Uncle Kent writes about Grandfather Denzil

The letter below is from uncle Kent to cousin Tish in 1996. I've been working with OCR (optical character recognition), so expect several of these old missives over the next few months. The 4 page addendum mentioned has Grandfather Denzil's work history and will be posted separately later. The letter is long and perhaps only of interest to my blood relatives, but I am thrilled to have the heritage hereby preserved.

In this and all future "Old Letters" posts, my words are blue, Kent's (or TGP's or whoever the original authors are) will be in black

Kent Hollingsworth

September 11, 1996

Dear Tish:
Here's that letter. I would like to tell you about your Grandfather, my Father, but this is no easy thing, for I never really knew him.

Oh, I knew about him. Mother forever talked about him in his absence, when he was off somewhere on a construction job, about how tall and handsome he was, how neat and well dressed he always was. How very smart he was, and how hard he worked. Mother said he would get to the job early, return home late, dead tired, and fall asleep; then wake up in the middle of the night, get out of bed to check the job again, to see how the night shift was working under lights.

Also, how athletic he was. Mother said he was marvelous at golf, and he did have a picture swing, but he never broke 80. Mother reminded that he was good enough to swim on the varsity team at the University of Illinois. In an era when Johnny Weissmuller's flutter kick won Olympic golds by lowering the 400-meter freestyle record by more than 22 seconds, and by becoming the first swimmer to do 100 meters in less than a minute, with that little flutter—Father had an outboard-motor kick, thumpa-thumpa-thumpa, gutters awash, here he comes, you children better get out of his way!

While Mother conceded Weissmuller's chest was as big as Father's (when the star showed up for an exhibition at the Missouri Athletic Club pool) she noted that Father certainly was better spoken. Weissmuller's movie lines were limited to "Me Tarzan. You Jane." And while Clark Gable did have a mustache and parted his hair in the middle like Father, he had enormous ears, so there really was no comparison...

At home, I was instructed that my Father was a nonpareil. At school, I further learned that he was rich. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, "rich" was pejorative, used by sneering schoolmates to separate me from the crowd, at an age and place where one desperately wanted to blend-in and be an inconspicuous part of the crowd.

Anyway, I grew up knowing my Father only by reputation. I never really knew who he was as a young man, what he did, how he did it. We had photographs, proving he was every bit as handsome as his adoring wife thought he was, but I had no admissible evidence as to what sort of person he was when he began making his own way in the 1920s and 1930s. For all that Mother, and Donn, and Hall told me about Father before I was old enough to look at him and listen to him myself, I understood nothing of the inherited and environmental bases on which he built whatever he was. I had no facts, just hearsay, and conclusions from non-expert witnesses.

I needed some first-hand data. So I went first (hand) to the U.S. Census records and found that in 1870, my great grandfather, Joe Hollingsworth, at age 28, and wife Ellen, age 23, were living on a farm in the Allison Prairie Township near Lawrenceville, Illinois. In 1880, Joe, age 38, and Ellen, age 33, were still living there, together with their four children: Charles H., age 9; Ethelbert C. my grandfather, then age 5; Dollie D. (also known as Daisy), age 3, and Joseph J., age 1; plus two live-in workers, Belle Gannen, age 9, and George Kronkenberger, age 20.

The 1880 census for Bishop Township, near Effingham, Illinois, about 50 miles northwest of Allison Prairie, showed that another of my great grandfathers, August Piel, age 41, and wife Sophia, age 40, both born in Germany, had immigrated in 1862 to Illinois where six of their seven children were born, the youngest being Bertha, my grandmother, then age 3.

Most of the 1890 census records have been lost in a fire. The 1900 census, however, reveals that during the last two decades of the 19th Century, Ethelbert, age 25, had married Bertha Piel, age 23, and they still lived there on the family farm in Allison Prairie with their son, listed as Maurice D., then age 1. (Donn said Mother could not stand the name Maurice, and used his middle name, Denzil; Father promptly switched, signing on as Denzil M. Hollingsworth in high school.)
In checking the census for Illinois and Indiana, in the genealogical library at the University of Vincennes, I happened to peek into the town marriage-license book and discovered that Bert Hollingsworth had married Bertha Piel in Vincennes, Knox County, Indiana, about 10 miles east and across the Wabash River from Allison Prairie, on February 10, 1898.

Five years ago, Donn, Hall, and I drove over to Lawrenceville, Illinois, looking for some record of Father and his family in the Lawrence County Courthouse. We found that on July 27, 1870, great grandfather Joe Hollingsworth paid $2,500 [equivalent to $24,625 in 1994 dollars] for a 160-acre farm about four miles east of Lawrenceville in Allison Prairie Township. This farm was in two 80-acre tracts about a quarter-mile apart, one with no improvements, for it cost only $500, the other tract probably having a house on it, costing $2,000.

This, as Old Home Places go, may not have been majestic, considering what $20,000 today would get you on 80 acres—maybe a second-hand mobile home. Be that as it may, Joe worked that 160 acres for 11 years, until he died at the age of 39 on Nov. 7, 1881; his widow Ellen raised three boys and a girl in that trailer, and lived off that flat prairie farm for another 18 years after her husband died.

At the age of 23, my grandfather Bert built a $500, two-story, frame house on the back portion of the farm, married Bertha, and apparently became involved in a family squabble over who owned what. Bert was named defendant in a lawsuit filed in 1898 by his older brother, younger sister and brother, and his mother, to partition the family farm they had shared for 28 years. Pending final order in this suit, Bert's mother, Ellen Jones Hollingsworth, sold the unimproved 80-acre tract to Charles E. Jones, perhaps a relative, for $500, what Joe had paid for it 29 years earlier.

The court then awarded Ellen her old house and 10 acres, valued at $1,000 as her homestead, and another 10 acres as her dower; the remaining back 40 acres were partitioned equally among the four children, Bert getting the 10 acres on which he had built his house two years earlier.

Last month I drove to Allison Prairie to see this house where Father and his younger sister, our Aunt Dorothy, were born. It was unimposing. It was the only house in sight, surrounded as far as one could see by irrigated soybeans and tall, corn, directly south of the Lawrenceville-Vincennes International Airport. In weathering a century on a windswept plain, the clapboard house had lost some paint, but was livable. A young couple and their children were having lunch under a large shade tree beside the house. The young man said he did not know how old the house was, but he understood his grandparents had lived there when they were young, before World War II, and his Father had been born in the house. He said he and his brother farmed some 500 acres on this side, and the other side of Highway 1100N, which the house faced.

My grandmother Bertha apparently did not care for this house, and its surrounding 10 acres, although she had caused her husband to deed over all his rights in it to her in 1899. Also, she did not care for the lifestyle out there on Allison Prairie. Further, she doubted her handsome young husband (Mother said Bert looked like Hall) had any sense of upward mobility, and suspected he was not going anywhere--certainly not upward, socially or economically, and not even to town, geographically.

One evening, Bert returned and was stunned to find the house empty. No wife, no children, no furniture. He was soon to learn that she had sold the property, cleaned out the bank account, and had gone—to where, he knew not. The 1901 St. Louis City Directory lists Bertha Hollingsworth, forewoman, as renting an apartment at 3505 Itaska Street in south St. Louis. (Randolph says a forewoman was a supervisor of other women in a sweatshop; Bertha was making her own way sewing lace.)

Three weeks ago, Dorcas and I drove to St. Louis, checked land and marriage records in City Hall, city directories in the library. Dorcas took pictures of buildings still standing where Father, Mother, Bert, Bertha, Uncle Jim Addis, Chum and Grandmother resided from 1901-40. The neighborhoods around Tower Grove Park, where Father and Mother grew up, contain multi-family brick dwellings built in the early decades of this century. Mother indicated they were occupied by low-income German and Italian immigrants. Now these neighborhoods are all black, save Flora Place,

six blocks with center parkway, leading west from Grand Avenue to the old entrance to Shaw's Garden on Tower Grove Avenue.

Bert did not catch up with Bertha until 1903, when the St. Louis City Directory lists him, as a laborer, residing at 3435A LaSalle Street, a building now razed, in a business zone. At the same address in 1905, we find James T. Addis, listed as a contractor. In 1906, Bert, then and thereafter listed as a locomotive fireman, moved with Uncle Jim a few blocks over to Park Avenue.

We could not find a record of Bertha's divorce from Bert in the St. Louis Civil Courts Building, but we did obtain a copy of Bertha's and Uncle Jim's marriage license, showing the marriage was performed by a justice of peace in St. Louis on Nov. 11, 1908.

The City Directories did not show where Bertha and her children lived from 1902 through 1908. Father told me that he remembered his mother had placed him and little Dorothy in a St. Louis orphanage when he was four or five years old; it was just for a few months, until his mother could find a job and place to live. After a week or so, Father thought she had abandoned them forever, and he had a hard time comforting his younger sister, who cried a lot. Dorcas recalls Father saying they lived for a while in Clayton, a St. Louis suburb just west of Forest Park (site of the 1903 World's Fair which celebrated the Centennial of the Louisiana Purchase).

After Bertha's marriage to Uncle Jim late in 1908, it may be presumed she moved with her children to Uncle Jim's address at 2900 Park Avenue. This was not your usual New York Park Avenue flat. Urban renewal has razed many of the old tenements in this area, but Dorcas was able to take some pictures of young black residents of 2900 Park Avenue. Father probably lived in an apartment at this address for four years, until he was 14; then Bertha moved Uncle Jim and her children to a house of their own, in a little better neighborhood, three blocks west of Grand Avenue, one block south of Tower Grove Park, at 3924 Juniata Street.

Father lived in this two-story red brick house for the next nine years, while going to high school and college; he listed it as his residence on his marriage license in 1923. Dorcas' photograph of this house, shows it was situated quite close to a neighboring house. Donn said Bert worked his way up between these two houses, climbed through a second-story window, snatched Uncle Jim out of bed, told him if he ever drank whiskey at home, in front of his children, he, Bert, would kill him. Uncle Jim recognized the earnestness in this threat and Donn said he believed Uncle Jim never had another drink at home. Which must have been tough, for he was an Irishman, and whiskey fueled his crew of Irishmen who wrecked buildings as a business.

Father said his father never drank or smoked, "but he sure gave women hell”; then he would laugh, embarrassed, and slap his knee. Father said Bert lost his job with the railroad many times, usually for fighting, or arguing with his superiors. Father said Bert was not tall, only about 5-foot-8, but he was robust, very strong, and athletic. Father remembered Bert's lifting him on his shoulders, and jumping off a street car before it stopped, running as fast as Olympic sprinter Archie Hahn, to keep from falling on his face with his top-heavy load. Bertha heard about the stunt and got a restraining order to keep Bert away from her children, and Uncle Jim.

Father did not seem to inherit much from his father, in the way of physical features, mental acuity, or cultural awareness. He had no chance to learn anything from his father, because he never lived with him, never saw him except for brief, uncomfortable visits which his mother
discouraged.

Father probably inherited his drive from his ambitious mother. Bertha devoted all her energies and street smarts to make her handsome son into someone important, whose success might reflect on her. She abandoned a dusty, Illinois prairie, and her unpromising first husband, for the excitement of a big city, and she latched on to a man who had his own company, and who could provide her and her children with a solid brick home.

To expand her social contacts, Bertha formed a sewing circle, inviting the most attractive ladies in the neighborhood; among these was the beautiful and elegantly mannered young wife of a university-educated physicist— Blanche Parrott and Chum. He was graduated from the University of Michigan, with honors in mathematics; while teaching in Saint Johns and Saginaw in Michigan, he had written several scientific articles that brought him some out-of-state notice. In 1909, he accepted an offer to teach at McKinley High School in St. Louis, and moved with his wife and 11-year-old daughter into a nice duplex at 3867 Utah Place.

My grandmothers, Bertha and Blanche, became friends and during sewing circle sessions, exchanged glowing reports on their children. They arranged for Mother and Father to be introduced to each other. Soon thereafter, Father suffered a broken leg playing baseball in Tower Grove Park, and asked Mother to visit him in the hospital.

According to family tradition (compiled mostly by Mother) neither looked for love elsewhere, ever after. Mother was born in June, eight months before Father, and while they were the same age February through June, every September Mother remained an academic year ahead of Father.

In the fall of 1916, Mother matriculated at the University of Missouri in Columbia. While she was gone, Bertha began looking around for a better prospect for her son. To insure that Mother could not tie him up in Columbia, Bertha insisted that Uncle Jim pay out-of-state tuition for Father and shipped him off to the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in the fall of 1917. Mother transferred to the University of Illinois for her junior and senior years, and there, the twain having met again, they never were to part--Rudyard Kipling notwithstanding.

I have annexed hereto, a four-page chronology of Father's construction work and financial success, abstracted from Father's 1943 application for a commission in the Navy SeaBees. These are facts, over Father's signature, interspersed with my parenthetical notes intended to amplify stark data; I have converted 1920 and 1930 dollars into 1994 dollars, using the U.S. Labor Department's Consumer Price Index table, to place in current perspective Father's earnings in his business-active years.

Father's initial success in the construction business cannot be attributed to his stepfather's guidance. Jim Addis ran a building-wrecking crew of Irishmen, pick-and-shovel men who moved dirt with horse-drawn drag buckets in the first decades of this century. Father ran grades, laid out the work, and supervised the men for his stepfather while he was in college; but he thought in terms of machines and mechanical advantages, and he spoke the language of a university-trained civil engineer, a language Uncle Jim did not fully comprehend. They did not work together long.

Measured in today's dollars, Father earned $147,610 at the age of 26, during his first year of business as his own boss. His stepfather and father never got within 31 lengths of that kind of money. That he was able to buy a $293,000 house
(left to right Blanche, Dorcas, Denzil, Kent, Donn, Hall, Polly, Chum)
two years later at the age of 28 was an indication of precocious business success, attained sooner and in greater measure than anything realized by his forebears, or his descendants. He earned some $321,000 at the age of 32, and he earned about $5 million at the age of 40, from his own physical efforts, his own thought processes, his initiatives, his inventions. No one handed this monetary success to him in a pay envelope. No board voted him a stock option. He earned it, by himself, without apparent benefit of inherited and environmental influences.

For much of my professional writing career, I have been pointing out the incidence of exceptional performers in the pedigrees of successful race horses; and I have emphasized the importance of environment — good food and care during the early years, expert training, and adherence to a well designed strategic plan — to attain success in any endeavor.

I see little of this in my Father's background. He may have been guided, motivated, by his mother and his wife, but many individuals have been guided and motivated toward success, yet failed to realize it for want of other essential ingredients in the mix. Father did what he did mainly on his own. His success was self-made.

I sorely regret that I never really got to know him, that I was so self-absorbed in making my own way, I did not appreciate my Father during his last 25 years, when I had the opportunity to walk at his side.

So I have set out for you here, some of the things your Grandfather did when he was young, about your age, that you might perceive a vague image in the mist from whence you came.
With love,

Father (Kent)