Genealogy - Bearing Tragedy

 

1908 Teddy Bear - then and now

Sometime around 1908 my grandfather, Herbert, received a Steiff mohair bear as a gift. Not long afterwards he was holding that bear tightly and proudly while standing aside his older brother, Robert, on the family's farm in southern Ohio. Robert watches on lovingly and protectively. 

Nearly 120 years later, that bear sits atop a shelf in my mother's apartment staring lovingly and protectively at its cub.

I know nothing about the circumstances of how the bears came to my grandfather. I don't remember seeing them when I visited my grandparents. I know that my father brought them back to the house after my grandfather died -- knowing my mother loved bears.

Those bears witnessed a family tragedy. The photograph of the boys is the last image I have of Robert.

The boys' father, Sylvester, married in 1888 and spent the early years blacksmithing, managing apple and peach orchards, and looking for work opportunities and stability along the Ohio River.  That stability didn't come. By 1910 he had found work down river but away from his home in Ohio, speculating on lumber tracts in Louisiana and helping to transition tree harvested forest properties to farms. This work, though, meant he was separated from his beloved wife and four children. 

He was still working in the timber industry in Louisiana when his oldest son, Robert, finished school. Robert probably joined his father in the work for a time. Robert wasn't yet old enough to be drafted into the World War so he could have had up to two years with his father. 

The opportunity to build his relationship with his father was a bright point.  Unfortunately, the remoteness and male dominated nature of the work made it ripe for over-consuming alcohol. Sylvester had certainly succumbed to it.  Robert followed.

 By the end of 1918, Robert was eligible for the draft. He went to Fort Thomas, KY.  No longer had he joined in September the Armistice was signed in November. Robert was then discharged as a recruit in December. He may have returned to the timber industry with his father, but if he did, it was short lived. His father died in October of 1919 of Cirrhosis of the liver -- a direct result of his alcohol consumption.

Robert's family moved in to live with his maternal grandparents, Robert and Betty Wiley in a large house in Athalia, OH. While he may have helped in the General Store that his grandfather owned, Robert was trying his hand supporting the growing need for automotive mechanics.

Wiley Home and General Store in Athalia, OH

Robert married, Mary Lewis sometime after February of 1920 and they had a son, Lewis Edward born in September of 1922. 

Either the mechanic work didn't pan out or the alcoholism overcame Robert. Robert's marriage dissolved and he was eventually incarcerated for non-support.

That is tragedy enough. But while serving time in the Ohio State Penitentiary, a fire erupted in the prison. Robert was among the over three hundred men who lost their lives in that fire.

My grandfather swore off alcohol completely -- not for religious reasons -- but because he witnessed the disease it caused his father and the devastation it brought to his big brother. 

He lost a brother but kept the bear, and he kept his vow. And in doing so, he carried forward not the darkness that consumed his father and brother, but the love that once shone in a young man’s protective gaze. The bear remains bearing witness to tragedy, memory, and devotion.

*****

Next time we will look at the tragedy that follows Robert's son, Lewis.