| Biography |
- Reminiscences of Ruth Chapin Hill Jones (Midge)
Mary Louisa Cadwallader and Harry Hill
Family pictures show that Grandfather was a frequent visitor to the Cadwallader house on Center Street. He and Grandmother were high school classmates.
At 20 years of age, Grandmother was 6 months pregnant. Grandfather was forced to take responsibility, marry her. Destructive basis for marriage, especially when weighed against Grandfather's status as the spoiled baby of his family.
I suspect he never forgave being forced to take responsibility. After all, it was Grandmother who had gotten pregnant: her fault, not his. From what I remember of Grandfather and the family stories, that would have been his attitude.
It set the stage for more destructive attitudes and actions. Laurence and Betty both reported that the Cadwalladers made a point of never visiting if there was a chance that Grandfather would be present. Not a healthy family environment.
When I was growing up the Hill house on Front Street was a single house. There was a broad front porch connecting the two doors at either side of the house, steps leading down to the sidewalk in the center of the porch. A porch swing was suspended from the ceiling on what was later Betty's side of the house. On warm summer evenings Grandmother would sit there, neighbors out walking would stop and chat.
Inside, the two front rooms were connected by a double archway which had no door. At the top of the stairs leading to the basement there was a single doorway connecting the two "kitchens". There was another single doorway at the top of the stairs on the second floor. The attic was open. When the house was returned to being a double house, there was a wire mesh of some kind that separated the two sides of the attic. There was a single opening linking the two sides in the basement. When Had and Sally moved out of their side of the house I have no idea what barrier was installed between the two basements.
The kitchen for the "single" house was where Betty's kitchen was later. As a very little girl I remember a big iron coal stove against the wall separating the two "kitchens". My only memory of Grandmother standing upright is one of her standing at that coal stove.
Betty modernized the kitchen when she taught in Milton, putting a gas stove against the wall between the kitchen and the center room, the wall where Betty later put her wall ovens. The sink was always on the outside wall under a window looking out on the side porch.
In the center of the room was a square table.
At the back of both "kitchens" was a narrow pantry lined on both sides with cabinets. As Grandmother's arthritis got worse and she became even more crippled, Betty installed a toilet in the pantry on what was later Had's side of the house. When the house was turned back into a double house, Betty closed off the kitchen entry to the pantry on Had's side of the house and tore out the wall connecting the two pantries. Grandmother then had access to the toilet from her side of the house.
When I was little, the dining room was in the room that would eventually be made into the kitchen on Had's side of the house. It had a dropped tin ceiling and a hanging lamp in the center of it with an orange (as I remember it) silk shade. The twins used to sit across the table from me, dip a spoon in their water glass and shoot the drop of water across the table at me. I loved it! But I howled, of course.
I also loved chasing the twins up one stairway on one side of the house and down the stairway on the other side of the house. Great fun! When the twins didn't play the game by my rules, I would go to Grandmother and complain that the twins were teasing me. (Teasing! Imagine that!) Grandmother would make them behave - and we would soon be back at the chasing game again. I loved it!
Eventually the dining room was moved from the back room on Had's side to the middle room on Betty's side of the house. I presume that was in preparation for returning the house to a double house. The kitchen remained the same.
The middle room on Had's side of the house was always dark, a private den of sorts. A radio was there. Milton's location made it difficult to hear radio signals, mostly it was static as far as I could tell when I visited. I couldn't follow the broadcasts, I was used to the strong clear signals that made listening easy in New Jersey. Grandfather listened to the radio a lot; Grandmother got her news from the daily Milton Evening Standard.
Grandfather also often dozed, slept on a leather daybed in that dark center room. As a little kid, I found that room rather scary.
I was told as a little girl that at times Grandfather would go up to the attic and throw stored Cadwallader furniture out the back attic window. He may have broken some of it up for kindling to start the coal furnace in the fall, but I also remember hearing that he just destroyed it. I have no idea what furniture was stored there.
The stories were that Grandfather often refused promotions at his various jobs and so was eligible for lay-off when times turned down. I remember him as the janitor at the Lincoln Street school.
He also imposed Rachel's strict religious rules on the family: church several times a week and several times on Sundays. No funny papers on Sunday. No fun, no enjoyment on Sundays. The rules eased after Rachel's death.
I never heard him say it, but I was told that Grandfather often threw it in Grandmother's face that she was "first cousin to a Catholic" because she remained an Episcopalian until her death.
Pinochle was the family card game. I played it with Grandmother and others. Mother told the story that there was often a running card game that went on for days, the 5 boys, their friends dropping in
and playing for a while, then going home or up to bed while the game continued.
There was also the story of a friend of one of the boys (one of the twins, I think). Every couple of days his mother would call Grandmother and ask her to send the boy home to change his clothes. He pretty much lived at the Hills.
The Hill house was the center for the kids' friends.
When The Holland first failed, we lived at the Hill's for some period of time before Mother and I moved to the Chapin hilltop (Chapin home on east Broadway). Mother told the story that as each of the boys finished dinner they would ask to be excused from the table and would head to town. According to Mother, they walked individually, never waiting for a brother to finish and walk along, even the twins would go to town separately. Mother thought they were probably no more than a block or two apart. She called it the "Hill Parade".
When I was a kid and visited, there was a Victrola sitting in the front corner of "Betty's" front room. It stood on the floor, had shelves for records, you wound a handle on its side to make it play. Seth and Laurence had bought records in the 1920's, I loved to play them: Paul Whiteman, recordings by an unknown band of the "Missouri Waltz", "Bye, Bye Blackbird" and Sir Harry Lauder singing "My Bonnie, Bonnie Jeanne". I would play them over ... and over ... and over again.
One day Grandfather came into the room and said to me, "Why don't you play 'X', I haven't heard it in a long time." It was the one I had been playing. I didn't understand the sarcasm, I thought he wanted to hear it again, so I obligingly played it again.
Now I realize he was being sarcastic, but for some reason he didn't, couldn't just tell me to stop. He had never had any problem telling other cousins to stop what they were doing if he didn't approve of it. I think now the reason he didn't say "stop" to me may have been because my mother was a Chapin and he had already felt the wrath of the Cadwalladers.
I had been "given" the Victrola and the records and I badly wanted them. For whatever reason, they were never moved to wherever we were living at the time, I can only presume because my mother didn't want me to have them. When the 1936 flood hit, things that could be moved were moved to the second floor. The Victrola and the records were left standing in the front room. After the flood, coated in river muck, they were all thrown out. I was heartbroken.
At the time of the '36 flood Grandmother and Grandfather left the house and went to the Hill house on Center Street. The creek behind that house backed up, flooded the basement and put out the furnace. Then everyone moved out to Uncle Bert's farm (William Herbert Hill). At least I think that's where they went, I don't have a firm memory of it.
We visited Milton about two weeks after the flood waters receded. Water soaked furniture was sitting out on the curbs along Front Street. In the house there was a line about 5 feet high, the high water mark on the first floor. The house smelled, of mildew, of whatever had entered the house with the water. Betty said they had taken 5 truck loads of mud out of the basement.
Back in those days the heating pipes to the bedrooms were exposed. (Betty camouflaged them eventually on her side of the house.) Grandmother used to pound on them some mornings to get the twins up and out.
I can remember Grandmother sitting at the telephone in a comer of "Betty's" middle room, talking with the butcher and the grocer, discussing what was fresh, what was on sale, ordering. Things would be delivered.
Grandmother was bent like the letter "Z" (from arthritis). She shuffled around the house, steadying herself in doorways, on furniture as she passed. She refused to use a cane, she was afraid of tripping over it. She was terrified of falling, breaking bones, being further crippled, even bedridden.
She had lost most of her muscle strength, so to get up from a chair she had to rock back and forth until she had momentum enough to swing up on her feet.
As long as I can remember, she went upstairs to nap every afternoon. (I guess raising 7 children in a poverty-stricken family was tiring.) So four times a day she traversed those steep narrow stairs carefully, stepping sideways, clinging to the bannister. More often before Betty put the toilet in the pantry.
In the kitchen Grandmother had a metal stool with no back, the kind often found at soda fountains in those years. She dragged it around the kitchen so she could sit and do her work. She couldn't stand unsupported.
She cooked, she washed dishes sitting at the table in the middle of the kitchen. She couldn't lift or move things other than papers or magazines because she had no strength or balance. Someone, Grandfather, Betty, had to lift things to and from the stove, to and from the dining room table.
Grandfather had a bicycle. He suspended lard cans by their handles from the handlebars. He would ride out to abandoned farms or open fields and pick wild berries, grapes. Grandmother would make jelly, most of which was given to Had and his family. Grandmother also made pickles of all kinds, canned things from Grandfather's small garden at the foot of the property.
Grandmother was determined to remain active. She had a treadle sewing machine in the unused room (first in "Betty's" middle room, later in "Had's" kitchen.) When Betty offered to buy her an electric machine, she refused saying the movement of working the treadle was good for her feet and legs.
My mother liked and greatly admired Grandmother. I can remember Mother saying she didn't see how Grandmother endured the agony of her early arthritis, kept active.
According to Mother, at the time Grandmother came down with arthritis there were 2 men in Milton who also came down with it. The doctor told all of them they would be bedridden within eight years. The men did indeed quickly become bedridden. Grandmother struggled on for over 25 years!
I was too young to see and understand what Grandmother was going through. I remember Mother often saying she didn't see how Grandmother could keep going while enduring such agony. There
were days that Grandmother hurt so badly she couldn't get up in the morning. There were nights that she couldn't bear to have even a sheet covering her knees. But she forced herself to get up and keep moving, she was not going to be bedridden!
At some point, I don't remember when, Mother became aware that Grandmother couldn't go outside in the winter, she didn't have a coat! Mother wondered why Aunt Anna hadn't been aware of it, bought one for her mother. The Bakers were well off financially, my parents were struggling after the failure of The Holland. But Mother made a coat for Grandmother.
Sometime in the 1930's (I think it was) Laurence heard of a doctor who could "cure" the crippling of arthritis. I know nothing more than that. Grandmother went out to Detroit for the treatment. Don't know how she traveled, Laurence must have come east and driven her out, she couldn't travel alone.
It turned out (as I remember hearing) the treatment consisted of forcibly straightening the crippled legs. It was so painful Grandmother couldn't stand it, finally gave up on it.
Betty taught in Milton for about 10 years, then she began to talk about moving on. Grandmother encouraged her. That's when Betty discussed turning the house back into a double house so Grandmother could have some income. Betty wanted to turn it into upstairs and downstairs apartments claiming they could get more money for it if it was set up that way. Grandmother was totally opposed to that and overrode Betty.
At the end of World War II when household appliances came back on the market, Betty set about returning the house to its original layout. One of the things required of whoever rented the other side of the house was that they would fire the coal furnace in exchange for a reduction in their rent. Grandfather had a heart condition and they felt he would be unable to look after the furnace adequately.
He had started the habit of prowling the house at night or early in the morning. Grandmother was afraid of what he might do. She particularly feared fire in that old wood house in her crippled state. In fact at some time, I don't know just when, he tried to light the gas stove, it didn't ignite properly, and the door was eventually blown off!
When the Hills had first moved into the house in 1911 they lived on Had's side of the house. When Betty returned the house to two houses, Grandmother would have preferred to take that side of the house again, it was the sunny side. But she also wanted to live next to Mary Clinger in the little house next door, so she chose Betty's side of the house. Mary and her family had lived next to the Hills for over 30 years and they were very close, she'd seen the Hill kids grow up and then the visiting grandkids. She was like a member of the family.
At some point Grandfather fell, broke bones. I believe Laurence was visiting at the time, arranged for Grandfather to be taken to the veteran's hospital in Wilkes Barre.
(NOTE: Laurence and family were staying with Had and Sally. At about 6 AM the phone rang, Laurence found out that his father had slipped on the rug at the bottom of the stairs and fallen, got in his car and raced up Front St. to the house. He drove Grandfather to Geisinger Hospital in Danville. The fall had resulted in a broken hip.)
Later he was moved to a veterans home in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Dad and I visited him there. He died there.
Grandfather's death relieved Grandmother of a lot of worries, and she felt she could continue to live in the house alone. However it wasn't long before she telephoned Betty in a panic, being completely
housebound as she was she found that the loneliness was too much for her. Betty found a companion, Miss Hess, to live there with her. She wasn't a nurse, she was just someone in the house with Grandmother. Not the best arrangement, she wasn't the most companionable person, but she enabled Grandmother to continue to live in her house.
Grandmother had always had a fear of going into a nursing home. In those days most of the nursing homes were converted from older houses, wood construction, several floors high. Grandmother feared seniors like Grandfather had been might inadvertently set fire to the place.
Eventually however she became too disabled to navigate the stairs. Betty installed a bed in what would be Betty's middle room. But then Grandmother got worse, needed real nursing care which Miss Hess could not provide. Betty couldn't find a nurse to look after Grandmother and things were reaching a critical point.
About that time Aunt Anna learned of a new nursing home outside of Bloomsburg. It was built as a nursing home, all on one level, access to the outside through wide doors and ramps. Grandmother had gotten so sick that she finally gave in and agreed to go there.
It was a wonderful solution. Aunt Anna was close enough to visit regularly. It was in the country on a farm, the farmer and his family lived in an apartment in the building, their kids were around (Grandmother loved that), the wife was a registered nurse so she met the state requirement of a nurse available at all times. Many of the practical nurses were country women, in fact one of them turned out to be the wife a high school classmate of Seth's.
The one downside was that Grandmother gave up walking. All the furniture was on casters for easy evacuation in case of emergency. Grandmother had nothing to hold on to when she shuffled around.
Grandmother seldom went out anywhere. It was difficult to get her in and out of a car and she hated to be seen in public in a wheelchair.
When George and I were planning to be married, I went to Grandmother and asked if she would come to our wedding if we were married in Bloomsburg. She said yes. That's why our wedding was held there, so Grandmother could attend.
Sadly I was in Arizona when she died and couldn't come east for the funeral.
When I was little I was so lonely and unhappy I longed for Grandmother to embrace me, hold me, make me feel loved. The Hills weren't a touchy-feely family and neither were the Chapins. I really felt unloved, and yet I understood that Grandmother loved me.
Talking to other cousins at Aunt Anna's funeral, I realized that they had loved Grandmother as much as I had, that she had been as important and influential a part of their early lives as she had been in mine. Looking back I realize she had the uncanny ability to let you know that she loved you even though she seldom touched you.
She had been the glue that held the Hill family together. Her children all adored her, remained loyal to
her. The same was true of the grandchildren who were old enough and close enough to have interacted with her.
She was a very special lady.
Addenda
It was said that Dave Jenkins had bought the Center Street house for his in-laws, the Hills. I have no idea if this is true. It makes some sort of sense since the Aunties (the unwed sisters) had raised his motherless children.
Albert Cadwallader bought the Front Street house for his daughter. They moved into it in 1911 when the twins were 6 months old. Betty was born there.
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1878 - 1962 (84 years)
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