A family trip and a tattered cardboard box

A family trip and a tattered cardboard box

Trip to Gettysburg

I was sixteen years old in 1970 when our family visited Gettysburg National Military Park in southeastern Pennsylvania. During the four-hour drive, my mother mentioned a relative fought and died at Gettysburg. But, unfortunately, all she knew was his last name: Howell. Howell? That was the first time I’d heard Howell mentioned as a family name.

I was surprised that the Gettysburg battlefield didn’t match the picture of the heroic three-day battle I’d created in my imagination. Grassy meadows bordered paved roads named for Union generals. Fields of waist-high corn, overgrown thickets, and woodlands made it appear like any other country setting in the rural northeast. Only polished stone monuments stood as evidence of the unimaginable horrors of those killing fields. I looked at every memorial and gravestone we passed for the name Howell. It turns out quite a few Howells fought and died at Gettysburg. The idea that a member of my family—even one I’d never known—fought and died on that hallowed ground stuck with me.

A cardboard box

Fast forward to 2010. I was visiting my parents in upstate New York and noticed a tattered cardboard box under the window in my bedroom. A quick look inside revealed dozens of small books of varying sizes, a photo album, and two musty scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings. The box’s contents belonged to my great-grandmother, Maude Murphy Phelps. The books were her diaries. My mother had gotten the box from her cousin with me in mind.

A one-hundred-year-old love letter

Maude Murphy circa 1906

Also inside the box was a love letter written by a young Maude Murphy to Earl Phelps, probably written around 1906. Maude and Earl are my great-grandparents. To help you make more sense of this (or maybe confuse you!), Earl is Hattie’s son.

Maude Murphy was born October 15, 1887, to Wesley and Phoebe Murphy of Hector, New York, a small rural farming community at the southern end of Seneca Lake near the better-known town of Watkins Glen of auto racing fame. These days, Hector is part of the burgeoning Finger Lakes Wine Region.

The letter is revealing in several ways. Maude writes that her mother has found and read Earl’s recent letter in which he states his parents don’t much care for her family. Hattie and Arthur, Earl’s parents, don’t want Earl to see Maude. Maude’s family lives with her mother’s parents, most likely the result of her father’s drinking and ne’er-do-well ways, which Maude prays daily he’ll find the strength to overcome. Earl’s parents consider the Murphys too poor and unstable to allow their son to be involved with Maude.

Maude’s mother, Phoebe, embarrassed and offended by this characterization, counters by offering to pay for piano lessons if she stops seeing Earl. Unswayed by piano lessons, Maude writes:

Darling, nothing will get in the way of our courtship. I know one day we will marry.

They married February 6, 1907.

Maude lived until 1974. I knew her quite well… as well as one could really know an aged great-grandparent. I was in college when she died.

The Diaries

The earliest diary was from 1910, and the last was in 1974. The diaries reveal the day-to-day details of farm life. Their primary crop was Concorde grapes (juice and jam grapes), but they also had a peach and apple orchard. Earl died in 1957, three years after I was born. Too old to work the fields, they sold/lost the farm in Hector around the time I was born.  Earl’s parents, Arthur and Hattie, originally owned the farm.  Maude and Earl moved into the “big house” after Arthur and Hattie could no longer work the farm.   My mother, who spent lots of time at the farm as a young girl, told me that Earl never recovered from that loss. Farming was his life.  He tragically died in Willard State Hospital (Willard Insane Asylum in the book), most likely suffering from depression and dementia.

Maude’s diaries came in all shapes and sizes

Earl and Maude had three children: Helen, Donald, and Arthur.  Helen, the oldest, a striking beauty as a young woman, married a rather goofy-looking Roger Coles, a self-taught engineer who worked at IBM from its early days. They had two children, one was my mother Nancy. My grandmother Helen lived an upper-middle-class life as a housewife and mother, something I suspect in hindsight was never quite her ambition.

Donald Phelps was a big strapping fellow who fought in WWII at the Battle of the Bulge. He had his own farm and, after the war, became the local postmaster. Arthur Phelps was an ordained minister and a bit of a jack of all trades. In the 1960s, he worked as a cabinet maker at the MOOG synthesizer factory along Cayuga Lake. He likely made the synthesizer cabinets for some of my favorite keyboardists of the era, including Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman, among others of note.

Maude’s diaries contain few personal reflections. The love letter is the most personal of her writings. Her diary entries primarily recount what happened day-to-day. A typical entry from February 18, 1927.

Awful cold day. Earl and Oscar [Maude’s brother] drew [cut and haul to the ice house] the last of the ice from the lake this morning. In the afternoon Earl finished tying vines in the lower vineyard. I swept the house [with a broom] made two loaves of bread [wood fired oven], and a batch of cookies. Earl’s parents came for supper.

In a few sentences, she offers a glimpse into the rigors of farming, from the time of the horse-drawn plow until tractors tilled the fields. Earl often did work for others, including his father and neighbors. He worked as a substitute rural delivery mailman on occasion. They pieced together a life through hard work, selling whatever they could grow: grapes, peaches, apples, eggs, and butter or laboring for others. In later years, their son Donald delivered hay often as far away as Long Island. One diary entry notes Donald delivered hay to the Bronx Zoo.

I needed to do something with the diaries, but what?

Family history has always fascinated me. I have always been the collector and keeper of family photos. I needed to do something with the diaries, but what?

A journey into family genealogy

Curious to learn more about my family, I opened an Ancestry.com account and dove into my family’s history on my mother’s side. Soon, I had a family tree filled with names I had never heard of dating back to the 1600s.

Here is some of what I discovered:

Hannibal Howell is my third great-grandfather. Third great is genealogical shorthand for a great-great-great grandparent. Hannibal was the Howell my mother told me about on that family trip in 1970. Hannibal and his two brothers, Byron and Tappan, volunteered to join the Union Army (NY 76th Regiment) in 1861. Only Byron survived the War,

Reunion of the New York 76th at Gettysburg 1883. The monument is in the location where Hannibal Howell was killed. – Homeville Museum, Homer, NY

Who is who

Harriett “Hattie” Howell ➣ second great-grandmother and namesake of Hattie’s War.
Arthur M. Phelps ➣ second great-grandfather (not to be confused with Maude and Earl’s son Arthur).
Hannibal Howell ➣ third great-grandfather and Hattie’s father.
Charlotte Wickham Howell ➣ third great-grandmother and Hattie’s mother.
Earl Phelps ➣ Hattie and Arthur’s son and my great-grandfather.
Maude Murphy ➣ great-grandmother, the one who kept the diaries. Married Earl Phelps.

Now what?

The more I learned, the more fascinated I became with the Howell brothers’ story. Three brothers volunteer to join the Union Army. Only one survives. The oldest (35), Hannibal, had four children and one on the way. I had so many questions. I wanted to write about it. I had to. But how? From what angle? I’d read somewhere that sixty thousand books had been written about the Civil War. What could I possibly add of value?

I suggest going here next ➣ So Many Questions ➣➣➣➣

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