occupant. He married Jeannette Gilbert in 1897 and the 1900 census shows the couple employed a female servant. McEachren ran his medical practice in his home, and I remember my mother telling me that a doctor used to live in the house, and his office was the room that years later would be my mom and dad’s bedroom. McEachren died in 1906 at age 36 of tuberculosis and his widow moved out. But a boarder, Dr. Nelson MacArthur, became the house’s primary occupant through 1908, probably continuing the medical practice from the home.
The fact that my mother knew about the doctor, and even knew where his office was in the house, leads me to believe he was likely my grandfather James Wellington McCrie’s boyhood physician.
In 1909 a blacksmith by the name of James Mortson moved into the house. The automobile was in its infancy at the time, and an ad from the Detroit Free Press of 1910 showed that there was still a horse and mule market on 14th Avenue. The 1910 census showed Mortson living with his wife Ida and their son; in the other flat Stanley Perry, a young automobile clerk, lived with his teenage wife Agnes. The house on 14th Avenue in 1910 encapsulated the transition of Detroit from horse and buggy to automobile, with its occupants working different sides of the technological divide.
An advertisement from The Detroit Free Press, 7 August 1910
I remember a large wooden barn, complete with hayloft, in the back yard of our house on 14th Street. By the time I lived there, of course, the barn was used as a car garage, but for many years it would have been a horse and carriage barn for the home’s earlier occupants.
Morton, who became a salesman at the Columbia Buggy Company on Woodward Avenue, was the last occupant of the house before my grandfather, James Wellington McCrie, took over in 1914 with his wife Sarah. A year later they began their family.
The first upstairs tenant under James W.’s ownership was a dentist, Gordon Hackett, in 1914. The dentist was followed by the widow Fannie Lynn, who in turn was followed by Arthur Post, a motor company clerk, and his wife, two daughters, and sister-in-law. He was followed by another widow, Isabella Burt, and her son, a clerk.
An urban neighborhood — view of opposite side of 14th Ave from James W. McCrie’s house
The home on 14th Avenue was between Michigan and Grand River Avenues, not too far from the Detroit River. I could occasionally hear the large freighters’ boat horns, so it’s not surprising that between 1923 and 1925 a boat captain, Jerry Rose, was the tenant. He was followed by Carl Sanchez, an auto worker, and afterward by Jack MacDonald, a painter and decorator, and his wife, daughters, son-in-law, and a roomer. MacDonald’s son-in-law worked as a lithographic laborer and may have known my grandfather from work, since my grandfather was an accountant at a lithographic company.
Extract from the 1930 census showing James as an owner at 3087 14th Street, and Jack McDonald as a renter at 3089 14th Street, the upper flat.
In the 1940 census the upstairs flat was vacant, not surprisingly, as James and Sarah’s eldest child William was married later that year and the upstairs flat was to become his home. James died in 1940; his widow Sarah remained in the downstairs flat with her youngest daughter Jean. The next year, in 1941, Jean married Leonard Schutze and Len joined his wife and mother-in-law in the downstairs home.
This family arrangement was the final one for the house. William, living upstairs, became a computer analyst for IBM, Sperry Rand, and Burroughs, a field that was cutting edge in the 1950s and 1960s. Leonard, living downstairs, worked as an hydraulic engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers, Great Lakes Division. Bill had two children and Len had three.
By the early 1960s the neighborhood was in economic decline while Sarah McCrie was in physical decline. She died in 1963 at age 87. In 1967 the area was engulfed in the Detroit riot; in the ensuing years anyone who could afford to move out did so and the neighborhood went to ruin.
William left the house after the 1967 riots; Leonard left in the early 1970s after his wife died and the home became a frequent target for break ins by neighborhood thieves.
William eventually sold the vacant house to a speculator but its days as a home were over. Shortly thereafter the house burned down.
For blocks around there are very few structures remaining. Looking at the area, it is difficult to imagine it was once a thriving neighborhood filled with houses, apartments, schools, grocery, drug, and dime stores, banks, churches, and a gas station.
Houses, even more than people, take their secrets to the grave. But a house that gave shelter and comfort and maybe even some inspiration to generations of Detroiters deserves some kind of obituary.
Lest it be forgotten, this is my humble tribute to the place I still think of as home.
Footnotes:
1. William Downie, A Complete History of Calvary Presbyterian Church: from its beginning in 1868 until its 75th anniversary, May 25th, 1943, (Detroit, Michigan: Calvary Presbyterian Church, 1943). Accessed via Hathitrust Digital Library, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015071480811;view=1up;seq=5
2. “Death of Rev A. T. Wolff, D. D.,” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, Illinois), 11 May 1905, p1, c3. Accessed via Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/14714554/
I probably owe my fascination with fountain pens to James Wellington McCrie.
My grandfather was an accountant and he kept a stash of dipping pens and spare nibs in his desk drawer. I grew up in his house and frequently rummaged around in his desk. He didn’t mind; he’d passed away nine years before I was born.
Owen School, built 1879, ca. 1890
I went to the same elementary school as he did. When I attended it was the oldest school in Detroit. The desks still had ink wells. My older sister remembers using them, but by the time I began cursive writing the ballpoint had replaced the dipping pen in the classroom.
Nevertheless, exposure in my youth to the ink wells and to my grandfather’s cache of pens stirred thoughts of using a fountain pen when I was in college and I bought a cheap one with ink cartridges. I didn’t use it long—it leaked like a sieve and made a mess of both my paper and hands.
Years later I got a leather holder with a nice pen and pencil as a gift from co-workers. There was a different feeling to extracting those writing instruments from their pouch than with grabbing a Bic pen from the drawer. Maybe it was similar to the way one feels when putting on a suit and knotting a tie rather than pulling on jeans when going out to dinner: a feeling of anticipation, deliberation, mindfulness, sophistication.
Later still I attended a seminar where one of my classmates had a Montblanc ballpoint pen. It was the first time I felt pen envy; I was determined to have one of my own. I bought a Montblanc knockoff (i.e., fake) pen from a street vendor in New York. Unfortunately it just wasn’t the same—like wearing a tee shirt with a bow tie print to a formal affair—and I didn’t use it long, nor did I ever take it out of the apartment.
I reconnected with fountain pens when my wife and I visited her cousin in Los Angeles a couple of decades back and we were introduced to a friend of hers. Her friend worked as a district sales manager for Montblanc and she enthused about her personal fountain pens. She hooked me up with a deal on a Meisterstück fountain pen, and writing has never been the same. It’s tactile and pleasurable: deliberate, mindful, sophisticated.
Which brings me back to James Wellington McCrie. I’m naming one of my favorite fountain pens for the man who started me on this writing journey.
Pelikan M805
The pen I have in mind is a Pelikan Souverän M805 Stresemann. The pen’s striped gray barrel was designed after the suits worn by the Weimar Republic’s foreign minister Gustav Stresemann (1879-1929), a contemporary of my grandfather’s.
The design gives it a “buttoned down” look that would have been appreciated by my accountant grandfather. Pictures I have of him show he was a conservative dresser — yes, he wore a real bow tie — and this pen would look great in an accounting office, or any office for that matter. Its black and gray tones are matched with palladium plated clip and rings, and a rhodium plated 18-carat nib. The pen exudes understated sophistication.
The German-manufactured pen is a piston filler that holds a good amount of ink. When I reflect on my college years’ experience with a leaking cartridge pen, this would be its opposite — it fills easily and cleanly and writes without mishap or misstep. It’s fine-tipped nib would work nicely for an accountant filling in columns of numbers, but I eventually swapped it out for a broad nib more suited to writing lines of flowing text and signatures. That’s one of the strengths of the Pelikan brand, you can interchange the nibs among similar models.
Unfortunately, the pen is not as cheap as the knockoff Montblanc I snagged in New York. However, using the frugality inherited from my Scottish grandfather, I bought it from an on-line retailer in England — Cult Pens — which offers Pelikans at considerable discount over American pricing, especially when the exchange rate is favorable.
Peter Twydle, author of Fountain Pens: A Collector’s Guide, writes, “The one question people ask me more often than any other is, ‘What is the best fountain pen in the world?’ My answer is always Pelikan and, more specifically, the Pelikan M800 and its variants.” I can’t disagree with him. This pen writes beautifully. It fits comfortably in the hand. And with its beak-shaped clip, distinct pelican logo on the finial, and beautifully engraved nib, it is extremely handsome.
So just who was this James Wellington McCrie I’ve named my pen after? That’s a good question because I never met him, and his wife and daughter didn’t talk about him. His portrait was on the fireplace mantel, but he might as well have been a ghost. So here’s what I’ve found, and I have to say I’ve grown to like him.
James in 1878 in Grand Rapids
He was born in June of 1878 in Grand Haven, Michigan, to James and Anna (Anthony) McCrie. He was apparently named for his father but given a distinct middle name — a name that doesn’t have precedence on either his father’s or mother’s side.
When James was two years old his father was working as a foreman at the railroad’s grain elevator in Grand Haven along the Grand River. Leading a rather comfortable life, the family lived within a short walk to the river or a twenty-minute walk to Lake Michigan. His father apparently was well regarded, for two years later, in 1882, the family moved to the city of Detroit where his company had just completed a grain elevator in the rail yards on the Detroit River and his father was given the job of weighmaster. James was four years old.
Detroit Business University, 1894
Four years later the family moved to a house on 14th Avenue, where James attended the nearby John Owen Elementary School. His public education continued through the eighth grade; after that he attended the Detroit Business University for between six and twelve months to complete the business curriculum, taking courses in business writing (including penmanship of course), business arithmetic, bookkeeping, commercial law, business correspondence, and business paper (invoices, contracts, leases, mortgages, deeds, etc.).
James McCrie’s signature on a 1918 draft register shows a sample of his penmanship
The education stood by him well as he worked his way up from clerk, assistant bookkeeper, bookkeeper, paymaster, accountant and cost accountant over the course of his career in various businesses around Detroit.
He began at age 17, working as a clerk at Michigan Carbon Works, a stone’s throw from the Detroit River where today Cobo Hall is located. At age 21, in 1899, he was working as an assistant bookkeeper at Wm. H. Elliott, a store selling clothes and dry goods on the corner of Woodward Avenue and Grand River. The handsome 6-story red brick Elliott building still stands on the northwest corner of the intersection.
Four years later he was working as a bookkeeper at Crown Hat Manufacturing Company. He worked there for six years, and I believe it was while he was there, in about 1905, he met his future wife, Sarah Livingston, who was working as a stenographer at a millinery (hat) wholesaler a few blocks away in downtown Detroit. The couple put off marriage for seven years while Sarah was living with her elderly mother and young orphaned cousins. She wanted to delay starting her own family until the cousins were grown.
From an advertisement of 1909
In 1909, at age 31, James was a bookkeeper at Everitt-Metzger-Flanders. The company, more commonly known at E-M-F, was the fourth largest automobile manufacturer at the time, with Henry Ford’s company being the largest. Ford’s small factory, now a museum, was on the neighboring block on Piquette Avenue.
James would have shouldered his way to work in the heart of the fledgling auto industry amidst a stream of factory laborers on the streets, with machinists, engineers, inventors, and automobile tycoons bustling about. From his office he’d hear the thrump of machinery, the grunts of men, the cranking of engines, and the whistles of trains arriving with parts and departing with new cars. It was a time of energy, competition, and excitement in Detroit, centered in the neighborhood where he worked.
In 1910 Studebaker took over E-M-F and expanded the plant into Henry Ford’s factory when Ford moved his operations to Highland Park. (Interestingly, Studebaker ran its cars through Henry Ford’s old office at the front of the building on their way to the rail head.) James McCrie became an accountant with Studebaker that year. When the head of the company started up the Maxwell Car Company three years later, in 1913, James moved with him and became the paymaster at Maxwell.
Click on certificate to see enlarged image and guest book
It was a time of excitement in James’s personal life as well. He married Sarah Livingston in 1912 when he was 34 and she was 36 and in a couple of years they moved into a house on 14th Avenue a block from his mother’s.
They started their family quickly, with son William born in 1914; daughters Margaret and Jean followed in 1915 and 1917 respectively.
James W. McCrie with son William and mother Anna, wife Sarah, and sister Jennie (seated), 1914
With his new family established, James changed jobs again in 1918, becoming a bookkeeper and accountant for a pair of attorneys on the 14th floor of the Ford Building in downtown Detroit, a skyscraper of its day and a building that still stands. He was only there shortly though; the next year, at age 41, he started working for a lithographic company, Calvert Lithographing, on Grand River Avenue. He became a cost accountant for the prosperous and long-established firm; the job was solid, supporting the family through the Great Depression of the 1930s.
James Wellington McCrie (without jacket) in his side yard next to cousin Florence and friends ca. 1928
From photographs of James we know he was bald at an early age, overweight, a bit stiff, and almost always wore a tie. He seems to have had a sense of humor, but one he kept in check. Accountants are generally known to be conservative, conscientious, rules-based, and unimaginative in their work, and James looks like he fit the bill, right down to his socks.
James McCrie the father and gardener ca. 1917
Pictures show he worked a flower and vegetable garden in his back yard, and he had a chicken coop as well. He rented out the upper story of his two-story home, a common practice of that day and area. His bank book showed he religiously put money into savings, even during the years of the Depression, so he must have known how to manage his own as well as company funds.
Though he looked self-possessed in all of his photographs, my sister tells the story that he became so exasperated with his headstrong daughter (my mother), he once took her by the heels and hung her down the clothes chute when she misbehaved. He apparently wasn’t as unflappable as photographs suggest. (Clothes chutes were much bigger in those days. I used to sit in it and play astronaut during the early space exploration years.)
By his early 50s James’s love of ice cream and his sedentary job may have contributed to his developing chronic myocarditis and nephritis, which felled him at the age of 62. Bed-ridden in his last months, he died at home on the day his son was married in October of 1940.
James Wellington McCrie’s mantel portrait
I wish I’d had the chance to know him.
I also wish I’d had the foresight to keep at least one of his pens.
Instead, I have to settle for naming one of my favorite pens for him, thinking of him when I pick up the conservatively dressed Pelikan Stresemann. I call it ‘The Wellington’ in his honor. I think it’s an apt name.
better homage to Bessie than a pen that when capped literally has an ace up its sleeve. Bessie would have loved the symbolism. She occasionally joked that one of us was holding one up ours when a card game was going against her. Conversely we’d tease her when she gleefully laid down a run of high-scoring aces.
