Born to Run

I have lots of photos of my father’s mother. Portraits of her as a child. Portraits of her as a young woman. Portraits of her with her twin babies. Then snapshots of her with family, with friends over the years. A full chronology of my grandmother’s life.

But I can count the photos of my grandfather on one hand and still have a finger left over. He wasn’t camera shy. He just didn’t stop for the camera. In the first photo he is a boy of ten. It’s 1890 and he is with his family before their very large Ohio farmhouse (I count nine windows and four doors on just the two sides I can see). It looks to be late winter and this yard is no doubt beautiful in summer with its overhang of leafy trees and long views, but here it is a mess of mud and melting snow, a hazard for the ruffled skirts and high heel boots of his sisters. Grandaddy is in knee-high leather boots and holding the harnesses of two yearling calves, an odd prop for a family photo, and amusing given the formality of the other family members. He looks like he was just passing through and the photo’s subjects stepped aside to make way for him, he stopping for a moment before moving on. He was always headstrong, so more likely he insisted on including two calves he was raising himself. John H. Berryman Family 1890The next photo is a good 20 years later. My grandparents lived in a big two-story Colonial on Glen Road in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. Granddaddy commuted across the George Washington Bridge and into Manhattan each day. In the photo his suit coat is off and tie is loosened. He is holding his baby boy in the air, gazing at him as if in sheer wonder. Or perhaps sheer fear, because these new twin boys were conceived bittersweetly three years after my grandparents’ darling daughters, one six and one six months, died of then-incurable disease, my grandmother deciding she would never again have children. Her own father had to intervene to persuade her that she could love other children, but that’s another story for another time. Granddaddy waited patiently, as was really his only choice, and now I have this photo of him cautiously holding this precious bundle of baby that was my father. Or uncle. I can’t tell.RF Berryman and Baby Ted BerrymanSometime during their Woodcliff Lake period he decided to invent a better kind of running shoe. He had been a track star at Oberlin College and held the “Big Six” record for the fastest two mile. Only fragments of the running shoe story remain. The soles were made from tires, or tire rubber. To prove their superiority he ran in them from Woodcliff Lake to Passaic (20 miles) or Lima, Ohio (625 miles), I forget which. That’s all I know. There is no photo commemorating his accomplishment. In fact, I have no other photo of him until about 40 years later.

Peg and Bob Berryman, Elizabeth and Waldo Berryman, r to lIn that photo he is an elder in his 80s, standing next to his brother and behind my grandmother who finally, after a life more nomadic and in all ways unsettled than she ever wanted, was sitting in the lap of luxury at her Leucadia, California home, the gleaming Pacific to one side and an endless panorama of rolling hills to the other. Granddaddy lived in that lap of luxury too, but it was luxury he did not want and did not take to with ease. The febility of old age frustrated his need to put one foot in front of the other toward some fanciful goal.

As a boy Granddaddy was a prodigy. I have it on numerous family authorities that he flew through high school in one year and graduated from Oberlin College in two years. He was  fluent in English, Spanish, French, Greek, Latin and Portuguese. As a recent graduate he accepted a one-year position to teach school in the Philippine Islands, where he became fluent in Tagalog. On coming back he went to work for a Wall Street Bank as an interpreter. A few years later he moved his family onto a commune called The School of Living in Suffern, New York, founded by the noted utopian, Ralph Borsodi. After a few years of that he scouted the Land of California, writing home that it was “a magnificent panorama of unparalleled magnitude.” That impressed the family, and as soon as my dad was home from WWII, off they went.

They weren’t following history, though. California’s greatest population booms followed the Great Depression and World War II. In the 1930s thousands of Americans, left destitute by the double whammy of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, went west in search of work. By that time my grandfather’s brother, Waldo Berryman was already moving his growing auto aftermarket company from Ohio to Palo Alto. He eventually moved it to Encinitas, California, though I don’t know if that was before or after my branch of the family moved there.

After WWII thousands more Americans moved to California after GIs had passed through there on their way to the Pacific Theater. They came home, grabbed their wives or sweethearts, and headed for the promised land of sunshine and opportunity. By the time my father was home from war the family’s bags were packed, furniture all shipped, and car gassed up and ready to head west and join Granddaddy in the Berryman family’s new-found home upon that “magnificent panorama of unparalleled magnitude.”

In the last photo I have of my Grandaddy he is an old man walking, stooped and gnarled by Parkinson’s, but still, as he always was, moving forward and deep in thought.

I recently went hunting for photos of him online. Surely, with all he had done, there were photos of him in some college yearbook, newspaper, or historical archive. I know he was a track star in college, so I Googled “Robert Fulton Berryman” and “two mile,” his specialty.

Nothing.

I tried the search again with “R. F. Berryman” and bingo, I landed on the Oberlin College yearbook of 1905. (Thank you www.archive.org – you always come through!) I found the yearbook photo of the Oberlin track team. But…argh! The team members were not named in order of the photo. There was no, “Named, left to right.” In fact, there were more young men in the photo than names to the side. This wasn’t going to be easy. After studying each face, looking for my grandfather’s unmistakable upside-down pear shaped head, I settled on just one possibility. He had to be the confident looking young man sitting in the bottom row, second from right. Technically he’s seated in the second row, I suppose, but also technically his is the second head from bottom right.

R.F. Berryman Oberlin 1903 team

I still don’t know for sure if this is Robert Fulton Berryman, Oberlin Class of 1905. But I’m going to believe it is. Because he was almost certainly in the track team photo and no one else is a close match. Because the head shape, ears, and eyes match the photo I have from 1960. And because the only photos I have of this man I loved so dearly are blurred, dark, or from his back or side.

R.F. Berryman 1903 and 1960I take this from these few scattered facts or semi-facts: Robert Fulton Berryman always ran towards, never from. The whole world was that magnificent panorama of unparalleled magnitude. He raced through college and then ran (not literally, I must point out) to the Philippines to see the aftermath of the Spanish American War. He got an inheritance and so ran to Oklahoma to start a sheep ranch (fine occupation for an academic prodigy!). He ran from Wall Street to a commune, and from there to California. Whether he got comfortable in California and so decided not to explore further lands I don’t know. I do know that as I age, changing my life gets harder. I would like to move someplace completely different than coastal Southern California, but so many ties tether me here. After a while in one place it gets like that. But that’s another story for another time.

Grandaddy didn’t have time for cameras. But he had time for me. No camera can capture that.

John Fitch, Chapter 2: Victory…or Die?

John Fitch, 35-ish.GIFWhen we last saw my distant ancestor John Fitch he had just buried his gold and silver on Charles Garrison’s farm in the dead of night.

To catch you up, it was December, 1776, and General Washington’s army was staggering through Trenton in full retreat, with Cornwallis fast on their heels.

Fitch and his apprentices were making guns as fast as they could, but with one eye watching for the fierce and now fast-approaching Hessians, German mercenary soldiers of the British army.

Fitch worked until the Hessians were practically on him, then took what he could carry and fled.Fitch shop market

No sooner was he gone before his factory was set fire, all his equipment destroyed.

All he had left were some small silversmithing tools and the gold and silver he grabbed quickly and carried, hidden, when he fled.

He buried his precious metals under a chestnut tree by the light of a dim lantern on Garrison’s Pennsylvania farm.

moonlit-landscapeHe carefully smoothed the spot, and mentally marked its precise location for when he returned, knowing it could be months, maybe even a year or more. 

Then Fitch was alone once again.

It was a pattern that repeated itself over and over throughout his life.

He could not make and maintain deep connections with either people or places. Of course, I would run too with the Hessian army chasing me.

But most of the time it was only John Fitch’s dark thoughts that chased him, both from love and ultimate success.

The same dark thoughts that drove him to think of suicide countless times throughout his life.

Yet it’s early. He’s only 33. His greatest achievements – and greatest failures – still lay ahead.

At 33 he has already been one of the most accomplished silversmiths in America, and State armorer to New Jersey, building a factory and employing 60 gunsmiths.

But right now he’s lost.

The treasure that John buried made him a comfortably upper middle class man and gave him some sense of security as he stood in the field wondering which way to turn, what to do next.

He knew that when the war had passed through and he could safely reopen his silver and gun businesses, he had the money to buy the best equipment and set up in the best location.

What to do now was the problem.

While Fitch was escaping Trenton into Pennsylvania, General George Washington was heading the opposite way – crossing the Delaware to defeat the British at Trenton.

The war was young. The shot heard round the world was at Lexington just 14 months earlier, and the British had been chasing General Washington ever since, first all across New Jersey, and now across the Delaware River and into Pennsylvania.Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware_by_Emanuel_Leutze,_MMA-NYC,_1851

Morale was low, desertions high.

It was December 23, 1776. Thomas Paine was with the troops, and saw the toll their defeats had taken. He sat down and scribbled an impassioned essay.

Washington had it read to his troops: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

Washington rallied his troops. They mustered, Washington shouted his battle cry, “Victory or die!” and the Continental Army crossed the icy Delaware back into New Jersey and defeated the surprised Hessians. It was a turning point for the war, and now Washington could turn his army toward Morristown New Jersey and their winter headquarters.BattleofMonmouth

This gave James Fitch an idea. He went to Baltimore and proceeded to fill two wagons with tobacco and dry goods, then drove them to the army’s camp at Morristown. After finding he had competition in those products he turned to something the soldiers were not getting enough of: beer.

He set out again, this time buying all the beer one local brewery could brew. When that wasn’t enough, he found other breweries, and was keeping a constant flow of brew to the troops, his wagons going back and forth from brewery to camp as fast as they could.Ale House Door - Chalon

Fitch made an average of $100 pounds a week, an incredibly good payback. In all, he made $40,000, an enormous fortune.

The only problem was that he was paid in Continental money, not British pounds, and certainly not in gold or silver.

He knew inflation was high, but he didn’t know it was so high that by 1781 the continental would be worth only two and a half percent of its face value. And eventually, Congress would redeem the continental for just one hundredth of its original value.
By the time Fitch closed up shop on his beer deliveries, his $40,000 was worth only $1,000.

Fitch lost his money without the pleasure of buying or gambling it away.
All he had left was the buried treasure on Garrison’s farm, so he set out to go see his old friend, Garrison.

And that’s where it gets really interesting!

Stay tuned….

Ladies Who Lunch: Costume Edition

Nine kindly little ladies on a lovely outing.

That’s what I thought. Nine friends on a festive picnic, away from family duties for a few short hours of girlish giggles and shared secrets. They hiked their dresses and pulled each other up the sandy bluff like a chain of pink roses, never minding their scuffed shoes and wrinkled skirts because those are a small price to pay for the rare bliss of unencumbered time with old friends.

I’m sure some of that is true in spirit if not in fact. But look once more at the photo. What seems at glance to be a simple picnic turns far more curious at closer inspection. The photo was taken in Bainbridge, Ohio in 1920. But alert readers will note the ladies aren’t looking very 1920s, roaring or otherwise. Can these women be so fashion-challenged that they’re wearing 30-or-so year old styles? And who among them is the same size as she was 30 years ago? Even if they didn’t gain weight, some settling of contents does occur. Or are they so strapped to the old ways that they refused to change with the times? And why is the black-clad woman at far left brandishing a rolling pin?

Their clothes are some kind of mashup of Edwardian and late Victorian. The high collared shirts and bell-shaped skirts could be 1890s or 1900s, though the length tells me 1890s. The puffy sleeves are definitely 1890s. I don’t know what era the rolling pin or picnic baskets are from; they aren’t much different from ones I have. The cook’s apron, though, is definitely 1920s. I know at least one of these women is college-educated and a member of a prominent local family. The pretty little lady with the picnic basket, third from right, is Clara Brown Eggleston, my great-great grandmother. She was the wife of a distinguished doctor of both medicine and theology, who himself was the son of a college educated clergyman and businessman who lived in one of Chagrin Falls’ largest mansions. They were down-to-earth Emersonians and G-Grandmother Eggleston at least was far from pretentious. She spent a good deal of her time filling her basket with food and delivering it to the needy. But why would she do it dressed like Little Red Riding Hood, as she seems to be here?

I want answers! But lacking any, I sent the photo to fashion history expert Pauline Thomas, who believes the women are dressed in simple costumes of earlier eras for some sort of fair or anniversary event. That’s what I kind of figured. Since all their get-ups can be generally classed as Victorian or Edwardian, and the photo was taken in 1920, I can only surmise that they’re either on a costume picnic or cast members of a bring-your-own costume play. G-g’ma Eggleston does look like an elderly Red Riding Hood. And the black-clad school marm at left looks like she’s about to beat the dickens out of whatever miscreant is behind the camera.

I’ll never know what they were up to that day, but it’s comforting to see my g-g’ma looked like a sweet and kind lady, ready with brimming basket to dusty her shoes and skirt walking Bainbridge’s still-dirt side roads to share her blessed bounty with those in need of her – and her food’s – nourishment.

As for the costume picnic vs. play – I’m loving the idea of a costume picnic. Anyone want to join me?

John Fitch, Chapter 1: Soon to be a Major Motion Picture!

John Fitch and I are second cousins eight times removed. That means my ninth great grandfather was his second great-grandfather, and my eighth great grandfather was his great-granduncle.

It’s nothing I’d get too excited over. Except that I wouldn’t know about him if I didn’t have this connection, and you wouldn’t be reading about his major-motion-picture life of an itinerant button maker.
John Fitch portrait.GIF

I’m thinking Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Am I right?

Joseph Gordon Levitt
I’ll give you a 30-second preview of the movie in my head.

(To be read aloud in your finest action movie trailer voice):

“As a mapmaker, his surveys helped open the Western Reserve territories… As a silversmith, he was renowned as the finest in the land… As a button-maker, he built a fortune… And as a land investor, he was captured in Kentucky Territory by hostile Natives…

“And that’s only the beginning… Fitch was traded to the French. He was confined to a prison island, and made another fortune. Bound on a prison ship, he narrowly escaped being sunk in sea battle by his own American comrades. Set free in New York, he set out for Kentucky to do it all again… And then…he invented the steamboat.”

Researching your genealogy isn’t just about dates, places, and begats. It’s history. And a way to learn history. When I saw the loooooong line of Fitches that stretch out behind me for many hundreds of years, I wanted to know more about this family and the history it wound itself through. It happens that there’s more out there on Fitches than for your average fairlJohn Fitch book cover.GIFy anonymous ancestor.

One of the things I dug up was a little (as in diminutive) 413-page book about James Fitch, published in 1857.

The book is The Life of John Fitch, Inventor of the Steamboat, by Thompson Westcott. You can get it free at www.archives.org.

Author Westcott treads the victim theme pretty heavily, from Fitch’s reprobate family (How could he rise from this?!) to the many times he was slighted, cheated, lied to, given empty promises, and otherwise played the patsy. But I didn’t see it. I mean, how do you take a man who builds part of his fortune on supplying beer and tobacco to troops in the field and call him anything but an opportunist? And opportunists sometimes get their hands slapped.

Be that as it may, Fitch was brilliant and industrious, and knew how to turn a circumstance to his advantage.

When he was born in 1743 there were just under one million Colonists in America. By 1760 that number had swelled by three quarters, to a million and a half, and they were revving themselves up for a Revolution. Paul Revere - Dunsmore

That’s the world John Fitch was born into. Roiling, uncertain, full of promise and knee-deep in opportunity, but as changeable as a fire wind.

With no guidance from people who loved him, John had to find his own place in the world. And because he was full of ambition but short on patience, he took a few ground balls to the chin along the way.

Fresh out of his father’s home, FitIndenture certificatech endured an unsuccessful apprenticeship with a clockmaker who wouldn’t teach young John how to make clocks, so after fulfilling the duties of his three-year indenture he was tossed to the world with scant skills at age 21, which was considered somewhat of a late start.

By grit and determination he found himself a position making buttons for a lazy silversmith, and before long he had bought out the man’s equipment, which he financed by making brass buttons and selling them town to town, traveling by foot.

His reputation grew and he somehow finagled himself the commission of armorer to the Revolutionary Army, providing arms and ammunition to the ill-equipped recruits who flooded in from small towns and woodlandLafayette - spirit of the colonists settlements to fight the bloody British.

He set up a small factory to build guns, but continued to supplement his income by making and selling buttons town to town.

By this time he was worth the healthy sum of 800 pounds. But with British forces ever on the move forward, and his racing around from town to town hauling buttons, he worried about his money.

After considering the alternatives, he decided to secretly bury it on his friend Charles Garrison’s place in Buck’s County, Pennsylvania.

993px-Parable_of_the_hidden_treasure_Rembrandt_-_Gerard_Dou

And that’s when the story really gets interesting.

To be continued!