Name/Title
AU Lambert, Elsie Pauline [Warfel] - XXXX-XX-XX letter to James Lowell HarrisEntry/Object ID
1990.1.478Context
Now there is a difference between HISTORY and a nice S.S. story.
In spite of the good and the bad in the family, the brilliance and the dullness, the poverty and the wealth, they were all interesting characters from LIFE. Believe me they were much more interesting as they were than sugared up like a grub in a cocoon. And I admire them a whole lot more, including my father.
I notice in the family trees of the past that many times the man had a wife. She had 6 children and died. Then he had a second wife. She had 4 and lived. .....or in the case of the most admired ancestor.... he had a wife and two. She died. Another wife and a number. She died.... and a last wife to total 16. Today with the safety of child birth the men are the ones who die in middle life! But the idea of a man wearing out a wife from having all those children unsafely, to me is a reflection on him.... not a thing to be admired.
Of course neither Alva nor Ira were ever divorced... but long before the end of their lives Nellie and Alva lived apart. Nellie had a place with Marie and Alva made his headquarters at Glenn's (when he was not wandering over the face of the earth). Mr. Phipps used to say quite frank things about Alva and Nellie as did Mrs P/ (they were in laws on the other side and lived in Muncie). However on their side they kept him clothed (he was a tailor), took him in, fed him, and washed him up.... and gave him return fare to Glenn's ...when he wandered into Muncie wearing 3 pairs of pants, and 2 coats....... from a freight train or some other unorthodox mode of travel. Also that no Lambert ever accepted charity..... He was in the county home for a while and thot it grand. He thot he owned the vast "estate" and "greenhouses," where he worked.
Dad, Ira and Alva were all struck off and on with delusions of grandeur. In Westerville, poor Martha Mayne was kindest to Alva.... clean shirt, underwear... food.... sent Dwight after him etc. Oh well, how did I get off on this? The family was very interesting wasn't it? Probably dad, Ira and Alva vowed never to be dominated by a woman because grandmother Lambert was not a Stanton for nothing.
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Here is some miscellaneous information, including a letter my father wrote into the circulating letter or wrote as a special letter, shortly before that fatal trip in 1955.
You probably have most of the information. There are some other facts included.
Now what does he mean by saying anything bad about anyone he seems to include in being married and divorced. In grandpa Lambert's day divorce was a bad word but in dad's day it became commonplace.... altho even to day should not be entered into lightly. My mother fought the bug-a-boo of "divorce is an evil thing." For that reason I think we should mention that dad had 4 wives and was divorced twice because he was the one who kept saying to my mother "divorce is an evil thing." Also he said many times, loudly and at length that he wet to Cincinnati and told off the Browns when they wanted to help Emma get a divorce from Ira. Of course James you know that it would have ruined his preaching career. Ruth Bancroft's husband was a Methodist minister but at the time they were divorced he was a professor of philosophy at the Un. of Hawaii. However after she got the divorce I do not think he ever preached again (Jack Thomas that is.... the first husband).
We have a case next door to us. I am good friends with the wife and mother. He is originally English. He has become practically an alcoholic and he is an Episcopal Rector. He lost out as head of a school in N.Y. because he consumed too much wine. The mother says he has ruined the daughter's life. (They have a son the age of ours). The wife was a N.Y. debutante. The family was in the social register.... still is. When they were about to marry (on the rebound for her) the mother called him in and asked whether he drank. He said No, of course not. I am a minister. "But" she said, "I think you look like one who drinks. If you do my daughter cannot marry you." He held off for a year and then from the day of the birth of their only son he began and has been at it ever since. The son is now 23. He went to the army as a chaplain and lost out as a Canon of the Cathedral.... then at the school.... and got this little church as a last resort. He seems perfectly contented.... but the wife is entirely unhappy. He also does not treat her very well, especially when drunk. He always gets in shape for the Sun. service. But that red face shining out from his robes is not good. The family always had cocktails etc., being society but they believe in moderation.
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The mother says she and her husband would have gotten a divorce for her years ago but she would not, for altho she was miserable she had her friends and would not ruin his career (if any). Here she has no one.... but me and a cousin in the country and a few dates at the Cincinnatus Society and DAR. She just does not mix with these people..... neither do I very much. I go to Swarthmore to church..... But I can adjust myself much better than she can.
Anyhow the omission for dad is this:
My mother died August 18?, 1930.
Buried in Otterbein Cemetery, where they both are now buried. (For altho my grandmother had and extra lot in Mitchell Cemetery near Plain City, O. mother lived all her married life in Westerville. Grandfather and grandmother Adams (Charles Henry & Mary Samantha Harris) are buried, 60 years apart in the lot together. The Mitchell Cemetery is a book of all the ancestors on that side of the house.
The Lamberts looked down with no reason on the "in-laws" always. That was why the early circulating letters were so funny. The were all about "dear brother" and "dear sister" and left out the in-laws and in many cases the children. Grandma and grandpa did not do this but the children did.
Once dad said, when I asked him, that the reason he considered Jordan Harris inferior and that Ida always spoke for him was that in the school days he once said, "Pappy says that if you break a window stuff an old pair of breeches in it." No one in the hills of Ohio in the early days was exactly a paragon of the social arts so why pick on poor Jordan.
Back to dad...
Second wife. Mrs Ethel Brown (widow from Hamilton O.) married her in 1931 or 32. Married 8 months and divorced. She had a son 18 and a daughter, Nina, 9.
Third wife. Martha Philipps Vanderhoff....... Married her about 1932 or 1933. They were married for 19 years and divorced. Before the ink was dry on the paper , he married Henrietta Dupree Lesher (widow with 7 children. She survives him and lives at the W. address.
