Lamb Stories

 

LAMB STORIES……………………………………………………………..DRAFT

 

 

 

Eugene Harrison Lamb, my Grandpa Lamb was born in Pennsylvania in 1870 and lived with an uncle and aunt who ran some kind of resort.  When he was about fifteen years old, he left home and went ‘out west’ where he got a job working on the railroad. 

 

 

 

He started as a Section Hand, helping to build and repair the tracks along a section of the railroad.  When trains would come by, work would stop until the train was gone.  He would look up at the engineers and think to himself “That’s what I want to do”.  He studied, took some tests, and got a job as a Firemen.

 

 

 

         *The resort was used as a nursing home in the winter and a resort in the summer.  It is still standing;  The current owner boasts that Annie Oakley once stayed there.

 

         Harris and Willis worked at the resort for a couple of summers when they were young.

 

         In the 1930’s it was run by Uncle Herbert, Aunt Elizabeth and another Aunt …  (The name Mary Hurd resonates in Bob’s brain.  Clyde had a pencil inscribed with that name and somehow, from grade-school days, Bob associates this with the Pennsylvania resort.)  The four brothers visited there (to settle an estate?) when Harris was living in Ada (1930’s) and came back home with the conclusion that the folks in Pa. were all crazy.

 

         In his failing years, Uncle Herbert who was Eugene’s brother, came to live with Eugene (who I suppose was called Gene??) and Hanna.

 

         In the late 1950’s another estate was settled and the four brothers received letters that they were heirs.  Clyde and Bessie discussed what they would do with their inheritance;  they thought that a Hi-Fi would be a nice addion to their home so Clyde went out and bought a $600 Stereo.  Later they received a check for about $100.

 

 

 

 

 

In time Eugene became one of the more senior Engineers for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad and was assigned the Des Moines to Chicago run. 

 

 

 

In 1897, Eugene married our Grandma, Hannah Marie Barnes, of Cass County Iowa, and they settled in Boone, Iowa.  Grandma was nine years his junior. When they were married she was eighteen years old and Eugene was twenty-seven.

 

 

 

 

Hannah presented Eugene with four boys, Clyde (1899), Ray (1901), and later twins, Harris and Willis who were born in 1904.  All of these boys were born in their home on the outskirts of Boone.

 

 

 

When the twins were born, Clyde was five years old and Ray was three.  Clyde and Ray first saw the twins when they were shown into the bedroom to see their mother and the new babies. 

 

 

 

“Boys”, she said, “You have twin brothers.  This is Harris, and this is Willis.  They are going to be a lot of work and I am going to need your help.  I’d like to have each of you take responsibility in helping to raise a twin.  Clyde, you’re the oldest so you can pick which twin you want to help take care of.”

 

 

 

Clyde liked the name Harris, so he chose him to be “his twin”; Ray’s twin was Willis.  Over the years each looked after his twin, played with him, taught them, and each became a little closer to his twin than the others of that close brotherhood. 

 

 

 

When the older boys were mad at one another, they would have their twin beat up on the other twin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Four Lamb Brothers had many adventures growing up while living just outside Boone.  They played outdoors and had a donkey with a cart which they used for fun and for transportation.  They made many trips to “The Ledges” where they would hike, fish, and camp out.  These activities became lifelong hobbies, especially fishing.  More on that later.

 

 

 

In the early nineteen hundreds there was no indoor plumbing and people used privies behind their houses.  It was no fun to go outdoors to wash your face in the morning.  Likewise it was no fun to go trudging through the snow to the privy in the middle of a cold winter night. This helps to explain the universal practicality of chamber pots and wash basins.

 

 

 

The Lambs had a three-hole privy.  There was a big hole, a middle-sized hole, and a small hole for the kids.  One day one of the small boys must have been in a hurry because he used the big hole instead of the small hole.  He fell in.  Fortunately, brothers were nearby and heard the screaming, help was summoned, and the child was fished out before he drowned.  Needless to say that a bath ensued.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eugene was away on his job much of the time.  The Des Moines to Chicago run consisted of the trip to Chicago, an overnight layover, and a return on the following day. 

 

 

 

Eugene loved gadgets and purchased the first automobile in Boone.  On Saturdays, he would go down to the Roundhouse to be paid or on some other railroad business.  He would take the boys along and have them watch the car while he went inside.  The car always drew a crowd and the boys proudly showed off their charge.  “This is the throttle,  this is how you steer, and this is the crank”, they would explain as their visitors admired the vehicle.  Maybe these experiences helped them get the idea that they wanted to become teachers.

 

 

 

Their mother’s influence was especially strong in the matter of education.  She insisted that the boys be good students and this influence led all four to enroll and graduate from Coe College and to become teachers and coaches.

 

 

 

When the boys were in school in Boone, Hannah insisted on participation in Declamitory Contests.  These were events where the contestants learned poems or readings and presented them from memory to the audience.  They were community gatherings and a source of entertainment to the townspeople because these were before the days of radio, movies, and television. 

 

 

 

All of the boys became polished public speakers and each had his special piece.  Many years later, when they visited together they would entertain themselves and their children with recitations.  Favorites included, The Shooting of Dan McGrew, The Cremation of Sam Magee, and The Spell of the Yukon.  These readings were influenced by the poems of Robert W. Service who published his ‘Spell of the Yukon’ book in 1907 when Clyde was seven years old, Ray was five, and Harris and Willis were two.

 

 

 

Later, Clyde would say that Harris could sell an icebox to an eskimo.  The presentation skills learned in the declamitory contests were part of the reason for that statement which applied equally to all of his brothers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before we get away from Eugene Harrison Lamb, we should note that his father, Harrison Lamb married Esther Whitney.  Harrison’s father was Ebenezer Lamb and his mother was Nancy Gordon whose father had been born in Ireland and fought in the Revolutionary War.  Esther Whitney’s great-great-great-grandfather was Nathaniel, born in 1620 in Watertown, Mass.  Nathaniel’s grandfather John Whitney was born in 1589 in England.

 

 

 

Through the Whitneys and the Gordons, all of you Lamb ladies are Daughters of the American Revolution.  You rate five stars on your badge for the five documented ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War.  There may be others because so far there is no information before Ebenezer along the Lamb line.

 

 

 

The genealogical work was done by Jim Gobin, Jackie’s husband.  For more information on DAR, contact Jackie or her daughter, Kathy Dixon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 23, 2006, rev 5/21/06

 

Bob

 

 

 May 15, 2006 footnotes added about Pennsylvania resort.