2009 Essay Contest
Winners
My Favorite Ancestor: Fren Nicholas
By Carol Nicholas Tinney
My favorite ancestor is my father, who faced adversity and overcame many obstacles that were involved in raising two children alone sixty-four years ago. I suppose there is a time in every little girl’s life when she thinks of her father as a hero, and I am no exception.
My father was my father/mother/hero for the first seven years of my life. He was not tall in stature or overly muscular, though I thought he was very strong. He was what was then called a linoleum mechanic, which I thought sounded impressive. His attire was always the same, beige carpenter pants and a pocket t-shirt, which held his pack of Camel Cigarettes. He was always neat in appearance and, even though he spent his days on his knees spreading black floor adhesive, somehow none splattered on his ‘uniform’. I am sure the lady of the house where he was working appreciated his immaculate work habits. He came home looking the same as he did in the morning, fingernails and hands clean with the slight odor of turpentine and his wavy black hair still groomed. His over-sized dark brown eyes, a trait I’ve inherited, were the windows to his soul. As I grew older, I learned to interpret his mood by reading his eyes.
My father, Fren (named after his grandfather) Nicholas came to Ashtabula when he was fourteen years old. He was an only child who lived with his parents in the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania in a small town that had no high school. His father, a coal miner, envisioned a bright future for his son, so my father was delivered to his aunt’s home on Main Avenue in Ashtabula in the summer of 1930 so that he could graduate from Ashtabula High. Two houses away on the corner of Main and Burroughs Court was the home of a lovely teenage girl, who fell in love with my father. They graduated together and later married. My father, who loved numbers and was blessed with creative hands, continued his education by learning his flooring skills, a trade that I often heard him refer to as feast or famine. I would imagine my Grandfather’s aspirations for his son were realized. How difficult it must have been for my grandparents to send their only child away for the sake of a better life!
My sister was born in 1941 and I, in 1945. She remembers that we were a happy little family, but I was too young to remember. I was an infant when problems surfaced and our mother made another choice. You must realize how uncustomary it was sixty-four years ago for a man to be given sole custody of his children. But that is exactly what happened. So, as I said at the beginning of this memorial, my father was my father and mother - a true hero. The three of us lived in several different families, but he made sure we were always together - Nick and his two girls. Eventually, the three of us returned to his aunt on Main Avenue, so we were cared for while he worked. We slept in a good- sized room upstairs, sister and I in an antique double, Father in a cot in the corner. Speaking of corners, we always knew that he was in our corner in every sense of the word. He cared for us like a mother. He curled and combed our hair and bought us dresses for school. In those days little girls had to always look like ladies and Dad insisted that we act like ladies, too. For fun, he built us a toboggan so we could fly down hills together. One Christmas Eve, he used his crowbar in the snow so we could fantasize that reindeer had pranced on our front porch while Santa filled our stockings. When we didn’t feel well, he was there to hold our hand or our head. In his roles as a father and a mother, he worried about us.
When I was seven years old in 1952, my father remarried, and we were once again a happy little family. We lived next door to his dear aunt and also next door to the house that was our mother’s childhood home, but now we had our own home with a Mom and Dad, a dog, a piano, and eventually, a television. There were plenty of lean times, though. People didn’t want new floors or counter tops installed during the holidays, but nonetheless our holidays were good ones, thanks to my father. One Christmas he constructed a beautiful large wooden toy box, which I still have. On top of the toy box was a new baby doll. What a great Christmas! And what fun we had around that piano in our home, my sister or I playing old country standards and Father strumming the guitar. We even cut a demo record, the four of us, singing and playing Hank Williams’ Mansion Over the Hilltop. Since it was my father’s birthday the day we were recording, I sang Happy Birthday to him on the flip side of the record.
When I was a teenager, my father was still the worrier. He was stricter than my friends’ fathers, and sometimes when I wasn’t permitted to go to parties, my friends called me a baby. When I did leave for dances, dates, or football games, he always asked me if I had a handkerchief. “Yes,” I would reply. “Then keep your nose clean,” he reminded me, his way of saying, ‘Behave, young lady.’
I have many good memories of my childhood in Ashtabula on Main Avenue. Our house is no longer there. A car dealership is across the street and new cars rest on the black top where I grew up and became a young woman. If you’re ever walking by, perhaps the echoes of laughter and music can be heard and the sounds of family life in the 1950's. My father, a hero from the good old days, came full-circle, back between two significant houses. And so did we with him. Nick and his two girls.
My Favorite Ancestor: Marilyn May Jarvi, my Mother
by Karen Anthony
I knew I would write this about my Mom but it wasn’t until I was cleaning one of my gardens that I knew what to write. The garden I was working on was my Yellow Flag Irises that Mom and I dug from my Great Grandmother, Marl Ellen Carlson’s foundation ruins. Cleaning out the Iris bed just brought back so many memories of my Mom and that day. The trip to the old foundation of Mom’s grandparents house to dig those Irises was rewarded with a beautiful old fashioned Flag Irises that now almost cover the front half of my barn. But better than the flowers was the conversation of her childhood; her Grandma’s hugs, the canaries she raised and the special cookies she made her – Julia’s Sugar Cookies, the recipe from Julia Berridge, a cousin of Mary Ellen’s. We still use that recipe today!
I can still hear her telling me about the train accident that killed her Grandfather Carlson, how it traumatized his son Lynn and how when Mary Ellen heard the train whistle blowing and blowing and just knew it was August. He just got a model T and it stalled on the tracks near the house, he thought he could push it off the tracks. He made his son Lynn get out of the way and he tried to move the car, instead the train hit the car and threw August and killed him. Mom instilled in me the desire to get to know my ancestors through her recollections of her family. When I look at photographs of Mary Ellen Tracy and August Carlson, her memories have been so deeply impressed on me I feel like I know them too.
Mom was born in 1928 in New Lyme, Ohio, I can hear her telling me about the doll baby her Daddy bought her. She was playing with it outside all day, went in for dinner and left it out all night. When she found the baby doll the next day moisture had ruined its head, she felt so sad about that doll. Her Daddy died of pneumonia when she was only 5 years old, the doll was the last gift her Daddy gave her. Mom loved collecting dolls, she loved buying us dolls when we were little girls, I know she never got over losing the doll her Daddy gave her.
Another story I remember; the time Aunt Violet Carlson got them to smoke corn silk behind Grandmas barn, or hiking over rough places and tossing Mom across a small ravine. She hit the ground pretty hard and her arm was bleeding, I guess the older kids got in trouble over that. Then there was the time they pushed a log off the beach and sat on it, they were too young to understand about lake currents and drifted way out in the lake and someone had to get a boat to rescue them.
Since my grandmother, Hazel Carlson Stoker was a widow during the great depression, her family knew what it meant to go without. Her personal situation made her compassionate for others in need of a meal, so she would always feed hobos that stopped off in their area. My Grandmother would midwife to supplement their meager income, there were times she would get called out at all hours leaving the children at home. Mom said they (her brother Gorden and sister Evelyn and her) would hide on the floor if a hobo came by the house when their Mom was gone, she said they were really scared.
Mom’s Grandmother died two and a half years after my Grandfather died, it was a terrible time for her Mom and her family. Mary Ellen helped her with the grief of being a young widow with three little children, losing her Mom made life all the more difficult. Mom told me how her Mom would have migraines, they would come home from school and the house would be dark and her Mom laying down. They would spend those days outside doing whatever they wanted picking berries, playing at the lake or hiking about.
The love she had for her family and keeping all those stories so close to her heart it was only natural that genealogy would become a interest of hers. I was 17 and had a boyfriend (Ralph Anthony, now my husband of 35 years) and he was working on his family tree. His interest became mine and then Moms also. There are several research trips that stand out in my mind but my favorite was at Western Reserve Historical Library in Cleveland, Ohio. It was early in our research and we just had some basic information, we were new to that library and genealogy research, so Mom started in the family history books. She found a book on the Tracy family from England, it had an elaborate family crest and history of this family that was very interesting to her. She wanted to write it all down, I just couldn’t believe this ancient family would be in our family line. She was right and I still have that paper that she wrote it all down on.
Another occasion was looking through my Great Grandmothers Bible with Mom out fell a paper with Mary Ellen’s parents and their children and her Grand parents and their children. It was so exciting for both of us!
My favorite memory of my Mom and Dad was the vacation we took together to England in 2001. I had a travel guide and was looking for places to visit and here is Stanway Manor House, so I asked my Mom – doesn’t that name sound familiar? So we got the genealogy notebook and sure enough Stanway Manor was the home of our ancestor Lt. Thomas Tracy, you can imagine how excited we were! It wasn’t until we got to England and toured the other castles and ruins did we fully understand how many of these places our ancestor walked. It was a trip I will always cherish and I have such wonderful memories of our trip.
Mom died December 1, 2008, she had been living with Ralph and me for 2 years. I am sure having to leave her home, losing her independence was almost as difficult as losing my Dad. But she did good, she never gave up, maybe it was what she called “stubborn Swede” her inheritance from August Carlson. I am sure that growing up during the great depression and growing up without her Daddy gave her a resilience that you only get from enduring life’s difficulties.
Mom taught us so many things as children how to sew & crochet, she encouraged me to follow my creative instincts, she installed in us a love of reading. Her and my Dad taught us, by example that you can do anything you put your mind to. They also did things that were out of style, like plant a garden, can food, be a do it yourselfer before it became all the rage. Mom also bucked the Drs. advise and nursed all three of her babies.
A tribute to my Dad and Mom is that as my brother, sister and I settle their estate there has been peace in the family – no disputes or arguments. Today you read so many times of families being divided over money and possessions I am so happy we reflected my parents peaceful personalities. For genealogy purposes here is a list of the ancestors mentioned in my essay:
Mary Ellen Tracy & August Carlson
Hazel Eliza Carlson & Cecil Albert Stoker
Marilyn Stoker & Robert Jarvi
Gorden Stoker & Eveline Stoker Knapp
Violet Carlson Riipi
My Favorite Ancestor: My MOM – "It” or Evelyn Ruth (Allen) Lewis
by Trudy Hanhilammi
My mother was born December 16, 1909, in Austinburg, OH, to parents, Ida and George Allen, that I am sure never expected this angel. They already had 2 daughters, Nora, age 14, Bessie, age 12. The girls were so delighted with this baby sister, that they always referred to her as ‘It”. “It” did this, or “It” did that.
“It” always followed her Dad around, even as he plowed the fields with the horses, she walked back and forth behind the plow with him.
As she grew up her sister Bessie, a music teacher at the time, taught “It” to play the piano. She enjoyed singing with her sisters and cousins at get togethers and best of all she met the “love of her life” at a barn dance where her Dad played the violin for dancing.
“It” or legally my Mom was named Evelyn Ruth Allen. In high school she wrote an essay about how someday she would marry and go to Florida.
She quit high school in the 11th grade and married on February 23, 1928, to Russell Lewis, whom she met at the barn dance. Evelyn and Russell had 4 daughters, Ida Mae, Trudy, LaVaughn and Rheta.
My parents had a very happy marriage and it was due to my Mother. My Dad had his own business and when he came home from work, she always had a good meal ready for him and us girls. She let him be the head of the household.
My Mother taught us girls to cook, bake, sew, embroidery and crochet. She taught us to play games together and be fair. She always had us doing something to keep us busy. She sewed our prom and wedding dresses and had us learn to make our own clothes.
When my husband was drafted in the U.S. Army, my parents said I could come back home to live while he was gone. When he went to Germany and wrote that he needed a sweater and it had to be the color of his uniform, my Mother shopped with me for the pattern and yarn. I knitted the front and back and Mom knitted the sleeves and he had a warm wool sweater in no time. A sweater of the right color could not be found in the stores.
In time my Dad took Mom to Florida for a visit. She liked it so much that he purchased a home for them in Largo, FL. Then they spent 6 months every year in Florida. My Mother got her wish!
After several years of their traveling back and forth, my Dad took ill and passed away in Florida. My Mother continued to live there every winter until us girls asked her to sell the Florida home and live near us.
Her grandchildren have wonderful memories of her. Certain little things, such as
Clove chewing gum, reminds them of Grandma. She always offered them a stock of her Cloves chewing gum. One time before she went to Florida she asked the grandchildren what they would like her to bring back to them. My son, Keith, said, “Grandma, can you bring me back some ocean water?” Several months later when Grandma came back, she had some gallon jugs of ocean water for him. She was anxious to see what he was going to do with it. He said, “Now I can order my sea horses and they will live.”
In Florida my Mother loved company to come and stay with them. The grandkids of all ages, loved to be with her. When she was in her 80’s, she still wanted to take them to the parks, Disneyland or swimming in the ocean. They would remark about her great strength. She never tired from walking and enjoyed people of all ages. She passed away April 27, 2001, at the age of 91 years and we all remember how great she was, the songs she sang and everything she did.
My sisters, nieces and I are now putting together a cook book of her favorite recipes that she taught us to use.
My Favorite Ancestor: Uncle Ottley Russell
Coulter,
by Adrienne L. Marrison
“You probably don’t know this, but ……,” was the manner in which my Uncle Ottley began many conversations. At the time, I thought he was a bit opinionated and also overly fixated on the past. But after researching him for our family history, I came to realize that he had legitimate “bragging rights” and a vast storehouse of knowledge of which I was mostly unaware. As a young woman, I thought fondly of him as my amiable, old, half bald uncle, regardless of any perceived eccentricity. Despite a crippling hip condition, he would visit us in Andover about once a year, and correspond by the “hunt and peck” typing method more often. He thus corresponded with many over the years, keeping track of who, what and when, leaving a record of his life.
He was the first child and only son of four children born to my Grandparents, David, and Effie Ohl Coulter, on June 6, 1890, in Parkman, Ohio. His protruding ears and aquiline nose were notable even as a cute youngster in his “dress”, at age 4. At age nine, he was thrown from a horse and suffered a broken skull. It was thus said that he was a delicate child, as well as a bright boy. (In a letter to me in 1968, he wrote that he had tested out in the genius range!)
He may have received his inspiration to become an “Ironman”, after hearing the childhood stories from his dad and Uncles Andrew and Robert, about their big brother back in Chester Co., PA. A massive man, William was purportedly the strongest man in Eastern Pennsylvania, able to heft barrels of flour three high. (Unfortunately he died at age 20, from a rupture from lifting something too heavy!) So, Ottley grew up bonding with and helping the men in his family in their nearby grist mill, lifting bags of feed and barrels of flour, himself. He also helped his maternal uncles on their local farms. Many years later he wrote a friend that “I was the shortest (5’6”) and the smallest male in the family (paternal and maternal) of relatively large men, but in time, I would prove to be the strongest”.
He attended the local schools until 1908, graduating from the three-year high school. Ottley entered Hiram College in the Scientific track, a member of the literary society, and on the football team. Tiring of studying, he left in his second year, joining his family in Austinburg where his father had entered into a partnership in the local mill. Ottley described himself as a laborer in 1909 (at the mill?) and as a ‘milk loader” at the Austinburg Creamery, in 1910. He said he had begun lifting in 1906, but not very systematically until 1911, after writing for some training courses from the leading physical culturist. In 1912, he bought one of the old Milo bells, and trained in his father’s mill, lifting feed and cement. He outlifted all of his co-workers, raising 1900 pounds on his back using a platform on sawhorses. (During his career he would lift 3500 to 4500 pounds!) He explained that he could beat bigger and stronger men, because they didn’t have “the old what-it-takes” to push themselves. His Uncle Andy considered all athletes as a bit “nutty” and his own father referred to him as an “educated fool”.
He teamed up with Mexican ring artist, Jose Prada, and became a professional strongman at last. Prada boarded with the family and trained in the winter of 1911 and 1912 in the mill and inside the home when temperatures were too bitter. In addition to his lifting, Ottley’s circus act grand finale was having an auto driven over his upper thighs. In 1912 the Frank A. Robbins circus in New York City, offered him $25.00 a week for the season. Thus began a year of “playing” in 147 different towns, often giving two performances a day. Later in the year, he turned down an offer from the Barnum management to work with Katie Sandwina, knowing that he “would be playing second fiddle to a woman”, and not wanting to break his contract with Robbins. When the season ended, he and fellow circus performers walked and hopped trains to get home. He and two friends unloaded a 40 ton car of coal for which they were paid $2.50. (I hope that was for each!) He was later hired to unload rail cars of gravel in Terre Haute, Indiana. He continued the work for a month, and also trained while there. In a later letter, he listed as one of his greatest feats of strength, his pushing a “rail car loaded with scrap iron” at the Vandalia station there.
By 1913, his family had moved to Andover, Ohio where his father owned a mill. He set up a trapeze in the barn and worked out there. In April, he had signed with the Walter L. Main Circus out of nearby Jamestown, PA. His diary entries reveal that after daily expenses, he was not able to financially capitalize on his jobs. By November he had made his way back to Andover where he remained until 1915, in partnership with his dad in the mill. For part of the years 1915/16 he organized his own athletic troupe, including two women, as a subcontractor with Superior United shows out of Cleveland. This new business promoted wrestling with his partner, Kid Parker. He said he did not really care for wrestling because though he had the strength, he didn’t have the speed. He was trying to “make it” on the “ballyhoo” circuit unaware that it’s heyday was almost over.
A letter from strongman Robert Snyder of Hagerstown, Maryland and short visit, climaxed in a huge life change, resulting in the end of his traveling days. It was there when he met the love of his life, Ethel Alexander, a cook, at the restaurant where he was cashier. He became more focused, and worked on gaining recognition of his abilities. They married March 17, 1917 and subsequently had three children; John Robert, Athelda, and David. Son David was a massive man, who never went into weight lifting, but his doting father knew the size of his neck, biceps, thighs, etc. (I wish I had asked my cousin if his dad went around with a tape, measuring all the men!) Ethel was a chef over the years, and they always ate healthful food. He didn’t believe in all the over processing that was milling out of the bran, etc. and spoke against it. He never smoked or used alcohol in his entire lifetime, and in later years skipped breakfast, and drank a glass of warm water until lunch. Ironically, he broke his hip joint in a fall, at age 54, and it never healed properly. The crippling arthritis, forced him to use a cane to get around for the rest of his life. However, it did not stop him from pursuing his interests.
Ottley and fellow strongman George Jowett had opened the “Milo Gym” in Pittsburgh, and wrote several Physical Culture books together. With David Willoughby, they helped to set the rules and standards for weight lifting by developing the American Continental Weight-lifting Association, which became the official governing body for the AAU. This moved weight lifting out of the quasi-respectable arena of circus and vaudeville and into the world of modern sport. Ottley went on to hold 4 world records at only 139 pounds as the lightweight champion harness and deadweight lifter of the world in 1918 and 1919. He claimed that he was the “Strongest Man at his Weight in the World”-which he probably was.
Subsequent jobs were as a railroad section worker out of Andover, policeman, a night guard at the Frick Coal Mine, and a bookkeeper after retirement, all in PA. He wrote several books on Physical Culture, was a regular paid writer for magazines on the subject, and was recognized as one of the pioneers in the weight lifting field. He later translated articles from many languages, and acquired the largest library on Physical Culture in the country, perhaps the world. For many years he attended the national weight lifting events, becoming friends with Paul Anderson and other “greats”. Despite his bad hip, he visited libraries all over the country for research. He later sold his library to the University of Texas, Austin, which is opening a museum on the campus, sometime this year. He died on December 17, 1976 at age 86.
Obviously, Ottley overcame the “delicate” child prognosis, and really “fleshed out” his childhood dreams into a reality that few people might have thought possible, given all that he had to overcome. He was also a self-educated man who obviously knew his “facts”, having lived out or witnessing most of them first hand. Until researching him, I had no idea that my favorite uncle was such a unique and famous person.
My Favorite Ancestor: Samuel Goodlove Cosgrove
by Cathleen Lilly
The Cosgrove surname is of Irish orgin. First found in the southeastern providence of Leinster, where they held a seat in ancient times. It is assumed that our ancestors migrated to America in the early 1800s, before the potato famine, lured by the promise of free land.
I am blessed to be in possession of my family Bible, which dates back to 1870, and contains meticulous records of my bloodline, some penned in beautiful Spencerian handwriting. My genealogical descent is documented through six generations, with my oldest traceable ancestors being (unreadable) Tupper, born 1759 and Ashbill Fuller, born 1766. Tupper’s son, Gideon wed Fuller’s daughter, Zernah in 1817. Hand-written records chronicle the account of their marriage in Vermont and immediate journey to Ohio, “driving through with a sleigh and three horses hitched to it.” These stalwart New Englanders settled in Newburg, and their daughter Corrine was my great-grandmother, through her marriage in 1886 to my paternal great-grandfather, Professor Hazen A. Lincoln Cosgrove, who was an educator at a Cleveland university.
Hazen was the youngest of twelve siblings born to Elliott Cosgrove and Emily Berkshire, and grew up on a farm in Defiance County, Ohio. A scholarly and accomplished bunch, almost all of the children became school teachers. Brother Samuel Goodlove was an especially colorful character. At sixteen years of age, the farm boy enlisted in Company E, 14th Ohio volunteer infantry, to serve in the Civil War and was honorably discharged in July, 1865. (Later in life, as a member of the Grand Army Republic, he would serve the jurisdiction of Washington and Alaska as department commander, and at Louisville, Kentucky, be elected junior vice-commander in chief, the third highest office in the army.)
After the war, Samuel taught school for awhile at Woodsfield and Brooklyn, Ohio to pay for his own education, and graduated from Wesleyan University in 1873, having earned MA and LL.B degrees. As a young man, he read law under Hollister and Okey at Woodsfield, and was admitted to the bar in 1875. He was married in Cleveland in 1878 to Zephorena Edgerton, and the couple had three children: Howard, Elliott, and Myrn.
Leaving Ohio in 1880, my adventurous ancestor spent a year mining in Nevada, then migrated to California for another year, and finally settled in Pomeroy, Washington, in 1882. There he practiced law and presided over 1400 acres of farm land in Washington and Idaho. He was a member of the first City Council, and served as president of the school board for eight years, during which time a large debt was liquidated.
Samuel Goodlove Cosgrove, the transplanted teacher/miner/lawyer from Ohio, was elected mayor of Pomeroy for five consecutive terms. When he first accepted the position, the city was deeply in debt, paying fourteen mills taxes annually. The following year it was reduced to nine mills, then finally to six mills, the entire debt being liquidated and put on a cash basis.
In politics, Samuel was a staunch Republican, campaigning in every election held since he moved to Washington. As a member of the constitutional convention, he was a McKinley and Roosevelt elector and a Roosevelt and Fairbanks elector, each time receiving the highest number of votes cast for any member of his party, and was chairman of two state conventions.
At this time there was much corruption in the raiload system. As a lawyer and politician, Samuel Cosgrove fought against the injustice, introducing and writing every plank in the Republican state platforms relative to reducing and establishing maximum freight rates. In the Spokane convention of 1900, failing to get the plank to the platform in committee, he took it off the floor of the convention and forced its adoption over the report of the committee. In the 1902 and 1904 conventions, he headed the delegation from his county and supported the establishment of Railroad Commission forces. He was instrumental in passing legislature and regulated the telegraph and telephone companies, and gave cities and towns the power to purchase, operate, and condemn street railways.
Although Samuel Cosgrove was a receptive candidate for the chief executive-ship for many years, he never allowed his ambitions to bias his acts or hamper his freedom with unfair compacts. In 1904 he was offered the nomination, if he would desert then-governor McBride and throw his influence in opposition to him, but he declined the honor. The same year he was offered a seat on the Supreme Bench, but he refused. In 1909 he was elected the sixth governor of Washington State, but served only one day before leaving for California for health reasons. He died in Paso Robles later that same year and is buried in the Masonic Cemetery in Turnwater, Washington, with his wife Zephorena.
Hazen and Corrine Cosgrove had four children, the youngest being my grandfather, Glen Corell. His parents were unusual in that they divorced back in a time when divorce was taboo – not done in “proper” families. My great grandmother Corrine lived in a small cottage on Myers Road in Geneva, where my grandpa Glenn met my grandmother, Ruth Clark, while picking strawberries on a breezy summer day. Later they would marry and own a thriving twenty-eight acre fruit farm not far from there, up on the sandy South Ridge that had once been the shoreline of Lake Erie.
My Favorite Ancestor: George Chismar “Outhouse Tragedy”
by Marilyn Strubbe
My mother’s brother, George Chismar was born in Banovce nad Ondavou, Austria-Hungary on September 27, 1894, the son of Mary Harbula and George Chismar. In Austria-Hungary the name was spelled Csizmar. He, along with his parents, landed at Ellis Island September 30, 1898 on the ship H. H. Meier.
They settled in Ashtabula until about 1915 when they moved to Alabama for a couple of years because George Jr. had breathing difficulties, probably asthma. After returning here, George Jr. worked for the New York Central Railroad. He married Susie Chlebo from Cleveland and they had two daughters, Ellen and Dorothy. In 1934 they decided to return to Alabama because he was still having trouble breathing.
They decided to build a “tourist camp” on what was then called Mobile-Pensacola Highway which was two miles north of Robertsdale.
From that time, the story takes a few twists and turns. I was told by my parents that he was working on the roof of one of the buildings when he was struck by lightning, knocking his shoes off, killing him instantly.
Several years ago my husband and I took a trip down to see my cousin, Dorothy, George Jr.’s daughter. She told a whole different story. The truth, as she told us, was probably too embarrassing to put in his obituary.
What really happened was that he was sitting in the outhouse when lightning hit a tree near the area, traveled thru the ground and into the outhouse killing him instantly. He was survived by his wife and his two daughters, aged 5 and 12.
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