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Farm House Destroyed by Fire
The farm house and wood shed of Holden Haseltine, about two miles south of Waterbury town, on the Montpelier highway was burned early Wednesday morning. Mr. Haseltine arose about 6:30 o’clock and before going to the barn to do the chores, built a wood fire in the stove in the dining room. After the fire had been built, he went to the barn, where he did the chores. On returning about an hour later he found the floor around the stove ablaze. As he was alone at this time in the house, he immediately set to work to extinguish the fire but was unable to do so as it had gained rapidly. He then obtained the assistance of several of his neighbors. They succeeded in saving the henhouse which adjoins the wood shed which in turns adjoins the house. The barns, some distance from the house, were not harmed. Mr. Haseltine said that his losses, which consisted of a great many of the household furnishings, were partially covered by insurance. The house was considered an old land mark in this section, having been occupied by the Haseltine family for three generations or more.
St. Alban’s Daily Messenger, 02/17/1921
Graceless Graces. (Printed in the Argus and Patriot, September 27, 1905)
Waterbury, Sept. 26–Robert and Charles Grace, brothers, were up before Justice Dale this morning and answered to several charges. Charles Grace came from St. Albans a few days ago to visit his brother and last evening they filled up on booze and made so much disturbance at the Waterbury House, of which J.C. Farrar is proprietor, that he sent for Officer C.C. Graves who made the arrest. Both men interfered with the officer and were arraigned for resisting an officer. Robert was fined $5 and costs for intoxication and $2 and costs for breach of the peace. both fines amounting to $19.46, which he will pay. His brother was fined $10 and costs of $6.15 for a breach of the peace while the intoxication case against him was not pressed. Each waived examination on the charge of resisting the officer and were placed under bail of $100, which was furnished by C.C. Graves in both cases.
The men in question are my Grandfather’s Uncles, Robert and Charles. Charles is the man who raised Grandpa after his father, Eugene, passed away in 1925. Trouble making Grace brothers!
Charles Grace:
My ancestors have a firm hold on my imagination. I gather small facts, or those stories which seem to be fact, and store them away, creating fiction to fill the gaps in what might have been the stories of their lives.
I keep coming back to this particular photograph. In my imagination it captures a moment in time that would soon slip from the grasp of not only my great-grandfather, but of an entire nation.
My great-grandfather was a professor of the natural sciences at the Baltimore City College in Maryland. Last year I found a copy of the 1925 issue of the City College year book, The Green Bag, and my father spotted this picture of his grandfather.
So here is that snapshot in time. Serious boys and serious professors, with one man quite out of place:
If I could thank G-G Haseltine, I would, for giving this gift to his progeny. Instead of the pat smile found in other photos, in which you have to strain to imagine something personal behind the facade, he has given us this; a glimpse of his humor and kindness.
Here he is in his element at City College, in a space affectionately called, “Hazy’s Hothouse”:
In 1925 The White House was occupied by another Vermont native, President Calvin Coolidge. The economy was transitioning into an era of mass consumerism. By the end of the decade 40% of the population would own their own automobile, and radio waves were reaching even the most isolated of rural Americans.
It was the era of decadence and of the celebration of masculinity; with some of the most popular American authors of the time being Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, and Faulkner. The Great Gatsby, with its critique of the American dream, was published in 1925, the same year these photographs were taken.
The year 1925 saw Darwin put on trial in Tennessee, defended by the agnostic super-lawyer, Clarence Darrow. I’m quite certain that it was this that led to the following tongue-in-cheek statement written by the City College Natural Science Club, pictured in the photograph with the skeleton: ”At our first meeting Dr. Leslie H. Ingham, head of the Science Department, gave us a wonderful lecture on “Science and its Relation to the Bible.” Those of us who were present can testify as to the worth and educational value of this lecture.”
On a personal front, some miracles were happening in Baltimore. My great-grandparents were to be blessed with the birth of their fourth child, my grandmother, Marian. It had been more than eight years since their last child had been born, and Anna had passed her 40th birthday. I have to imagine they were surprised to find out they were expecting.
Yet I keep returning in my mind’s eye, to this snap shot in time, of Robert I. Haseltine sitting stoically with the skeleton and his other colleague, Leslie Ingham. In my fiction these few years must have been some of the happiest in his life. But it isn’t the happiness that draws me back to gaze into the photographs, it’s the fast transition that his life would take, a sharp contrast to the humor we see in this old black and white.
Around the time of this photo, the family homestead in Vermont would burn to the ground. Through WWI and up into the twenties, Robert and his wife Anna, along with their young children, were calling this place home, at least occassionally. This would have been the home where my G-grandfather was born, along with his father, and his father’s father.
This must have been the reason Robert’s father, Holden Haseltine, moved to Baltimore to live with his oldest son. Not long after, Holden would pass away in that city, in July of 1928.
I do not know when my great-grandmother, Anna (Lewis) Haseltine, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, or how serious the condition was. What I do know is that by the end of the year 1930, my great-grandfather would surrender his employment with City College, and permanently return to the family lands in Moretown, Vermont. There he would take care of his four children, my grandmother being just a young child, and in September of 1933, he would lose his wife to breast cancer. She was only 49 years old.
In that same year, Adolph Hitler would become the Chancellor of Germany, bringing the Nazi party into official power, and bringing the world head-long toward a terrible war.
The year also sees the inauguration of FDR, an unemployment rate of over 24%, and a top tax rate of 63%.
This is why I keep coming back to the photo. Time stands still there, in the library of Baltimore City College. Time stands still in that light-hearted moment, seemingly just before the world falls apart. In the following eight years RIH would lose his home, his father, his job, and his wife. He would see his children lose their mother. He would see his country fall into the depths of the worst depression in its history.
As he watched Hitler rise to power, how long was it before he wondered if he would have to send his own young son to fight this rising evil? Could he imagine that loss that was still 11 years in the future?
Some part of me would like to stop time at the place it was when that photograph was taken with the skeleton. Could we stop, go back, and fix what was about to happen?
The shadow of loss is cast on all of us in this life, but some lose more than others. In what ways do such losses leave an indelible mark even on the generations that possess no memory of the actual events? In what ways has it shaped or even created us as a family?
My father was only 5 years old when his grandfather passed away on November 20, 1955, in the 70th year of his life. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers do shape us none-the-less, even for not having known them, or having known them only a little. For that I will one day have to thank Robert I. Haseltine Sr.
Census Links
Other sources: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/coolhome.html; http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/connections_n2/great_depression.html; http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/TIMELINE/nazirise.HTM
Edward Grace, known as Ned, and known to his children as the Governor.
My great-grandfather, Eugene, looked so much like his father.
This man was father of 12 boys and 1 girl, all but one of whom safely survived their childhood.
No mean feat in the late mid to late 19th century.
Edward Grace is my great-great grandfather. He was born in St. Columban, Deux Montagnes, Quebec, the son of Irish immigrants, in December of the year 1835. He was one of 11 known children of Patrick Grace and Honora McEvoy, both of County Kilkenny (Honora was most definitely from the town of Freshford).
Here Edward is the older man standing in the back. This is a photo taken with the family of one of Edward’s sons, Joseph Robert Grace, standing here beside his father.
Sometime before 1866 Edward met and married Catherine Warren Travers, another child of Irish immigrants. The connection between the Travers and the Graces is one that is tightly woven, but one that’s origins remain unclear to this generation*. No one is sure yet where they met, perhaps in Vermont, perhaps in Canada, perhaps somewhere else altogether.
One distant relative believes they were married in Canada, which is probable, since their first son, Patrick Henry, was born in that country in the year of 1866. Their second son, Joseph Robert, was born in St. Columban, Quebec, and their third son, Michael, was born and died in that same town at the tender age of 5 months.
After burying their young son, Edward and Catharine did move on from St. Columban. There is some evidence that they may have moved to Montreal, in the form of a birth record that can be found with the LDS. This record lists Edward Victor Grace, son of Edward Grace and Catherine Travis, pretty compelling evidence that they at least passed through Montreal.
They arrived to stay in the USA in 1876, with 6 young son in tow, the youngest of which was just an infant. They found their way to Moretown, Vermont, where Catherine’s parents were living, and where she had spent a good deal of her childhood.
The Graces in Moretown, Vermont, 1880
Again, we don’t know exactly what brought them back to the US, but this is where they stayed for the remainder of their lives.
*Catherine Travers had a brother, John Travers, who married Martha Kinsella. Martha Kinsella was also born in St. Colomban, the daughter of Thomas Kinsella and Honora Grace. This Honora Grace was Edward’s aunt, making Edward and Martha cousins. So, two Travers siblings married two cousins from St. Columban, Quebec. What I’m unclear on is what connection the Travers’ may have had to St. Colomban, or what the connection was between St. Colomban and Moretown/Waterbury, Vermont.
This is a photograph of my great grandfather, Eugene Grace. He was born in Waterbury, Vermont, on what was probably a chilly Spring day in the little New England town that his father had emigrated to just five years earlier in 1778.
Eugene was born a fraternal twin to his brother, George. George and Eugene were born the tenth and eleventh sons of Edward Grace and his wife, Catherine Warren Travers.
By this time Eugene’s mother, Catherine, would have been an experienced mom, and I imagine she must have suspected she was carrying twins. It is likely that George and Eugene, like most twins, were born preterm, tiny and fragile. This must have been terrifying for their parents, with infant mortality the way that it was in 19th century Vermont. They must have been especially frightened after having lost their son, Michael, in 1870 when he was just 5 months old.
However fragile their beginning, George and Eugene would both grow to be men with children of their own.
In 1897 at the age of 14, the boys would lose their mother. By the time of the 1900 census, the 17 year old Eugene was living as a boarder in Waterbury at the home of Eugene and Abbie Towne, and working as a farm laborer.
The photograph above is the only picture my father has of his grandfather. In the picture Eugene is wearing a US military uniform, with what looks like a cavalry insignia on the cap. As of this time I have been unable to find out more about his military service.
At least two of Eugene’s big brothers, Robert Joseph Grace, and Edward Grace, were US Cavalrymen before him, having served in the Spanish-American War.
Having grown up doing farm work in a small Vermont town, I can only imagine that the tales of his older brothers’ battles in far away places like the Phillipines must have loomed large in Eugene’s imagination. Whether or not this prompted him to follow in their footsteps by joining the US Cavalry is something we may never know.
