In The Shadow Of Blue Mountain: Lives And Letters Of A Remarkable Family - Volume I, 1868-1946

By Ronald J Brickman

IN THE SHADOW OF BLUE MOUNTAIN: LIVES AND LETTERS OF A REMARKABLE FAMILY - Volume I, 1868-1946 chronicles the personal histories of three members of the Hollingshead family: the father, Charles Anton, the daughter, Elma Kathleen (known throughout her adult life by her nickname Bim), and the youngest son, Roger Howerth. The author's life (indicated throughout as Ronnie) is inevitably included, as it became intimately intertwined with theirs. All people present in this book series share a special bond: They spent a significant part of their lives on an orchard property in the idyllic mountain town of West Point, California.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writer Cosmos
• Release date: Jan 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224649075

Book preview

I. THE CHILDHOOD YEARS OF CHARLES ANTON

In early 1950, daughter Bim, fully aware of the potential to make a memorable book out of the eventful life of her father, began to interview the old man, blind and feeble but intellectually quite lively, in the kitchen of their West Point home. Some effort was made to trace the earliest origins of the Hollingshead family, an effort somewhat hampered by Charles’s slight interest in family history. In 1954, he wrote to a great-granddaughter, Frankly, I know next to nothing of our forebears. While in London [in 1918, en route to Italy to start his work with the YMCA], I went to the Bodleian Library and read the origin of our clan, but I have forgotten most of what I then read...The clan originated on a small river named the Hollys. Our particular Hollingsheads or Hollinsheads ... lived at the source, hence the head in the name. Genealogical research from the American Research Bureau requested by wife Jen in 1939 traces the family back to 1358, in the reign of King Edward III. The analysis states that Prior to 1600, we find mention made of the name several times in East Cheshire, though later as the family spread, it occurs elsewhere. The research indicates that the most noted member of the family was one Raphael Holinshed, the English chronicler who died in 1580 and whose published works, still in usage to this day, were used by English dramatists, including Shakespeare, for much of the historical material used in their plays.

Charles continues:

In Cromwell’s day, because of religious differences, most of the clan was driven into exile, took refuge in Ireland, and immigrated to what is now the USA. At first, they settled in the Atlantic states, but the descendants moved into the Ohio Valley in the State of Virginia. At the beginning of the Civil War, counties loyal to the Union were cut off from the mother state and named West Virginia.

This set the stage for Charles’s birth on January 2, 1868, in Wheeling, West Virginia, to Daniel Hollingshead and Caroline Clark.

EKH continues Charles’s recollections of his earliest years:

Significant are the first two pictures called up in the mind of [CAH] as he began dictating childhood reminiscences in 1950. The order in which they are recounted is itself re-vealing. His second memory is described first. Its underlying thesis is the oneness of all things. The earliest memory, which came second in order of dictation, is of anxiety, grief, the need for comfort, and the entry of the dominant mother figure of his life.

In Charles’s own words describing his second memory:

Way back in my third year, my Aunt Polly and I went afoot one spring day over to visit Aunt Drusilla Varley. Of all that first great adventure and visit, there is but one thing that stands out clearly. I was looking out the window onto the country road that went by. On this was a team of horses hitched to the front wheels and running gear of a wagon. There was a sack of barley, or some other sort of grain seated by the driver. It seemed odd to me at the time how this whole assemblage of horses, harness, driver, and half-wagon should emerge into one single whole thing. All were in-separable components of a whole. I do not remember going home, but to home, we must have gone because the picture of that first visit has been part of my existence from that day to this.

This was not, however, my first recollection. My first memory is of some inexplicable experience of calamity. I made up my mind from what I heard afterward that it was when my father’s house went up in smoke and ashes, and a cousin of mine carried me to safety. There must have been considerable excitement and some alarm about my safety, for out of nowhere, a woman came and took me in her arms. It must have been Mother, my first remembrance of Mother.

A new home must have been built, and I remember seeing my father a little later. His dark chestnut curly hair was damp. He was lying in a white-sheeted bed. He had gone out of life in his early thirties, and I had to go live with my grandfather Hollingshead.

Life with Grandfather

Charles went to live with his grandfather William at the age of three and appears to have been happy there. There is speculation that Charles’s mother, having lost her husband, went to work as a housekeeper and could not take her child with her. Charles describes his grandfather thus:

As I think of him now, Grandfather was a curious old mystery with rather long hair and a heavy beard. He dwelled alone in his pioneer house but ate meals with his married daughter. Grandfather’s cabin home was an odd place. My grandfather must have been well educated, for I remember there were many, many books, some of them in German. He must have been a successful farmer as well. I remember tramping the fields with old Grandfather Billy. He used to take up a flower and talk to me in a strange jargon   about birds. Then we would come to our flock of sheep, and Grandfather Billy would stop to talk with the sheep, and they would talk back to him. However, I never could make out just what they were saying. I do know they were all glad that it was warm spring, and the grass was good, and soon, it would be time to make them more comfortable by shearing off their winter clothing." [As one shall see, this acquired predilection for conversing with plants and animals is a trait that Charles manifests in letters and conversations through-out his life.]

Now, we would go up on a little ridge in the meadow, and I would look off toward the setting sun. Between me and the horizon would come into sight a great silver ribbon stretching from a direction indicated by my right hand and passing out of sight on my left. This was the Ohio River, Grandfather explained. I never did get water into that early river. It was always a silver ribbon. Then we would go down the hill into the lowlands along the little creeks. Here was a paradise lovelier than Eden. There were beautiful, up-standing trees, each tree with a hollow spigot driven into it and wooden buckets under the spigots. I can still taste the water from those trees to this day. It was nectar.

A river surrounded by trees Description automatically generated with medium confidence

This is the Ohio River, Grandfather explained

Then there was a little old building made, I believe, of logs and a furnace with kettles on it. Here, I first learned the meaning of the word sugar and that unforgettable treacle called maple syrup. I must have been very fond of the maple grove. It was probably not considered safe for me to roam down there alone, for I remember that my cousin Dudie solemnly told me that the Divil [sic], Old Nick, or the Black Man had his residence down just below the sugar camp and was lying in wait for me to seize and carry me off. I remember with horror venturing down one afternoon when the sun was shining warmly. Then it became cool, and sure enough, I heard the Divil. Later, it struck me that the Divil’s voice was a lot of healthy frogs. Anyway, I didn’t want to be caught, so I started on the tear for home. In trying to get through a fence, I became wedged and, in my despair, sick at the stomach. Aunt Ann came and rescued me. My memory is not just certain on this point, but I think this was my first experience of bottom-warming. At any rate, I got a fine spanking.

Charles elaborates on his life with Grandfather, evoking memories that are astonishingly vivid for an 82-year-old man conjuring up what he experienced younger than the age of five:

What mysteries of making a living went on in that old farm-house! There were spinning jennies, warping bars, and gadgets of all sorts for weaving garments and carpets. I remember seeing them sow wheat, plant corn, and even hear a threshing machine’s roar. How I loved to smell the red paint on the new farm wagon!

Charles’s recollections of this period include these episodes:

I do clearly recall that my own mother came to see me once when I lived with my Grandfather. I wanted her to take me with her, but she said no, I would have to be Grandfather’s boy for a while. ‘Oh, Mother, I want to be your boy. I want to be your boy so bad!’ Well, yes, I liked Grandfather. Yes, he was good to me. ‘But I want you!’ But Mother vanished, and my heart was sad.

Then I took to stealing off to the home where I had lived when Father was alive, a habit which got me into plenty of trouble. I remember that Uncle Jim Gilchrist threatened to hang me if I didn’t quit running off. I think he went so far once as to show me the rope he would use. Little he knew, or the world knows, of the effect such threats could have, for I have often dreamed that I was about to be hanged, and it was not at all funny to me in dreams.

I fondly recall my first big binge. We had plenty of hard cider on that farm. In driving into the barn somehow or other, a horse broke through a plank and left a hole there—a wonderful hole. I could crawl under the barn, up through this hole, get a bung out of a cider barrel and, with a straw, reach down to drink in this nectar. But, as usual, with any great pleasures, this one ended sadly. One day, Aunt Matilda Gilchrist came to the barn and found me completely soused, lying across the barrel in happy dreams. This brought me my second-remembered butt-warming. I suppose they must have corked the hole, for I never got to repeat the delightful experience of hard cider afterward.

I have heard preachers say that the human is the only animal addicted to alcohol. I am sure these good folk never saw hogs get loaded on apple pumice or chickens having a binge on fermented corn. I fear the so-called lower orders are not much more moral than poor homo sapiens.

Childhood Years with Mother and Daddy John

Eventually, when Charles was five, his mother did come to take him back home:

One day, it seemed to me before winter set in, there was great mourning and crying on the farm. In brief, I found out that my good grandfather had passed on. I was left companion-less in that lonely place. Then came the great day. Mother came to the farm with a most beautiful dapple grey (or was it chestnut?) horse, with bridle and saddle and a gray-colored saddle blanket. With her was a man. She had come to fetch me to a new cabin home in the woods. And I am to live with you, Mother? Yes, Mother replied, And this is your Daddy John.

Such was my introduction to an untutored, Lowland Scots-man who was always Daddy John to me, the kindest man I ever knew, a man who never switched, who always treated me as an equal, who was my haven of refuge when Scotch Presbyterian Mother concluded that a good switching would greatly benefit my moral and religious upbringing. I can hear that Scotch drawl yet: Ah, Caroline, I wouldn’t. He’s a good lad. He won’t do it again. To Daddy John Steward, doubtless, this biographer owes his own unmerited escape from many a punishment.

Daughter Bim, upon transcribing these recollections in 1950, added this editorial comment:

Certainly, the rod was never an emblem of C. A. in his years of teaching, although just corporal punishment was not frowned upon in his day. It may be interpolated that he had a gift for compelling obedience. When one had truly sinned, a switch would have been easier to bear than the soul-stripping gaze of those hazel eyes in which, at such time, the brownish flecks seemed so many piercing needles. Such punishments as were meted out to pupils were designed to educate rather than chastise. He was stern when necessary but kind.

Charles continues:

Still sharply present, even from this late time of life, is the feeling of change in environment from the rolling ridge of Grandfather’s place, fifty miles eastward to the sharp-cut West Virginia hills of my new home.

It must have affected me as much as the Pilgrim Fathers were affected by the contrast between their English homeland and the raw New England hills. I missed the grasslands, the orchard trees, the large house, and various outbuildings. The new home was only a single room, rather large, one-story-and-loft building, with a full front lean-to porch, half of which was boarded in to serve as a kitchen. The whole was much more poorly furnished than Grandfather’s house.

We always ate in the kitchen except when we had company. Then we ate in the main cabin or out on the open porch. The big cabin room was heated by a large open chimney, furnished with a lug pole, hooks, and other gadgets for fireplace cooking. Instead of the well that had stood outside the kitchen door with its high curb and oaken well buckets, a live spring broke right out of a hillside. Just below the spring was a small log structure through which water flowed in two streams, both bounded by rock sides. This spring house was a capital place to keep milk and butter.

Outdoors there was not a single fruit tree, and I missed the Bartlett pears and the peaches, the apples and plums that grew seemingly without end at Grandfather’s home. But as do other animals, a human adjusts to the environment. I soon learned there were wild grapes and haws, May apples and serviceberries. I remember in the late summer or early fall, the neighbors would band together to pick wild blackberries for fruits and jellies to be stored away for winter, making a picnic out of these outings.

It may be miss-memory, but I find no cultivated berry or even grape can equal in flavor those which grew wild in the West Virginia coves. The blackberries were way beyond the modern, cultivate boysenberry or youngberry in size, too. The strawberries were much smaller than our cultivated ones but much more flavorful, and indeed the wild grapes after the first two or three full frosts were, to use the Hollywood expression, out of this world. And the grape butter was tasteful beyond words to express.

There were black walnuts, white walnuts, and butternuts. There were white beechnuts and white shell hickory nuts. Though you may not believe so, delicious white oak acorns lay under the leaves through the winter and were wonder-fully good in the early spring.

I soon made friends with the outdoors. I loved the gloom of the woods deep in the hollows. I also loved the chipmunks and the birds. I worshiped the dogwood flowers. Here it was that I learned that trees could understand and talk. There was a small colony of mighty beeches within a quarter mile of the cabin down in a shady dell. It was my custom to get out under these beeches in all kinds of weather. I was never afraid of thunder when under their protecting branches. I knew no Indian was ever struck by lightning while sheltered there, and the leaves always turned away the heavy rain. The Indians used to sing a queer song. I never could make out just what the song was about, but it was a song of the long, long ago, something of having sheltered the human race before men learned to build shelters of wood.

The chipmunks were pretty fond of this shelter and would rustle through the leaves looking for the pyramidal beechnuts. They never were overly friendly with me but were always very curious. A colony of hornets had built a fine dwelling of hornet paper in one of these trees. As long as I behaved myself, they would not bother me. This bit of wisdom I learned from Daddy John, who was wise to the ways of Nature.

The partridges would nest in the nearby woods, while the pheasants would establish an occasional nest. One of our hens seemed inclined to the wilderness. She built a nest near the end of a fallen white oak snag. On the opposite side of the snag, a mother pheasant had built her nest. I did not tell Mother that I had found the hen’s nest, for I sort of felt that this hen was a kindred spirit and entitled to her own way of life. Odd as it may sound, it is true that one day I discovered that either through neighborly courtesy or fowl stupidity, there had been an exchange of eggs. The domestic hen had put an egg in the pheasant’s nest, and the pheasant had reciprocated. I have many a time wondered why, but there is no solving the mysterious ways of men and women and all their kindred among the so-called lower orders.

I remember that a bird of the thrush type with a peculiar cry and always went by the name of the cranking bird, had built its nest in a small, bending ironwood sapling. The mother bird sat proudly on her eggs. One day I picked up a good-sized stone and thought, Well, for once, I’ll scare you away. Woe to me! My missile hit its target, and the mother bird was dead. I lay down and cried my heart out, then went home to Mother and told her of the pheasant’s nest, the hen’s nest, the bird’s nest, and my wicked, wicked deed and wondered if God would ever forgive me. I do not remember the details of my mother’s counsel, but I do know she said she would pray for me.

Dear Mother had great faith in prayer. She had inherited her Presbyterian faith from strong-willed Scottish ancestors. She saw to it that I was well versed in Bible lore and that I strictly observe the Sabbath. There was church and Sunday school every Sunday morning, some two or three miles down on one of the runs. (Runs are creeks, we call them. But in my early days, a run was smaller than a creek, and a creek was smaller than a river. Well, you get my point.) We had dinner soon after returning from morning services. Then began a long, tedious afternoon. I listened to readings from the Bible and Bible stories and was not allowed to play. No matter how the beeches beckoned and whispered, the bobwhites called, or the woodpeckers chattered, I could not go out to visit them in their haunts.

I remember one Sunday in early spring while I saw some rabbits pass by in the yard. What could I do but follow, hoping to catch one? I did not catch one and finally discovered that I was in deep sin. I had broken the Lord’s Day. I returned to our home, feet rather cold from the light snow. I went up to the warm fireplace to ease their numbness. Woe is me! My punishment was to sit in the chair for an hour, away back from the fire. When I asked for Mother’s permission to return to the fire, she made a biblical quotation. The gist of which was that the way of the transgressor is hard. Strictly to myself, I said that the course of the transgressor was not hard; it was hell!

In our yard, just a short distance uphill from the spring, were two sour gum trees that bore a crop of beautiful but inedible red berries. So far as I know now, these berries serve but one purpose. In the spring, they would hang on until fermented when the wood jays would come in and go on a binge. More than once, I have seen a blue jay lying on his back, waving two feet in the air, and singing a raucous jay song of How Happy I Am. I am sure Mother disapproved of this wicked phase of jay life, even though their antics produced a chuckle. It may be that this is why I was taught a poem, Father, oh father, come home with me now, the clock in the steeple strikes eight,—the story of a drunken father and the pleading of his little daughter. [Charles interrupted his reminiscing to observe that, Just a few days ago, tuning in to my radio, two modern asses were reciting alternate portions of this song, bursting with superior laughs. These are the modern jays.]

That cabin home was a model of cleanliness and order. The floors were always clean and scrubbed. Every day, the cabin had to undergo a daily airing except in the dead of winter when piercing cold forbade such sanitation. Every article of clothing had its place and was kept in place through effort. Mother seemed to know even where the last shoestring belonged. I remember losing my mittens once. I couldn’t find them. A day or two later, the mittens were on my chair at the table. The place for mittens is on a chair near the bed, not on a pillow. This reminds me that the place for my stockings was always one in each shoe, but only the tops of the stockings in the shoe, the foot part to be left exposed to the air. My feet had to be washed and pass inspection every evening before going to bed. I remember only once going to bed with unwashed feet. I woke up from pleasant dreams with a burning bottom. A Scotch voice was saying, Ah, ye little dev’il, I’ll teach you to go to bed with soiled feet!

I can honestly boast that I always loved Saturday nights when the big kettle was filled with water and hung in the chimney over the fire. A goodly sized wooden wash tub was brought in, and I was soused, soaked, and thoroughly cleaned. When I hear someone say that the Scotch Irish pioneers were not clean, I remember that old washtub, and I do know that it was an institution in every other house in that neighborhood. The pioneers were clean physically. Their most besetting dirt was that of speech! A poor singer was always characterized by the expression: He can’t sing for sour owl dung! A person too weak to take his own part in the battle of life was a poor puke or just a plain turd.

Our fare at the new home was not so varied as I had been accustomed to at Grandfather’s. Still, it was well cooked, well served, and supplemented with berries, wild currents, gooseberries, wild plums, pawpaws and possibly other fruits that I have forgotten, as well as walnuts and hickory nuts, acorns, hazelnuts, chestnuts, and beechnuts. The woods housed turkeys, quail and pheasant, rabbits, squirrels, coons, and possums. All of this food could be got without back-breaking effort. I can still recall my joy of those hazy, lazy autumn days when just to be alive was a joy. I would pretend that our neighborhood folk was Indians and that there was no toil or need of it.

EKH notes:

Curiously Charles Anton does not speak at any length of the chores he must have had to do. There is the above allusion, and in a letter of some years before, he says: Work! I vividly recall that long., long ago, when, as an urchin, I raised my hand heavenward, and swore that I would not work when I grew up. And so help me—I’ll keep that vow if I live long enough to grow up! He never did, as we shall see.

Charles continues:

Mother was an expert on hearth cooking. She prided herself on hoe cake, roast potatoes, mush, nut pones, and other pioneer dishes. I remember we quite often had potato soup, milk, and noodles. I recall Mother saying, When I was a child, I did not know there was such a thing in the world as a cook stove. We always cooked in the coals of the open hearth. It must be only a trick of memory, but the best things I have ever eaten all my life came out of the coals and ashes in that cabin home.

Early School Years

As recounted to his daughter Bim around the kitchen table in the 1950s, Charles Anton’s final subject of childhood memories dealt with his schooling. Again, his memories of sights, sounds, and interactions occurring some seventy years earlier were astonishingly detailed. In view of his accomplishments in later life as an educator and the rare opportunity provided to get a child’s bird’s-eye view of rural school life in the 1870s, these recollections deserve reproduction in full.

Charles’s first years of education took place at the Wolf Run School, an isolated one-room school located in Pleasants County, West Virginia, some seven miles from the town of St. Marys on the Ohio River. The school discontinued its services in 1943 after the West Virginia reforms when the independent school districts were consolidated into county-wide administrations. The historic building no longer stands, but we have a photograph of it from about 1935. Some early class photos can also be found.

See the source image

Wolf Run School, West Virginia, circa 1935, with unidentified teachers

Charles begins the recollections of his school years like this:

At last, another great change of environment was at hand. I was to go to school. I thought of it as a place where boys and girls went to have a good time, for I had heard much about the fun they had there. Early one morning, under the escort of two neighbor boys, I walked into my first school. I must have been rather late, for I remember no games or laughter. I was assigned a seat, and the teacher took my name, age, and other appropriate information. 

The first reader was put into my hands. I had brought to school with me a big old McGuffey’s Speller. Spelling was nothing new to me. How I learned the art is beyond my memory to account for, but the fact was, I could spell. This first-grade reader, though, was an entirely different matter. It made no sense. Sometime that morning, I was given my first lesson in reading. The total knowledge gained was zero, which added to the woe of having to sit still instead of going into the cool woods surrounding the Wolf Run District School.

Finally, I hit upon a way to escape the torture chamber. I managed to get word to one of the Stewart boys who had taken me to school that I was awfully sick and would have to go home. The teacher sent me home much, I am sure, to my escort’s joy. When we reached home, and I reported sick, Mother Caroline said, I think you need some switch oil. Father John, working nearby, sensed my peril and came to the rescue. I believe preparations were under way to administer the dose of switch oil when he remarked, No, he really is ill. Let’s put his pallet down on the hearth.

This was the usual place when I was out of sorts, lying on a pallet on the hearth. Soon, the warmth would send me off into a snooze from which I’d waken as good as new. Thanks to the wisdom of a Scottish stepfather, I was psychologically treated. Sleep finally didcome, and I had to be called for supper. The next morning, I got up and went out to play, hoping that school would be forgotten. To my surprise, a masculine voice called, Come in now and go to bed. You’re not at all able to be out. But I’m well. I’m well! I’m going to school. It was Hobson’s choice with me (actually only a single option).

How the next day passed, I do not recall, but I soon began to like school very much. I was a whiz at spelling, but I just could not learn to read. My teacher Jamie Moore said: You don’t seem to be a dull boy, but certainly you are very stupid in some respects. At home, Caroline said: Oh, never mind, Barnie mine. You’ll learn in good time. As for myself, I was not downcast or sad, but I was intensely curious how in Sam Hill did one read. What was there about it that I couldn’t understand? Then one day, Master Jamie put his pencil down on a word and asked me to spell that word. Of course, it spelled itself. That was no task at all. I don’t see, said Jamie Moore, How you can spell but can’t read.

Oh, do you say what it spells? Is that reading? Certainly, Jamie replied. After that, I grabbed up the reader and read the first lesson, started the second, and would have gone all the way through had the teacher not grasped the reader from my hands amidst a roar of laughter that shook the whole building.

I could hardly wait till evening to get home and show Mother how I could read. I read and read to her until Daddy John came in, amazed to hear me. I could hardly eat supper for wanting to read on. In that one short school term, only three months, I had read through the first three and was well into the Fourth Reader. I was smart in reading, if far from clever in knowledge.

When I was in the second grade, I came home one evening to find Aunt Louisa McHenry and my mother expressing regrets that they had never learned grammar. I know grammar, I said. Indeed, said my mother, as she prepared to give me what she termed a lesson in telling the truth, which, I realized, would be taught by the switch. But, Mother, I do! I do! Listen! A noun is a name. Nouns are proper and common. A pronoun is a word used for a noun. The personal pronouns are... and so on and on as I glibly defined, parsed, conjugated, and recited the rules while dear Aunt Louisa listened in amazement and openmouthed admiration. This was, of course, all parrot work, for in that big one-room school, I was too timid to get into mischief and entertained myself by listening to the recitations of the older grades.

I was particularly entranced by the language of grammar. Years later, when I came to study grammar, I filled these husks of words with meanings and became quite proficient. To this day,