My Father's House (Click most images for larger versions.)
My father's last name was Guy.
Once, he told me that the name originated among the Huguenots of the Guyenne Province of France, but he didn't know when his ancestors emigrated. An article I came across, however, led me to believe his forefathers might have been part of the exodus of Huguenots who fled France after Louis XIV revoked the "Edict of Nantes." Created to be an irrevocable guarantee of the rights of Protestants in France, Louis rescinded the act in 1685. From then until the end of the 18th century, 40,000 to 50,000 Huguenots crossed the English Channel to a surprisingly sympathetic reception. It's possible my father's forebears were among them, but that's just a guess. No matter when, my father's antecedents settled in England, and then his father, Thomas Guy, eventually wound up in Ireland.
Isabella Hosford, my paternal grandmother, was born in 1841 of Dutch immigrants in Cork, Ireland. There are no papers to clarify it, just family word of mouth. There is evidence that her maiden name was originally Hostvedt or Hoftvedt, but got homogenized, like so many others, when her family immigrated.
It's also unclear where or how she met my grandfather, but one of their grandchildren noted in a letter to me in 1969 that, "They were both City people from England." On my father's birth certificate, however, Isabella made a mark, unable to write her name. That lends little credence to her being a "City" person. What I think is more likely is that she was merely a country servant girl trying to make money in the city to send home. And, while she was at it, land a husband, just as my mother had done in New York—getting a husband was always number one on a woman's list back in those days...and for many females even still.
Isabella's husband, my paternal grandfather, Thomas, was a pensioner farmer who settled in Northern Ireland after his service in the British Army. He was full of army stories to regale his children, and to this day those stories are a part of the family lore; though, more likely than not, they were just that, stories.
For, Thomas has all sorts of histories. One, which I thought true until my son proved it to be absurd, was that Thomas fought with the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo in 1815. For that to be true, assuming Thomas was at least in his teens during the campaign, then he would have been in his nineties when my father was born! Besides, Thomas' year of birth is 1838, so let's put that myth to rest. A more believable scenario has Thomas fighting in South Africa during the Boer "uprising" of 1880, but if his birth year is correct, then he would've been in his forties. That seems old, but maybe only by today's standards wherein our young men go off to die for country and older men's rationalizations. According to a letter my father wrote, Thomas also made lieutenant while serving in Africa. But, what I think is apt to be the truth, and not a fireside yarn, is the family's belief that Thomas was a pay sergeant in the Duke of Wellington's 33rd Foot Regiment (the duke, himself, long gone), which did fight in the Africa uprising in 1880, whether Thomas was still with them or not.
A quick aside concerning my father's name: William Wellington Hosford Guy. It was his father's real or imagined military affiliation with Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), that inspired that christening.
The only thing known for sure about our raconteur, Thomas Guy, besides his ability to spin convincing tales for his Irish brood around an evening's peat fire, is that he was a pensioner (it says so on my father's birth certificate [140kb, pdf]).
If he did serve in some fashion in the British Army, upon being mustered out, Thomas asked to settle in Northern Ireland. He and Isabella then moved to a small town, which no one can remember, in County Armagh. From there, they moved to the township of Crannogue in the Pomeroy Parish, County Tyrone, and, according to his birth certificate, that's where my father was born.
There is no way of knowing where his older brothers and sisters were born: in England or Ireland. My son found a reference to a Frank and John Guy (names of my father's two oldest brothers) in an Ellis Island record that states they lived in Aunfield, England. The date is not quite in keeping with my father's family's order of immigration, but no where does anyone say that the older brothers lived with the family in Ireland. Is it possible that they were born in England, while Thomas was in the military, and then stayed there when the rest of the family moved to Armagh? I don't know.
According to a letter I received from my father in December of 1959, his family lived in a two room thatched cottage on 35 acres of farm land with cows, a goat, a couple of pigs, lots of chickens and dogs, plus a "wishing" well and pond. They churned their own butter, baked bread and scones on a large griddle, baked potatoes in a peat fire, and always had a kettle on for tea. They had plenty of good food, but very little money: just the pension and whatever the crops brought in. Once a month, after the pension check arrived, they traveled to market to buy the goods they couldn't make themselves, such as "pane" sugar, tobacco, and dry goods.
My father lived a rough-and-tumble life from its outset, and it only got worse when his father died. Young William had to quit school and go to work—he only finished the fourth grade! The pension stopped when Thomas died, and that, coupled with the two older boys and eldest girl having just left for America, meant the rest of the family (Isabella and her four youngest children) had to pitch in to save the farm, just the five of them to work 35 acres.
As an aside: Sarah "Sadie" Jane left Ireland in 1903 then traveled back to become a nurse in Belfast. In 1904, she went through Ellis Island again on her way to landing a job at St. Bartholomew's Hospital on East 47th in Manhattan. There are some inferences that allude to Frank and John emigrating to Canada, for that is where Isaac Hillis puprportedly joined my father and his brothers, at one point. Although, there is no verification, just a vague memory from a relative.
Of those last years in Ireland, all my father ever told me, in poor writing, came in a letter: "I was a full Back (sic) and a very good one at that, if you dont (sic) mind me blowing my horn a bit." Of course, he was referring to soccer and, I assume, to games played catch-as-catch-can, since he never stopped working once he got started. I couldn't get any more information than that out of him about his youth, although I don't blame him for wanting to forget the rigors he faced.
When he was twelve, at the turn of the century, William went to work for a contractor who was building a reservoir in the area. Six days a week—Sundays off to work the farm—William's duties included hauling the heavy tools to the blacksmith for repair and sharpening, keeping water buckets filled for the men, and cleaning out the latrines. He did it all for a pound a week, the equivalent of five dollars at the time. It wasn't much, but it was a great help to Isabella; she "...had nothing coming in except what she sold off the farm." But right after William found his job, his sister Sadie sent money so that his other sisters, Maud and Martha (Ike's first wife), could also leave for the States. They set sail September 29, 1905.
William wrote of that time, "...they were all away but my brother Joe and I, so it was up to us to hold the fort. So you can see that I did not have much of a chance to play or go to chool (sic). I envy the yongsters (sic) of today with everything giving (sic) to them. I had a harder time of it." But, all the Guys had a harder time of it, especially my grandmother, my namesake.
Although the family always called me Isabella, according to my birth certificate my name is Isabelle, with an "e". I also have cards and notes in which family members call me Isabella, but the "e" is official according to the State of New York, just as Grandmother Isabella's "a" is official, according to the Registrar of Ireland.
Anyway, with all the girls gone, Isabella quickly deteriorated, becoming chronically ill: "...mother never felt well after they left, it just broke her heart. She died 3 years later at the age of 62 years." Since the girls left in 1905, then Isabella would have died in 1908, after my father left for the States in 1907. But it's all guess work. There are no set dates, just references to crossings and years later. I think it's more likely that Isabella died in 1907, and that's why my father left for the States—he was the last one standing in Ireland.
All I know for sure is that he took the ship, Majestic, out of Londonderry, and went through Ellis Island on June 6, 1907. The ship's register claims he would join his brother, John Guy, at 328 N. 28th Street in New York. I guess it's safe to assume that John sent the twenty-five dollars that allowed William to purchase his passage.
( If you'd like to see his name on the Majestic's ship's register, you can download a pdf file of it. The file is a 2.3Mb pdf, because it's too large to show on a web page. Once you download the file, you can enlarge it tremendously in most pdf viewers, including Acrobat Reader—my father's entry is underlined with red. To download the file, click HERE. )
My father wrote that he planned to join one of his brothers and Isaac Hillis in Canada. Supposedly, they were working up there, but I never heard any more, and Father never confirmed whether he actually joined them or not. If he did, it couldn't have been for long since he would meet and marry Mother in Manhattan. Yet, he did know Isaac Hillis before he knew her.
The interconnection between some of my relatives is amazing. Here, my future stepfather already knew my father, hung out with his brother, would soon wed their sister, have a son, and yet no one had heard tell of Margaret Campbell. It's too bad I've learned nothing else about their lives, until William marries Margaret in 1911. Buster was born in Manhattan in 1912, but I don't know if that's where Mother and Father met, or when Father made his journey back from Canada, or even if he actually went there; and if he did, what did he do there?
All I do know is that he left Mother and me in 1916, after five years of "wedded bliss."
After leaving us, Father moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, with his hot-blooded Italian mistress. They married once the divorce came through, but never had children. I don't know whether she was infertile or whether it was by choice, but he seemed happy with her, nonetheless.
He began his "new" life by getting work at a hospital in Bridgeport. They started him out as low-man in the maintenance department, but eventually, he was able to join the worker's union and start making good money. He rose to chief engineer before he quit the hospital and went to work at the Stamfield Hotel as supervising maintenance engineer. It was a plum, cushy position, and he worked it for twenty years before retiring to Florida in 1946 with lots of money and a healthy pension.
And that's why he could afford what he called his "mansion" at 1017 NW 9th Court in Miami, which bordered on the Miami River. I never visited it, myself, I just know it from an old photograph he mailed me in the early sixties, and the Christmas card he sent about the same "era."
The property backed onto Seybold Canal and had a dock for a large power yacht. When the mood struck him, he could navigate his way down the canal to the river, down the river to Miami Bay and from there out to the Atlantic, and down to the Carribean, although I don't know if he ever did that. When he sent the photo of his house, he also included a picture of the yacht underway. It was a beautiful boat with a long forward deck for sunbathing and a covered aft deck for escaping the hot sun. Father called his boat Vrind, which means "friend" in Dutch, and makes a nice play on the word "wind." I think he gave the boat that name because of his mother's Dutch extraction.
At any rate, after his Italian wife died, my father began renting out rooms in the huge house to "Snow Birds"—people from the North who came down to escape the cold Winters. He had as many as twelve at a time, and seemed to enjoy it. I don't think he needed the money but, being gregarious, wanted the company, for in March of 1960 he wrote:
"Well, Isabelle, the Snow Birds are starting to migrate back to their homelands—there are only 6 of them left. But, I expect 6 new guests to come in this weekend. It shure (sic) has kept me on the go this winter, but it was good for me, it got my mind off the more unpleasant thoughts. And believe me I needed something to brake (sic) the monotony of living alone. I got so I was talking to myself and that is a bad condition for anyone to get into, but I am getting back to normal, thanks to the Snow Birds. They have done a lot for me."
But all that is yet to come. First, I should talk about my next meeting with my father, thirteen years after my five-and-dime epiphany. It happened during my full-time job at the Metropolitan Insurance Company.
For my birthday each summer, I took a two-week vacation. The first one I spent at Camptown, then a very small, country hamlet in the Northeast corner of Pennsylvania. One of Ike's sisters, "Aunt" Jennie, who married a William Stern, owned a vacation house there near what was a type of recreational retreat camp with tennis courts and planned events. I had a wonderful time, but the next year, 1932, I opted instead to accept an offer to go fishing with my father at Block Island—a small isle in the Atlantic about 15 miles due south of Rhode Island and about the same distance off the northeast tip of Long Island. How the invitation came or why I accepted are lost to me, though I remember the train ride up the coast and the ferry to the island.
No one met me at the ferry, however, I was on my own—an inauspicious start that, as it turned out, set the mood. It might have been part of the arrangement, but it seems strange to me that after thirteen years he didn't have the courtesy to meet me. (I've since conjectured that his Italian wife might have had something to do with it.) As it was, I had to carry my own bags and discover my own way to his boat. I don't know whether it was the same power yacht he had in Florida, Vrind, but there was plenty of room on board for the three of us—father, myself, and his miffed insignificant other.
She hadn't been able to have children, so I'm sure the last thing she wanted was for one of her husband's brats from his previous marriage to come aboard "her boat" and remind her of that fact. And she made no efforts to hide her displeasure with my presence. I can't remember her name, but to this day, when I picture her, I don't see a person so much as I get a blank, negative feeling.
She was a large, dark woman with umber eyes, raven tresses, and an ample bosom to go with her wide, swaying hips—a frumpish Sophia Loren. And from the moment I arrived, she made it clear that I wasn't welcomed: she turned and walked away, cursing in Italian. At least, that's what I thought. She never extended the slightest courtesy or warmth, and there was never an inkling of encouragement to get acquainted. Life aboard, at least while she was on board, was uncomfortable at best. Fortunately, she didn't join Father and me when we left his boat to board the fishing vessel.
My father loved to go after swordfish—which is what you find around Block Island—and the boat was crowded with other men who loved it, too. Their excitement was infectious. Once we were out with hooks in the water, I could feel the electricity run through the boat. When a fish finally struck someone's line, I joined in with everyone else, screaming exhortations and straining along with whoever actually pulled on the pole. As it drew near, crewmen would throw small harpoons at the hooked fish, trying to finish it off. Then, as the fish grew still, others used large grappling hooks to pull it on board. Everyone felt part of the triumph, and I have a wonderful photograph showing my father, the other fishermen, and the boat's crew all gathered around a monstrous swordfish he caught. The image still evokes the sense of accomplishment I felt, too.
Of course, when we got back to dad's boat, I felt more like the fish.
Eventually, the tension created by my "stepmother" proved to be too much. Whenever she was around, all I could think about was the wonderful time I had the year before at Camptown, and why, oh why wasn't I having another wonderful time this year. After a week of her, I'd had enough. I made my excuses, said my goodbyes, and left, my course straight for Camptown.
There, Bud joined me and we enjoyed a week of fun before going back to work, vacation over.