Name/Title
AU Lambert, Elsie Pauline [Warfel] - 1975-11-02 letter to Malcolm Lambert SmithEntry/Object ID
1989.2.4Context
5361 Park Ave.
Bethel Park, Pa. 15102
Sunday Nov. 2, 1975
Dear Malcolm:
I did not realize that my letter had been written as far back as January. Time does go along at a rapid rate. Your travels of this past summer sound interesting. I did not go out of the country or rather this side of the Atlantic. T took a tour of Canada, West. Dick and I had been East a number of times in the car when he was alive. I had never seen the far West. British Columbia seemed as far away to me as England. I had a partner, another widow, who lives in the next suburb and goes to our church (Mt. Lebanon United Methodist). I have known her for ages but never intimately. She is a fine person and has much interest in Eastern Star and that sort of thing. My father Wm O. Lambert was a 32nd degree Mason and my mother belonged to the Eastern Star but Dick did not belong and so I never did. Lucile and Leroy and Charles and Bernice belong. Anyhow it was a Canadian tour (University Tours Limited) and started July 6th in Toronto and ended in Toronto July 22nd. There were 4 of us from the Pittsburgh area and there were 31 in the tour. All were from the US except on Canadian couple from Toronto. We went to Victoria the northern route by Jasper etc. and back by the Southern route Lake Louise etc.......and by the excellent Canadian trains.
I have finally concluded that the family came from Yorkshire in England. However I have no direct proof of this except that dad said we were descended from General John Lambert of Cromwell's Army. He was banished first to the Island of Guernsey and then thru a new book on Cromwell a friend found that at last he was executed from the Tower. I read the part about General Lambert in that book....a rather new and weighty book about Cromwell.
The only connection with New England that I ever heard of was that the Stantons came to the Boston area and that an ancestor Mary Stanton was whipped out of Boston for being a Quaker. From there they took refuge in Newport Rhode Island. From there Henry (a Hicksite Quaker) went to N.C. with a Quaker group because he quarreled with his neighbors about religion. He settled in Beaufort, N.C. just inside the outer Reefs and was ship builder.
The family of the Lamberts came to New Jersey. ...Elizabethtown....(and the most favorite name was John). Lambertville New J. was named after one of those Lamberts because he got to the legislature with his proposal to name it after him before the ferryman got there. There was a ferry from New Hope to Lambertville at the time.
New Jersey also was a place the Quakers came to. The Embrees went to the Philadelphia area and had a town in Chester County named after them (Embreeville). For years they were very well thot of around Philadelphia. The ones who went to N.C. were from N.J. I believe because in Ohio Quakers from N.C. and Embreeville met at "Redstone Old Fort" (later called Brownsville on route 40 a National Road). They started from N.C. for Ohio in 1798, spent a year in Winchester Virginia and a year in "Redstone Old Fort" and picked the land they were to go to in Ohio near Barnesville. Then I suppose they did as others did put their stuff on a flatboat, went up the Ohio and down the Ohio after they left the Monongahela and landed opposite Wheeling W. Va. to go to their lands near Barnesville.
Those other Lamberts you spoke of I never heard of before. There are still famous Lamberts near Winston Salem N.C. but I don't know whether they had any connection with us or not. They are in the tobacco business. Dad seemed to think that John and Matthew Lambert both stayed in N.C. when the rest of the family went to O. They were the sons of the first wife of Abner the First. Dad said they would inherit the land after the English custom. Once dad had a big colored boy in his class by the name of Matthew Lambert and he found out he came from N.C. The colored that went with the family to Ohio did not take the name of Lambert. From a newspaper article once in Ohio it seems that they were giving land, freed and took the first names of 4 of the Lambert brothers for their last names. The article said that they were now having a hard time holding on to the land (the descendants of the original 4). It seems they did not get richer as time went on!
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Abner had 3 wives and 16 children. Dad seemed to be proud of that but the rest of us were not so crazy about the idea. The first wife died after 2 sons. Then our ancestor came in. I could find that she had 8 children (that lived) and maybe 2 who died one in Winchester Va and one in Redstone Fort. She died shortly after they got to Ohio and then he married a Faries woman. Can't say whether she had any children or not, probably did if he had 16 altogether!
Anyhow there is a break in there between John Lambert (was he John the 1st, 2nd, 3d after the General?) and Abner the first.
Other Lamberts in this country came directly here from Normandy France. For example the Lamberts from Anderson, Ind. who made the old Lambert automobile...a fine car but too expensive to make in the end. One of those gave Lambert Hall (Conservatory) to Otterbein College in Westerville from which school many of us graduated. Then the Mayne name is perpetuated on the Campus thru Mayne Hall named after Hannah Lambert and her husband and given by Horace Mayne.
I knew about the Lamberts of Anderson because my best friend Ellen Jones was a first cousin of Lucille Morrison who married Homer Lambert and I used to go with them to Otterbein games when I was in college.
Our Lamberts came from Normandy all right but thru England...with Wm Conqueror in 1066. I don't know which shield in heraldry is ours but probably the same as John's. There are 2 sources of the name....one comes from "The Land is Bright" and the other from Lamb Herder. A woman who is an expert in the Greek Language I know says that Land is Bright is logical because it goes back thru the French. ....to Greek.
I keep on living here and right now have a problem. I took in a cat and kittens and am having a time finding homes for them. She was a wild cat and she brot me her kittens and put them and put them in my covered window well. There are 4. Then I have my independent male cat Smokey and he has to be kept separate from them. He is pretty....white bib and paws on gray.
Natalie Lambert Hamilton Schmick of Cincinnati has gone into a Presbyterian retirement home. She got so we could not see very well, could not drive a car and needed the help of a home. She has plenty of money to support her anywhere and Charles and Bernice suggested that she do that. Her daughter Sally helped her move. Natalie's only sister Ruth Lambert Dickerson died several years ago.
Bernice and Charles have had their troubles. Her mother is very old, lives with them and is now in a nursing home (at the age of 92).
Lucile and Leroy were here briefly not long ago. She is not too well, has trouble with the back of her neck (wears a collar part of the time). I went to Ohio for a few days in August and saw everyone. Lucile's 3 grandchildren of Rodney Webner are now in college (He has 2 more at home)...Pam is a senior in Bowling Green Denise a Junior in Miami of Ohio and Cyndy nurse's training in Toledo O.
Well I am at home today instead of in church because I had such a big day yesterday (went to a play The Seagull at Carnegie Mellon Un). that I felt it would be too much to go since my friend who takes me is sick and I'd have to go by public transportation. I go to the doctor for a checkup tomorrow and don't want the blood pressure to go up or more sugar to show up. I'm fighting the signs of sugar.
Can't think of more to say now.
Sincerely,
{Pauline}
