Name/Title
AU Lambert, Elsie Pauline [Warfel] - XXXX-XX-XX - 'My father-William Otterbein Lambert'Entry/Object ID
1990.1.482Context
My father: William Otterbein Lambert
b. Feb. 25, 1875 Athens Co. Ohio
d. Sept. 1954 Westerville, O.
buried Otterbein Cemetery, Westerville, O.
In telling about my father I forgot to mention that after he gave up the administrative school work he taught H.S. at South High School, Columbus, O for many years till he retired at 65. We went to Lisbon O when Charles was a baby and Lucile about 2 1/2 and I about 4 1/2. Dad was superintendent of the H.S. there. We rented a very large house on the main street of the town....a house I will never forget. It was the only house my father could find to rent. We had a big front porch, a central hall with an open stairs... which woundup to a finished 3d floor (which we could not afford to heat). We had a parlor or music room (when my parents first bought furniture of their own... a mahogany parlor set and in that room my mother's piano). We had a big sitting room where we mostly lived. It would be called a family room today. The dining room
was a large room and it seemed miles to the kitchen. There was a big kitchen and pantry. Then my father had a library or study, whatever you call it. For those days it was a modern house... bath up and lavatory down... full basement and coal furnace. There were 4 bedrooms on second and as I said a finished attic... or 2 finished rooms up there.
We liked it there but dad got tired of the political climate and swore he would not be a superintendent again. So in the middle of my first year in school we moved to Columbus, O, near where dad's cousin Becky Lambert Hopkins and her husband Ed Hopkins lived. Ed and Becky lived in a house they owned ...... on Oakwood St. and we lived in half of a double on Livingston Ave. It was a German section and we were near Shiller (sp) Park where we often went on Sunday afternoons and Ed Hopkins took pictures of us there. Ed and Becky had
3 children, older than we were.... Earl Hopkins, Ellis Hopkins and Norma Hopkins. All were musicians and Ed made violins for a hobby altho he was an engineer for Jeffreys Manufacturing Co. (coal mining).
Today a part of that are is restored and is called A German Village. We lived in Columbus for about a year and then my father without consulting my mother bought a farm (40 acres) just over the corporation Line on S. State St. Westerville, O. He paid for it at the rate of $5 down and 30 years to pay. It was an old farm house nicely located among pretty trees. Prom all conveniences my mother was reduced to no Conveniences..... no furnace.... wood burning kitchen range, no bath, no electricity and no gas. We had stoves everywhere for heat
and a wood shed coal shed etc. Dad felt he needed to supplement his teacher's salary with money from the farm. So he had a vocation and an avocation.
At once he started making over the farm house. We soon got electricity from the street car co Street cars ran by the house. Never did get gas. Never did get a bath. After I graduated from college in 1923 they moved into one of the "new" houses and then at last my mother had a modern kitchen and a bath room. Dad built 2 houses on the frontage in the 20s. Now all are torn down including the many times made over farm house. Business places are there now. The farm at last is being built up into a section of town.
