Name/Title
AU Lambert, Elsie Pauline [Warfel] - 1955-03-18 letter to 'Dear cousins of the older generation'Entry/Object ID
2004.1.14Context
1949 Forest Ave.
Morton, Pa.
March 18, 1955
Dear cousins of the older generation:
I received the family round robin the other day from Henrietta in Westerville. I do not know many of you but I will identify myself by telling you that I am Otterbein Lambert and Loretta Adams oldest child. My mother died in August of 1930. We were at that time grown and away from home. We are Elsie Pauline Lambert Webner (wife of Richard Myers Warfel), Mary Lucile Lambert Webner (wife of Leroy Blough Webner), Charles Otterbein Lambert (whose wife was Bernice Jackson). I have one son aged 22, William Theodore Warfel, and today he went down to have his physical examination for the army (in Landesdowne, Pa.). He graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh in Fine Arts with a major in Industrial Design last June and he has been working with my husband in starting a new selling and small manufacturing business. If and when he has to go to the army we will miss him a great deal. He is not married. I look like my mother and the Lamberts also but my son looks exactly like his father. We are going to sell this house in the near future and move closer to our business which is on the Main Line of the Penna RR at Berwyn, Pa..... 10 miles from here. We live in Delaware Co. one of the 3 counties of the Philadelphia...... Delaware, Philadelphia, Montgomery.... bordered by Bucks and Chester counties. We are not natives of Philadelphia and came here in connection with a position my husband held. (He was in steel for 15 years but the Phil Branch of the Co for which he worked was sold... after we moved here so he started this bu of his own) We lived in Pittsburgh 10 years, Cleveland 3 years, Youngstown a short time, Muncie Indiana where I met my husband, some 8 years after we were married. There we knew Node and Mary Randall Phipps, both of whom are now dead. Node died last summer. You probably all knew them.... Mary's sister was Nellie Randall who was Alva Lambert's wife. Their only son, Randal Phipps is a high up army officer stationed in Japan the last I heard.
Back to my sister, she is married to a banker and lives in Orrville, Ohio. For a good many years she did not teach school but about 5 years ago the board came to her and asked her to go back and teach girl's physical education at the H.S. She did not want to very badly but did do it "till they looked for someone else." This lasted 3 years and she finally told them she was too near 50 to keep on with that and they would have to get someone else... suggesting over and over that they go to Otterbein College for a teacher. Then for the last 2 years she has taught 5th grade in a school just around the corner from her home. Her son is 23 and married to Nancy Bescher (who graduated from Mt Mercy College in Pittsburgh before they were married while he was still in the Navy). He will go back to school this fall... where I have not heard. He spent 1/2 year in Kent State University before he joined the Navy. They have a baby daughter Pamela Lynn Webner who will be 1 in May... and will have another in April.... seems to be the style among young people today.... They were with Lucile from December till now and Rodney is working at an electrical job at a factory... They are getting into an apartment this month. Lucile and her family are Methodists but both Rodney and Nancy are
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Catholics. Nancy is a fine girl and comes from a very good family. Her father was head of Koppers Plant in Orrville and has now been pushed up the ladder and has been moved to Pittsburgh, the usual path of promotion in Koppers Co. They live in Mt Lebanon where they bought a house on Cochran Road, not far from where we lived for 6 1/2 years. Mt. Lebanon is the most beautiful part of Pittsburgh.
Lucile's daughter Mary Sue Weber will be 18 in April and is graduating from Orrville H.S. this June. She has brown hair and eyes, is 5' 6" tall and very attractive. She will go to 1 of 3 Ohio Colleges, Wooster, Otterbein or Baldwin Wallace next year. She is musical and will major in Public School Music. I was amused at Glen's account of grandpa (dad's) Lambert's first great grandchild ("Daniel Lambert Webner"). There is a grandchild in the family named Daniel Lambert but the last name is Selby. He is Paul Selby's grandchild... son of Paul Jr. and they live in Columbus, O. Paul is Eva Lambert Selby's son.
Charles lives out of Cincinnati on the corner of a farm.... ground he bought from Mr Grimm who is head of the Y.M.C.A. in Cincy. Charles is assistant Y.M.C.A. Sec. of Cincy now. He has no children. He built a lovely little house in the country himself... after living for many years in apartments in Cincy.
We are having snow here today, after long weeks of spring like weather. It is to turn to rain this afternoon however. We have much milder weather here than in Pittsburgh and Ohio. We were interested in finding when we came to this area that there is an Enbreeville near by but now they say there are no more Embrees living there. My grandmother was Deborah Vernon Embree. There is also a Lambertville in New Jersey across from New Hope. By a trick old John Lambert got the town named after himself instead of after the local ferryman by going to the legislature about it before the ferryman could get his bid in. The ferryman called it Lambert's villainy. I can't for the life of me see how our Lamberts got from Elizabethtown to New Hope to Lambertville and then to North Carolina but maybe only some went to Lambertville. I can easily see how Eliz Stanton married Abner Lambert tho.... living in neighboring counties of N. Car. on plantations as at that time there was a great deal of visiting from one plantation to another.
On New Castle day we went there to see the old houses. In the largest of them we found on the wall that the people who lived there were proud of the fact that their ancestor had been an officer in the Revolutionary War.... seems to make a good bit of difference to them.
It was nice to see the pictures of some of you.
Maybe you might like to see a few things that I wrote concerning the family. Maybe some of you have seen these so called poem.... but maybe not. I will enclose some.
Best wishes to you all.
Most sincerely,
{Pauline}
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as a birthday greeting to my aunt Bertha Lambert Harris
To Aunt Bertha on her Eightieth Birthday Sept 1952
by Pauline Lambert Warfel
Southern hills, college town,
Quaker mother, cap and gown.
Preacher father, preacher lover,
Devoted wife, beloved mother.
Sacrifices freely made,
Darkness, unfair trade.
Once more the light,
Grandchildren first sight.
Faithful husband gone away,
She alone must stay.
Newest baby, Jimmy, loved,
Grandpa sees him from above.
Mighty years of joy and tears,
Wonderful life through the years.
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This one was written for my aunt Caroline Lambert Charles on her 77th birthday, at which I understand she had a party in the Nursing Home with a birthday cake and company.
Let me explain a little about this. I imagined that I was grandmother Lambert in Southern Ohio in the year 1877, just before aunt Carrie was born.
"Meditation of Mother Who is to Have a Child in Mid-November a Long Time Ago "
Nov. 13, 1954
by Pauline Lambert Warfel.....her grandchild.
"October has slipped away into November this day.
I have loved this October more than most,
And more than before I have sat in the sun
To rest before the baby comes."
"This autumn the colors have rivaled a palette
Of that painter from New York
Who paints our peaceful valleys
And our rolling hills."
"My older daughters are in my kitchen
And my sons bring in the cows and farm the land,
And I rest before the birth of this small one."
"My husband wends his way along the country roads
Preaching the gospel and bringing in new souls in Christ,
But he will be here to welcome this new child."
"His blue eyes will smile,
And he will clasp his baby in his arms,
A person softened as the years have gone along."
"These younger children will be companions
And listeners, and make him happy too,
For he has learned the art of children
And is not so stern with them as with the others."
"I hope it is a girl for girls ever warm the hearts
Of older people and bless the day that they were born....
And bring their children home to visit
And be blessed."
"Perhaps she will be bright and write the stories
I have longed to write and compose poems
Better than my own."
"But most of all I hope she will be a gracious one and pretty
And beloved of a good and worthy man...
Her equal in knowledge and the soul."
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"My, I have dropped my knitting
And the little robe is not yet finished.
Like it was before I am almost helpless
To retrieve it too."
"I am so glad the little coat is white
And the yarn so soft this time.
The sheep we took it from
Were better than the others."
"No, kitty, do not tangle it.
Here's your string."
"Little Bertha, won't you get the yarn for mother."
"That's a dear."
"Come stand by me or get the little chair
And I will tell you a story."
"You may bring Otty too but he's too small to listen much.
I'll just let him sit beside me here
And put my arms around him."
"And love him as a baby should be loved once more.
Little enough he will be babied after the new one comes
And he will miss it."
"Once upon a time, a long time ago
Way off in the country called France,
My great, great, grandfather lived."
"He was a good man but not a Catholic,
A Quaker. . . . like your grandfather and grandmother, dear."
"But in France most were Catholics
And did not like the Quakers,
So they gathered their trunks together
And came on a big boat to a place
Called Philadelphia . . . .
Way off east in our own country."
And her voice went on until the children grew tired
And little Otty went to sleep
And the sun crept around the corner
Of the house and she had to go inside.
Two weeks later...almost.
Beside the fire she sat and counted the stitches
In the little coat and the days on the calendar
That hung beside the schoolmaster's desk
In the sitting room.
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Bertha played quietly with her corn husk doll
And little sturdy Otty slept on the horse hair sofa
Relaxed and peaceful paying no attention
To its hardness in his sturdy, healthy little boy way.
November twelfth
"Another day has come and it must be near my time.
It's not so warm today and it's better by the fire,
But they are keeping the near bedroom heated
For me too.... for often I take a nap."
"Ida has taken Otty to my brother's house
And Bertha is at Reese Lambert's.
I miss those little ones
But Ida and Eva have too much to do to watch them."
"Dear God, help me to bear the pain.
And know that it will soon be over.
It must not be today for it is evening now."
"Daniel, is that you? Alas, 'tis now . . .
You are just in time to be with me."
"Deborah..... my dear ...here is your little girl"
"What do you want to call her? She is very fair."
"A girl you say. God bless the tiny mite.
I'll call her Caroline."
"What time is it?"
"It's one in the night....
And the twelfth no more."
The Bible record says,
"Born here upon this farm, a girl,
Daughter of Daniel Webster Lambert and Deborah Embree Lambert,
And her name is Caroline Deborah
(Her mother named her Caroline
But her father honored Deborah with the other part.)
A faded note in her mother's hand says:
"She is very fair with light curly hair
And deep blue eyes and she looks like Daniel.
I think she is the answer to my prayer."
