Mightier Acorns

Last week, we talked about the last of my “Great Eight” great-grandparents. They were Ahnentafel posts #16-#23. When we got to the end of the first Great Eight – my children’s great-grandparents, #8-#15 – I posted an Appraisal of what that generation looked like, using several points of comparison.

So this week, let’s look at a breakdown of my Great Eight!

The Lost Generation

The naming of Generational cohorts is a relatively new practice and is not rigorously academic. Five of my eight were born in the years described as “The Lost Generation,” generally defined as those born between 1883 and 1900. They came of age before or during World War I, or, at least, in the case of all of my great-grandparents, were born after the Civil War and during the “Gilded Age” of the 1890s.

The three oldest were John Q. Callin, David Clark, and Vicie (Reynolds) Clark. David Clark was the eldest by 6 or 7 years, depending on whether he was born in 1873¹. John Q. and Vicie were both born in July 1879, about 200 miles apart: he in Bowling Green, Ohio, and she in Lewis County, Kentucky. The birth dates of the other five spanned from 1885 to 1895, beginning with Bertha Greenlee (1885), Merle Huff (1889), Dick Witter (1890), Alfred Tuttle (1892), and ending with Edna Frey (1895).

As far as I can tell, three of the four great-grandfathers were enlisted during WWI – and David might have been; I haven’t found a draft registration or enlistment record for him, though. None of them appear to have seen any combat, however, either enlisting in the closing months of the war, or, as in Dick Witter’s case, being assigned to a stateside training unit.

This generation is characterized by academic researchers as being the first to be impacted by industrialization, and of these four families, only the Witters were farmers. Alfred Tuttle had the most “industrial” job, working in coal supply and holding management or sales positions. John Q. Callin sold insurance, taught in schools in Ohio and New York, and dabbled in real estate. David Clark and other men in his family worked in cabinetry and furniture making.

Location, Location, Location

I found it interesting that each of these four couples married someone born in the same State they were born in, and three of the four couples moved out of their home states. Only Alfred and Edna Tuttle stayed in New Jersey throughout their lives. John and Bertha Callin were born in Ohio and ended up in Florida; David and Vicie Clark moved from Kentucky to Arkansas. And Dick and Merle Witter were both born in Kansas, but only met after moving to Arizona!

What I find interesting about this is that most of the families had been living in their home states for several generations. The Kansas families were recent arrivals, as Kansas had only opened up for settlement near the beginning of the Civil War – in fact, the bloody history of the settlement of Kansas helped to start that war. The Witters arrived there after several generations in Pennsylvania; the Huffs came after living in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

But the Clarks and Reynolds families had been in northern Kentucky/southern Ohio for several generations, and the Callin family had been early Ohio settlers. The Tuttle family had been prominent in Morris County, New Jersey, for quite some time, too. Even Bertha Greenlee and Edna Frey, the grandchildren of immigrants, were the second generation born in their home counties.

The interesting part is that even the oldest families in the United States are only ever a handful of generations removed from a family that moved from somewhere else.

The Matter of Faith

I found it a little harder to understand the dynamic that religion played in this generation of ancestors. I have no doubt they would all consider themselves to be Christians, but there seemed to be less emphasis on the practice of their faith than I expected to see. At least, this is true of the men. David Clark and Dick Witter seemed to me to be more involved in the struggle to make ends meet than in their churches, and across the board, I got the impression that the four wives drove the religious life in these households.

David Clark’s obituary said he was a member of the Baptist church, and I am confident that Vicie probably was, too. John and Bertha Callin were members of the Baptist church in Florida, and when they lived in New York during the 1920s. Before that, I think they were members of the Christian Church, the same denomination that Dick and Merle Witter belonged to in Glendale. Alfred and Edna Tuttle belonged to the Dutch Reformed congregation in New Jersey.

The Family Matters

As we saw with the group we analyzed last time, there was a dramatic drop in the number of children from one generation to the next. This chart shows us a much larger drop-off. Bertha Greenlee was the only one to come from a family with fewer than 4 children (she had one half-sister, Mamie), and Vicie Reynolds might have had more siblings had her mother not died when she was so young.

Here is a table showing the number of children in each family for two generations, and the range of birthdates for those children. (In the “siblings” column, I counted the person along with their siblings, so Bob Callin and his two siblings give us three total.)

And where last time almost all of the people in our G.I. Generation were the youngest in their families, only Merle Huff holds that distinction here. Bertha was the oldest/only child, and Alfred and Edna were each the eldest in their respective families. Everyone else was a near-middle child!

Infant mortality is still not as bad as it will be when we move back another generation. Of the 52 siblings, only three died in childhood, that we know of.

Halfway to Sixteen!

As I said, the past eight weeks have focused on my Great Eight – and the next eight weeks will be my wife’s Great Eight. Together, these are my kids’ Sixteen. I can’t wait to see what we learn as we go!

1. Remember, I don’t know for certain which year David was born. ↩︎