52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks
Week 25
June 10 -16, 2024
Hard Times
The Great Depression brought hardship to many people during the 1930s in the United States. My family was no exception. Follow along with my story of the good times and the challenging times of my maternal grandfather.
Clarence W. Lord was my maternal grandfather. Born 16 April 1901 to Elsie Goble Lord and Irvin O. Lord in the small hamlet of Centermoreland in northeastern Pennsylvania, reportedly in the oldest house in Wyoming County. Up until a few years ago it was still standing but I doubt it still is today. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries an area of a farmhouse, usually an attached barn, was for the animals, often times in very close proximity to the human inhabitants.
It was into such a household that my grandfather was born. My brothers and cousins affectionately called him Pop-Pop. He was a wonderful grandfather.
My great-grandmother and great-grandfather had lived the rural farm life since each of them were born between 1875 and 1880 as well as generations before them. So, it was not a surprise when one of my great-grandparents decided it was time to move a bit closer to civilization and for my great-grandfather Irvin to work in a different environment. Knowing my great-grandmother as I did, I’m sure it was done at her urging. Lol!
In his childhood and teen years, he and his family seemed to be in a fair to good upwardly mobile financial situation. It was good decision to move to a more urban area of Pennsylvania.
Following along with the story of my grandfather’s life, the first piece of ephemera that I have about him is from his “vaccination” on 9 September 1907 when he lived on Holland Street, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania by a doctor who practiced in Ashley, Pennsylvania. I do not know what the vaccine was targeted for during the early 20th century.
According to the 1910 U.S. Federal Census, when he was nine years old he was living with his mother, Elsie, on Bank Street in Wilkes-Barre along with Samuel LaFrance, reported as his mother’s cousin and his second cousin by the census enumerator while his father, Irvin, was recorded as living in Wyoming, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania at a boarding house. I have never been able to confirm why he and his mother were living apart from his father, but it may have been for purposes of his father’s employment, as an economic reason, or perhaps his parents were separated from each other due to marital discord.
A newspaper article dated 16 June 1911 notes that he was promoted from Primary B to Primary A in a local Wilkes-Barre school in the Centennial Building. He was ten years old at that time. Education was important to his mother, Elsie, as she could only read and write in a very rudimentary manner as evidenced by samples of her writing later in life and from what my mother had told me about my great-grandmother’s literacy.
Clarence also belonged to the Dana Street Evangelical Church in Wilkes-Barre where he participated in various holiday observances as a boy and as a young man.
In 1915 on the 4th of July when he was just 14 years old, Clarence was living on Andover Street in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania when according to a local newspaper, he was shot in the back with a blank cartridge by a companion. The wad of cartridge lodged in his back and anti-tetanus serum was administered by an attending physician. It seems that he and several companions were playing with fireworks!
While I do not remember my grandfather as a very social person apparently, he was. By the time he was seventeen years old its seems that my grandfather was participating in a number of events for teenagers in Wilkes-Barre and Kingston. I found a few articles about his attendance at a “Weeny Roasts,” birthday parties for teenage girls, farewell parties, dances, and one that said he performed in a local play entitled “Miss Topsy-Turvy! Who knew? He never talked about his life as a young man. Nor did my grandmother.
He was a member of the Jr. O.U.A.M., the Junior Order of United American Mechanics, serving on various committees for the organization.
But, by 1920 when Clarence was eighteen years old, his mother Elsie, and his father, Irvin, were residing at their own home on Rutter Avenue, Kingston, Pennsylvania along with their boarder Samuel LaFrance. Clarence was working as a machinist for a local company, an occupation that he held for many years. Irvin, his father was a blacksmith, and Samuel was a driver for a local brewing company.
Rutter Avenue was a genuinely nice street before, during, and after 1920 into the 1970s. The house itself was fairly big with a large screened in porch that encircled the front and sides of the home, and it had a garage in the back of the lot that bordered on an alley. My grandfather, Clarence, later added a second story above it to create an apartment. Honestly, I’m not sure how my great-grandparents were able to afford that size house and lot in 1920. in fact, my great-grandmother owned a car and was the driver for the family.
In January of 1923 when he was 21 years old, Clarence purchased a car, a Chevrolet, from Wilkes-Barre Chevrolet Sales Co. He then promptly left on a two-week automobile trip to Buffalo and Pittsburgh accompanied by his friend, John Korn. Upon returning he was back on the social circuit! During one of those parties, a church dinner, a certain Elizabeth Harris was in attendance. Ah, so that is how and where he met my grandmother!
On 29 April 1925 he married Elizabeth Olive Harris in the First Evangelical Church in Wilkes-Barre and they went on a “motor trip” to Philadelphia and Washington. They later returned to live in their new apartment above the garage on Rutter Avenue, Kingston, Pennsylvania, a place I remember as a young child as I lived there with my parents and brother until we moved to a home in Dallas, Pennsylvania.
In late January 1926 my mother was born. Then in 1930 my uncle was born. Clarence, Elizabeth, and their two children lived in the small apartment until my mother graduated from high school in 1944.
During the time that he lived in Kingston, my great-grandparents adopted a young girl named Eva, they later changed her name to Glennora. She was only three years older than my mother. It was said that Elsie always wanted a girl.
Clarence, from what I understood, was Elsie’s and Irvin’s only biological child until, many years later when I learned that my grandfather had fathered another child, and not with Elsie! Uh-oh! Unfortunately, this little boy only lived to be 8 or 9 years old. That topic is for another blog post. As family genealogists we take the good with the bad and tell the truth about our ancestors. It helps us to understand our parents and ourselves better.
Thinking back, I never heard my grandfather talk about his own father, ever, and I spent a lot of time with him as a child and a teenager. But, as an aside; I do not think that my Great-Grandma Lord (Elsie) was an easy person with whom to live as I remember her.
As time progressed my grandfather continued to participate in his occupational clubs and organizations, even participating in local political organizations. As a young man and father, he became a local quoits champion. Quoits was a type of horseshoe game that was played with heavy iron circles the size of horseshoes. I remember him playing the game when I was a child, he was really good!
Rising from a meager agricultural background to a social event attender, to a family man that was a well-known local mechanic who had worked in the shipyards of Philadelphia, and for a large ironworks company that made parts for locomotives lasted well into Clarence's thirties. But then, the axe fell, for almost everyone in the United States at the end of the 1920s into the 1930s, The Great Depression.
In 1932 he lost his job in the ironworks company where he worked as did his father and many others. It wasn’t easy but his family was one of the lucky ones. By 1933 he regained his job at the Vulcan Ironworks according to a front-page article that was written about him in one of the daily local newspapers.
In 1949 his job was once again at stake. According to the company for which he had for 30 years, falling business in the railroad industry caused him to lose his standing a as supervisor as well as his seniority at the company. He and two other employees filed a lawsuit through the United Steelworkers of America to regain their former positions. Eventually they prevailed. I remember the times, though, when I was a young girl
during the 1950s when he and my grandmother were often concerned about his job.
Clarence was generally a healthy man, but at some time in his life he developed diabetes, like his mother, Elsie. It was a subject that was never discussed by my grandfather, my mother, or my grandmother.
I do not know if the medical community had developed guidelines for what to eat, or not to eat, or if there was medication for diabetes in the 1930s or 1940s. I do remember him eating a lot of foods and sugar (!) that would never be recommended today if one was a diabetic. Nor do I know if it was common knowledge that diabetes could lead to heart attacks as we know today. But, in 1967, just two days before Christmas, a heart attack took his life, only two years after my grandmother had died. He was sadly missed. It was a sad Christmas that year.
We all have tales of hardship within our family trees, but I like to remember the good times, the easy times. He was a wonderful grandfather! I, my brothers, and my cousins were incredibly lucky to have known him and to have experienced a small part of his life. Thanks, Pop-Pop for the happy memories.
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