Elements of Time: The Last WheelWright

By Craig: The sun was setting in old Halifax when the lonely, forgotten man brushed off his apron, hung it on an iron hook, and emerged from the wheelwright shop. There was a slight breeze, and although it was July, he felt the cool New England evening air hit his leathery bronzed neck. It had been an unseasonably cold day with an overcast sky, but 64 year old Isaac Barker was use to the fickle weather of the region. He had spent his whole existence here. It was his land. His forbears had come over on the Mayflower seeking a new beginning. They chose this cold, barren land and over the 250 years since their arrival little had changed...but change was coming, it was in the wind and the old bachelor could sense it. He sat down on a wooden bench outside of his shop and lit his pipe.



His thoughts began to ramble and he went back to the beginning. He had been born with little fanfare in Lynn a few miles to the north. He spent his early years here living with his parents and siblings, but when he was 12 his father; Ephraim, passed away. This left his mother; Lucy, with the care of the 8 children. His mother was pregnant with her last child at the time of his father's death, and a month later child # 9 arrived, a boy. She naturally named him Ephraim. She needed help and it was decided that she would return to her hometown of Halifax where she knew people. Since he was the oldest boy he took charge of the move. He packed the families personal belongings into a wagon and the 40 mile journey began.


It was 1830. The family passed through Chelsea and into Boston where they stopped to look at the magnificent Tremont Hotel which had just been built. It was like nothing that the family had ever seen. The four story granite faced structure, with it's large spacious lobby, and its indoor plumbing was a marvel of engineering by mid 19th century standards. The family moved on and found themselves in the marketplace outside of Faneuil Hall. Here they loaded up their stock of provisions. Isaac found a small confectionary shop and without conferring with his mother bolted into it. He came out with a large pastry which his sisters Ruth and Emma hungrily attacked with much energy and dedication, saving a morsel for him and his mother who chided her son for his impetuous act all the while savoring the taste of it! The wagon rolled out of Boston and made it to Braintree where they stopped for the night at an inn. After a good nights rest they made it to their new home in Halifax that afternoon. Isaac took a good look at his new surroundings. He would never journey so far again...



Over the next few years most of his siblings married and moved on with their lives. Not him, however, he was loyal to his mother. She had her hands full. Ephraim was known as the village "idiot," and her deaf nephew Isaac Waterman came to live with them. Only his older sister Mary, remained. Every day was the same. He would get up before dawn and tend to the fields and work them until mid morning. He would then spend the rest of the day...until dusk...mending wheels. Eventually he gained a sort of reputation for his handiwork and method. Orders came in and he spent more and more time fitting the wooden spokes into the wooden hub than he did in the fields. In 1852,when he was 34, his brother Ephraim took ill. They rushed him to Boston where the doctors diagnosed him with "brain fever." He died within hours. Their once large family now consisted of himself, his mother, and his sister Mary. Eventually Mary went to live in Chelsea, and Isaac was now the sole caregiver to his elderly mother. In 1877, at the age of 89, she too, gave up her mortal cares finally joining her long dead husband in the grave. The years went by...Isaac was now alone.



He sat on the bench puffing on his pipe. The sun finally poked its head from behind the clouds. It was low in the western sky, and he smiled. It was his last sunset, and he was all alone. He must have often wondered how life could have been different. What if he had married? Had children of his own? He would never know. He was, however, aware of the change. People had stopped buying wooden hubs...and wooden spokes. It was iron now. The old village wheelwright was becoming obsolete. He sat there contemplating the vastness of the world, and the cognitive dissonance of his mind was working. Change was good...Or was it? His was a small world. A mere molecule in the cosmic entirety of space and time. He had occupied but a fragment of the lineal line of time...a dot...a pebble on the beach. He knew nothing of mankind's illusion of their superiority and greatness as it related to the natural world, and the culture from which they sprung, whether it be a revolution...a Civil War...Temperance societies...Masonic rituals...religious conformity...He was ignorant of this ostensible arrogance created out of a false sense of importance. A trillion years hence it would be a moot point! If he had been a philosopher he might have agreed with Sartre..."Nothingness, lies coiled in the heart of being, like a worm." What does it all mean? There were the wooden hubs, and the wooden spokes, the lathe, and the chisels. He looked at his once strong weathered, arthritic hands. This was his life... He thought of his mother, his sisters and brothers...The pastry in Boston, oh so long ago! all gone now...And now he too would die in a house fire on this very night, but he did not yet know it. Not that it mattered, for He was enjoying the sunset, and the melodious sound of a distant mourning dove.  He was a lonely man... a forgotten man... My uncle...The last Wheelwright of Halifax.

William McKinley In My Grandfather's Attic

By Craig: I think that I first developed an interest in history before I was 5 years old. some of my earliest memories were of the staircase leading up to the large attic in my grandfather's house. It creaked with every step, even for a young, curious boy like myself who probably only weighed 30-40 pounds. The house was built in the late 19th century, and the attic was filled with stuff from my great-grandparents day. Old newspapers and magazines decaying with age were littered across the floor. Most of the magazines had dates pre-dating the Great War. Edwardian attire with old shoes, hats and other garments still waited for their owners to dust them off and don them. I could almost imagine a late 19th century dandy with outlandish looking whiskers hastily coming through the door to gather his top hat. He would look at me and wink.
"I've been looking for this bloody thing for 80 years!" He would say, before tilting his hat and disappearing in a ghostly mist through the wall.




Indeed, This part of the house was so isolated and remote from the living that it reeked of age and the long ago dead. I was too much of a coward to venture into this time tunnel without my twin brother at my side. Together we would investigate this room of historical mystery. We would play with the hand painted toy soldiers, and look through the crooked window that overlooked the Worcester skyline. But the window was high, and being only a child I could see nothing but the blue sky and clouds where I would sometimes believe that I saw biplanes from another time performing acrobatic feats that the Red Baron himself would have found astonishing. When I was a little older and able to read I recall going through the old newspapers and magazines and reading about events that had long since been forgotten, or had at least dimmed in the consciousness of the living. For some unexplainable reason when I think of my grandfather's attic today, an image of William McKinley pops into my head. One of the books in my grandfather's bookcase was a memorial tribute to the 25th President which was published shortly after he was assassinated in 1901. I do not know how my grandfather acquired the book. He was born in 1907. Perhaps it was his father's book, or perhaps it was in the house when he bought it. I do not know. Some of the newspapers in the attic were updates on the Spanish-American war. It was as if McKinley's ghost inhabited part of this house.


A few years ago I found a copy of the McKinley Tribute in a bookstore for a relatively cheap price. They must have made tons of them after his death so that it was still relatively easy to find. Like most biographies of that time period, the subject is portrayed as having no faults. In fact he is treated as an almost divine figure. He is referred to as "Our Martyred President."

William McKinley (1843-1901)

William McKinley was born in Trumbull County Ohio on January 29, 1843. He was the son of a manager of a blast furnace. His family was middle class and he therefore was afforded the opportunity of attending college. Shortly after enrolling, however, the Civil War broke out and McKinley enlisted in the 23rd Ohio Infantry Regiment. He saw action at Antietam and shortly thereafter his leadership skills were recognized and he was given an officers commission. He served in various capacities throughout the war and was recognized by Abraham Lincoln for "gallant and meritorious services at the battle of the Opiquan, Cedar Creek, and Fisher's Hill,."

After the war McKinley attended law school in Albany and worked as a lawyer before entering politics. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives and Governor of Ohio before being elected President in the 1896 election. McKinley was perhaps best known for his support of the gold Standard, and the Spanish-American War which was the first large scale conflict in the United States since the Civil War. Six months after McKinley's reelection he decided to attend the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo New York. Inside of a building known as "The Temple of Music" he shook hands with a number of people before an assassin named Leon Czolgosz fired two .32 caliber bullets into him. One of the bullets lodged in his abdomen and was never found. McKinley died of an infection eight days after the shooting. Czolgosz was an anarchist who believed that the American economic system was flawed, and the disparity in income between the rich and the poor needed to be addressed. He was executed in the electric chair less than two months after the assassination.

The years have rolled by and it has now been 114 years since McKinley's assassination. There are only a handful of people alive on the planet today that saw the same sunrise as President McKinley, and they were too young then to remember it now.

I find myself going back in time. It is the 1970s and I am about 8 years old. I am with my brother sitting on the wooden floor in my grandfather's musty attic. I look at an old chaise covered with white linen when suddenly a gust of wind blowing through the open window sweeps the linen from the chair. There is a noise coming from below...it is the stairs!...they are creaking. Someone is slowly coming up. Soon I see what is making the noise. It is a gentleman in a late 19th century black coat wearing a top hat. The gentleman is holding his abdomen and it is all too obvious who it is. He is black and white, for it is a black and white world from which he has come. He pays no heed to us as he sits in the chaise and crosses his legs. His baggy eyes look weary as if he has been traveling for some time and looking for a place to rest. He looks up toward the crooked window and suddenly his countenance changes. A hint of a smile perhaps? Or maybe it is curiosity?

"An aeroplane" He says softly, finally looking at us. "I knew it would come to fruition."

I did not quite understand him. I only knew that it was a changing of the guard...an old world...which was his...and the new world...which was mine. This attic belonged to him...not me. It was his world...not mine. My brother and I stood up as another gust of wind blew through the window and turned some fragile yellowed pages of the Boston Post to dust. The generations come and go, and one day, I too will outlive my time, and someone will be searching the remnants of it left behind for the living. We left President McKinley, who was smiling, and no longer in pain. He had finally found his peace...in his own time...in my grandfather's attic.

 

World War I: Walter Hipkins, A Letter From the Western Front

By Craig: It has been a century since the Great War which was supposed to have been the war that ended all wars. I have been reading a lot about it over the last few months and decided to do an article for this blog. On June 15, 1915 the Boston Post  published an article which I will post here in its entirety. The article relates details of a letter that my Uncle, Walter Hipkins, wrote to his brother, (my Great-Grandfather) Frederick T Hipkins who had been invalided out of the Royal Navy, and was at this time working as President of the United States Match Plate Company. Walter was serving in the South Staffordshire Regiment in France at the time.

He Writes From The Trenches

________

Boston Man Tells of "Gas" War, German "Snipers," Etc.

____________

Fred T. Hipkins who lives in the Forest Hills district has just received a letter from his brother, Walter, who is fighting with the allied troops in the trenches in France. The letter is one of the most interesting yet received in this country.

____________



Praises German Soldiers

It praises the Germans as soldiers and says the Germans have the best equipment of any army in the world. Notwithstanding this he says, the English will go on fighting until they win. He says that the efficiency of the German "snipers" is so great that it is a 10 to one shot if a soldier on the side of the allies should put his head over the parapet of his trench in the daytime, he would be hit.

The letter also gives great praise to the Canadian contingent on the firing line and bids the Germans beware of them. The letter says:

"We have been in this country three months, and two of these we have spent on the firing line, so you can guess I know a little about it now, and am also getting used to it. Bullets and shells, my boy, are not snowballs, but I am hoping they will give me a miss, as I can't say I am anxious to become a property owner in this country; but I am sorry to say we have already lost a good few of our fellows. But are we downhearted? No. We shall stick to it until we win. They can kick an Englishman if he is on the floor, but he will get up smiling. What say you, brother? I must say this. I believe in giving credit where credit is due. The German soldiers are brave men. their equipment is the best in the world. Their snipers command your respect, for if you put your head above the parapet of your trench in the daytime, it is 10 to one you are among the empties. But when we shine and beat them, it is because we never know when we are beaten. And if all our officers were shot down, and the N.C.O said keep on firing, we should do so. They (meaning the Germans) would not. And there is the difference between the two greatest nations in the world.

"I have met some of the Canadians and they are a smart looking lot of men. They will do some mischief. Thank God for our colonies and for what makes them come from all over the world when the old flag is in danger. This question takes some answering. Is there any other country in the world, or nation, that could do what we are doing? I say no. And what is the cause of it all? I for myself put it in two words-"freedom" and "justice."

Denounces "Gas" War

"To die by a bullet or shell is war, but by gas it is murder. It is impossible for me to describe the horrors of it all. To see all these villages and towns in ruins. Thousands upon thousands of lives lost and what for? Just for the vanity of one man who talks about God more than he believes in him. I do not know how long it will be before you get this letter. Lots of things might happen in the meantime. Even while writing this letter, our artillery are firing and kicking up a nice row. Someone looks like getting hurt. We go into the trenches tonight just to send a few more rounds at them.

That reminds me of a dirty incident they did in the trenches when the Lusitania was sunk. They stuck up a piece of board over the trench with these words on it "What about the Lusitania?" Our reply was the Union Jack from the top of our trench, but thank God they did not hit it."



2nd Lt. Walter Hipkins

Worcestershire Regiment

Walter Hipkins was born in Coseley Staffordshire in 1888. He enlisted in the South Staffordshire Regiment in March 1915 and served with this regiment until he was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant on  27 June 1917 at which time he was transferred to the Worcestershire Regiment. He was posted to the 5th Special Reserve Battalion at Fort Tregantle, Cornwall. Apparently he was taking a break from the front line action that he had seen with the South Staffordshire Regiment, but it was to be short lived. He was soon back in France posted to the 1st Battalion. The 1st Worcestershire was commanded by Major F. C. Roberts. During the afternoon of March 22, 1918 the 1st Worcestershire boarded a troop train for the front lines and by that night had reached Amiens on the Somme. After a delay the journey resumed and by 0230 on the morning of March 23 the Battalion reached Nesle. The troops detrained and the 1st Worcestershire marched to Pargny where they took up defensive positions along the slopes of the river bank. The Germans had pushed the 5th army back and they were now in retreat. The 1st Worcestershire began to see the retreating troops come through their lines at around 1400. The pursuing Germans were right behind them, but the 1st Worcestershire stopped their advance. Sometime that evening Major Roberts found out that the Germans had taken the village of Pargny and he decided that a counter-attack was necessary to retake the village. That evening he led two companies of the Battalion into the village and pushed the Germans back across the river. 2nd Lt. Hipkins was wounded during this fighting which took place along a few country lanes, and around a churchyard. Sometime the following day the English realized that they were about to be encircled and therefore retreated to a stronger position along a railway embankment.

Officers and NCO's 1st Worcestershire, March 1918



2nd Lt. Walter Hipkins survived the horrors of the Great War and was awarded the 1915 Star Medal along with the British and Victory Medals for his service. Ironically, and sadly he would meet his death during another war. On February 28, 1941 he was killed by shrapnel falling down his chimney during a German air raid.