A much needed pause--Susanna's genealogy....

Althena Garrison-Susanna's paternal grandmother.

First I must ask: What does it all mean? Where did it all begin? Are my kids and I the last ones to be spit out of this genealogical dysphoria? Is there any way that I.... we can take a stand somehow, someway....to stop this generational pain and madness? Is that all there is for the Larson/Foster/Evans tribe?

In the early months of that fateful year of 1996 I began to innocently enough research our family history. Little did I know that as my research carried on, not only would I become fascinated by the generational dynamics of my people and this seeming historical toxic mix of alcoholism, mental illness and prodigious talent and self-sabotage. but bizarre wild coincidence would start to take place...it seemed like I was opening up a vortex or two that was 'stirring up the spirits.' There was that 'one' defining event, where I would suddenly become incredibly passionate and determined. I will try to tell here of that defining moment, the one 'sign' from whence I would never look back....on September 26, 1996. As I have said in my earlier posts....I struggle with my writing ability. This particular component of this vast conundrum, that the Universe has saddled me with, is very difficult for me to construct in the fantastic, emotional and mind-blowing way that it all happened. Ahhhh, life is difficult.

My mother's grandmother was Althena Garrison, family hearsay said that she was a direct descendant of the famous abolitionist 'William Lloyd Garrison'....I set off trying to find this out...or 'prove it' was actually more the mindset.


A little background-

My mother was born Suzanne Delee Flanders Larson on December 6, 1924 in Chicago, Illinois to Lester Lamont Larson and Adelaide Viola Flanders. My grandfather Lester, was a tall, faired haired, soft-spoken man. His father Martin, was a Swedish butcher. Lester's mother was Althena Garrison, my great grandmother, she's the one we follow back, her mother was Mary Peart and her father was JH Garrison also a butcher. JH's father was Aaron Garrison a homeopathic physician from New York who migrated to Mendota, Illinois about 1850.

In my first few genealogical inquiries I corresponded several times with Mendota, Illinois, a small one-stop-light farming community. I knew that my grandfather was from there. I contacted the court clerk's office looking for anything on the Larson/Garrison clan.

They came up with one document that gave me a good start; Althena and Martin's wedding license. Married November 28, 1878, Martin was 28 and Althena 17. Althena's parents J.H. Garrison and Mary Peart Garrison were present, JH signed the document giving his permission. November,28 1878, four years after Custer's Last Stand.

After further census research, I found that Althena had two brothers and a sister; Fred, George and Netiem and that Althena's mother (Susanna's great grand-mother) Mary Peart Garrison died in 1878 in a month or less after her daughter's marriage. And J.H. Garrison, according to the 1880 census, was living with the WinterScheiel family as a boarder. What happened to Althena's two brothers Fred and George and sister Netiem? Census didn't give a clue. Was this where the hint of tragedy and 'insanity' took it's root?

In 2003 I would meet a second cousin who had been looking for me for years. She lived in Oregon; her grandmother and my grandfather....Susanna's father Les...were brother and sister. Ironically my cousin 'Marcia' had been doing research on the same woman Althena, her grandmother's and my grandfather's mother...she in turn had connected with a third cousin who had taken us back to 1400 England and consequently Stephen Hopkins who hopped off the Mayflower in 1620.

July 2009- Recently have been contacted by Marcia.....who had found our blood line reached Georgia O' Keefe, Betty Davis and George Herbert Walker Bush (oh brother!).

Althena Garrison was Lester’s mother. Hers was a name that as a child I would hear. As my mother would say “Oh yes, Althena was related to William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist. As a budding teenager and young adult I was sure that this was why I related so well to the anti-racism ethic. Growing up in the Sixties and fervently joining the marches and displays of the time, I was convinced that William Lloyd hovered by my side. Over the years I would read here and there on William Lloyd and occasionally catch his likeness. My God this man looks just like my grandfather; he certainly has his forehead and that receding line of hair!

But here I need to confess; The usual procedure in looking up ones genealogy is starting with yourself and working back but in my naive way of finding 'proof' of our connection in these early years, I started with William Lloyd Garrison himself...at least it makes for a 'funny' story!

In my beginner genealogy searches around this man there have been some thought provoking finds...he was a fascinating, way ahead of his time; born Dec.10, 1805 he was the fourth child of Abijah and Francis Maria (Lloyd) Garrison, who had immigrated to the United States from Nova Scotia early in the nineteenth century. His father a sea captain was “intemperate” in other words; a drunk or more clearly defined, an alcoholic. Deserting the family when William Lloyd was three. Uh oh, alcoholism ran rampant through my family and my father left me in quite the bind when I was young... hhhmmmmm “there’s a connection right there!” the hopeful connectors in my brain would whisper. Anyway, enough of this connection non-sense. How many boys and girls have gone on to become alcoholic with not a dad in sight? In my years in the recovery milieu it seems every other man “in the rooms” has a similar non-dad story. I am not implying that non-dads lead to alcoholism. But for some, this pain is a good reason to anesthetize.

William Lloyd was a loyal anti-slavery advocate and was one of the earliest to demand “the immediate and complete emancipation” of slaves. In 1826 at the age of twenty he became the editor of the Free Press out of Newburyport, Mass. In the spring of 1828 he joined Nathaniel H. White in editing and writing the National Philanthropist a publication out of Boston devoted to “the suppression of intemperance and it’s kindred vices”. From his own experience, having a non-dad from an early age (where I certainly could identify), he knew the invidiousness of this ‘intemperance’, now a disease called alcoholism. This paper was one of many including his most famous The Liberator, he and his partner Isacc Knapp with nary a pot to piss in, printed this paper on borrowed press and type with the first issue dated January 1, 1831 “in a small chamber, friendless and unseen”, bored witness to his reformationist/abolitionist make up. He and his partner Isaac Knapp would toil 12 hour days; writing, printing, and mailing this paper to not much more than three thousand subscribers. The main theme was unrelenting ‘the immediate, unconditional abolition of slavery’. It’s leading article was a manifesto of sorts always ending with “I am in earnest- I will not equivocate- I will not excuse- I will not retreat a single inch- and

I will be heard.” “The Southern planter’s career” he said, “is one of unbridled lust, of filthy amalgamation, of swaggering braggadocio, of haughty domination, of cowardly ruffianism, of boundless dissipation, of matchless insolence, of infinite self-conceit, of unequaled oppression, of more than savage cruelty”. He was one of the earliest to demand the immediate and complete emancipation of slaves. William Lloyd was described as a ‘philosophical non-resistant”, a pacifist. He trusted only in peaceful means to get his point across.

He was jailed several times, beaten and almost hanged. In 1835 an *English abolitionist George Thompson came to the United States on a lecture tour and was met in many places with a murmured loathing .On Oct. 21 of that year the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society held a meeting, at which a horde of several thousand people gathered expecting to tar and feather Thompson. Much to their chagrin Thompson cut out, so, the crowd believing that any abolitionist would suffice zeroed in on William Lloyd, put a rope around his neck and began dragging him through the streets. The mayor of Boston, The Honorable Theodore Lyman intervened and saved Garrison’s life. And in one of many outcries for women’s rights; at the 1840 World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London, he refused to participate when he found that women were excluded. * In 1838 England abolished slavery.

He was fascinated with phrenology, clairvoyance and spiritualism (“new” age?).

Garrison strongly influenced Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 with Congress amending it to the U.S. Constitution on January 1, 1863.

And Garrison kept on crusin’ on the crusade, he fought unceasingly for prohibition, women’s suffrage, justice to the “red man”, and the elimination of prostitution.

From the Dictionary Of American Biographies- “Garrison was an extremist, incurably optimistic, often illogical, and extraordinarily persistent. Seldom has individualism been more vehemently asserted than in his protests against social and moral orthodoxy...” “..He was a perplexing blend of contradictory qualities, of shrewdness and gullibility, of nobility and prejudice, who will be remembered chiefly for his courage in upholding a righteous cause when it was unpopular.”

“My country is the world- My countrymen are mankind”,

William Lloyd Garrison

Now here’s one guy I became mesmerized with. I felt a connection, weather it be thru the catacombs of genealogy or not.

Also, a relation to William Tecumseh “War is Hell” Sherman was whispered, the Civil War general who burned Atlanta on his march to the sea (my elementary school on the upper west side of Manhattan PS: 87 was named after the General; The William T. Sherman School (in fifth grade I was convinced that I owned this building) and Elbridge Gary, the antitheses of John Hancock, the man with the smallest signature on the Declaration of Independence.

In my genealogical reads and exchanges, I’m finding that many a family have these shadowy links or “as told by....” ancestral heresays. It seems some are whispered to simply lift a families’ already low generational self-esteem. As I suspect, this could be the case with my family. It seemed that a healthy self-esteem was a rare generational bird in my flock. Nonetheless my mother has been a veritable living warehouse of familial data. At least a strong starting point to help me sift thru the “as told bys” and shadowy links.

Lester Lamont Larson (my grandfather lest you forget) and his family were from Mendotta, Illnois. A small farm town (Population: 4, 346) in Lasalle County in the central part of the state. During the summer and fall of this conspicuous year (1996) I’ve had many exchanges for information with Mendotta. One of my first requests was for a possible copy of Lester’s mother and father’s marriage license...... And to my utter amazement I got it!

My grandfather-about 1890. Mendotta, Ill 'cabinet portrait.'

My great grandparents>>> “Greeting- Marriage may be celebrated between Martin Larson and Althena Garrison- November 28, 1878.......”. My God! this was the time of the wild, wild west, Custer’s Last Stand was only three years past! Martin was a butcher from Sweden. His parents were Elsa and Lars. But interestingly I also discovered the names of Althena’a parents; JH Garrison from New York (a butcher) and Mary Pert from England (housekeeper). JH’s new son-in-law Martin was a butcher as well.-----I’m sure JH was pleased.

JH was my focus, could I find a connection between him and William Lloyd?

J.H. Garrison

It was the beginning of September, my trips to NYC became more frequent. The past spring I connected with a new therapist, so I had a great excuse to get down there at least once a week, see her, do some ancestry research, hit some 12 step meetings, and more or less bounce around my town.

I loved getting over to the New York Public Library, the Catalog Room, the Main Library Reading Room connected to (way in the back) # 315S Genealogy. A peculiar busy, quiet place, books shelved all around to the ceiling, an information counter and desks in the middle with two or three disheveled information directors, pointing people to antecedent paths of family discovery.

I’d sit and stand many a day in this room...row upon row of black and gray books, like old oversized Britannica volumes. (The Catalog Room).

There was one book that I visited often....I think it was Ns-241..no....maybe it was gh-908...or hr-d678..who knows but it seems every time I went back I’d forget it’s index number (or lose the scrap of paper I’d written it on) and have to stand in line to re-discover it’s camouflaged spot on the shelf. It had just about every book listing (at least that’s what they told me) by or about a ‘Garrison’ in the last two hundred years.

I finally found a book or should I say a set of three books published about 1903 written by two of Wiliam Lloyd’s kids, Wendall and Elizabeth. This book was un-borrowable so I had to kind of try and read or should I say skim though as best I could. No where could I find a hint of a link to this increasingly mysterious JH . Judging by the dates and life-expectancy, my great-great grandfather JH Garrison, if he is connected to Wlliam Lloyd, would have to be his child or an off-spring of a brother or sister (nephew). On the marriage certificate that I received from Mendotta, dated November 28,1878 announcing my great-grand parents union. It told me that Althena was seventeen years old. So, I figure JH was about forty years old this day that he gave away his daughter (give or take five years?). Ancestral twists and turns. It was fun figuring these things out with-- Ancestral Age Arithmetic (AAA), I guess you could say.

Nonetheless my research up until this time at the library had gone for naught until one Sunday afternoon, sitting at home, I fired up my new computer and decided to move against every instinctual grain in my body, and enter for the first time, this mysterious, enigmatic cyber-world they called the World Wide Web. Just the mention of “World Wide Web” would make my skin crawl with a need for the nearest oxygen mask. I had great fear of this computer stuff but knew that the vast information and access thereof unparalleled. So...with an urgent ambivalence........ (to say the least)......I sunk in.

I found myself at the New York Public Library’s Web Site doin’ a search on William Lloyd Garrison.

Appearing was a listing of 58 “items”, with the first 12 on my screen; 1) Life and Character of William Lloyd Garrison (1896), A discourse on William Lloyd Garrison and the anti-slavery movement (1879), Evangels of Reform, by Mortimer Brewster Smith (1934), Behold Me Once More: the confessions of James Holley Garrison..... (1954) I locked right there. James Holley Garrison!? 1954?....J. H. Garrison!? My God....is this the connection that I’d been looking for? Who is this James Holley fellow and what connection does he have to William Lloyd? Or to my J H Garrison!? My God!.... do I have this connection!? Man, was I excited!

With info in hand I made a bee-line the following Thursday straight to the NYPL, into the Catalogue Room to pick up the necessary little ticket that I would take to the, I guess you’d call it “the Retrieval Window” in the Main Library Reading Room. A large oaken counter with a waist to ceiling window as long as it was high, and a kinda bingo looking lighted number board overhead to tell you when your book or books had been retrieved by worker book worms and their dumb waiter elevators from the bowels of the NYPL. These books are not “borrowable”, they are for reading and perusal only in the Main Library Reading Room. The security guards and their “bag checks” remind us of this. Seeing as though this is how I unearthed the 1903 book by Garrison’s kids, I had some familiarity with the operation.

Filled with anticipation I submitted my ticket and waited..... and waited. The bingo board’s numbers glowed and faded with each retrieved order, but my number was not coming up. Waiting about an hour I was told they couldn’t find it.....What! They couldn’t find it? Not only did “they” tell me they couldn’t find it, but they told me they couldn’t find it with a dumb look and... You know.... sometimes dumb looks really piss me off .

I got hold of a supervisor, he presents me with a more, lets say, advanced dumb look and tells me they could possibly try a search of other branches...... “so maybe you could check back next week”?

Next week?.....My God! (again)....verification of my historical self-worth would be delayed.... but, yes, I was sure....... verification was at hand.

Well next week came........ and I found myself panting and twitching (again) at the “Retrieval Window”...........They found it! A copy was located at the NYU library down at Washington Square....The Bobst Library. They gave me a numbered pass that I would need to get into this Bobst Library. I guess the library is only available to a select few, NYU students, faculty, ‘honored guests’? and only available to the general public with the NYPL’s blessing. And the Bobst had it.(for viewing only....the un-borrowable thing again) Or at least something like that.

The following Thursday (Sept.26) after therapy I headed down to the Bobst. The Bobst is twelve stories. Twelve stories of books and glass encased offices surrounding an atrium-like “space” from bottom to top. A large , modern convincing building with an M.C. Escher-like design on it’s ground floor that can be viewed quite impressively from it’s twelfth.

I presented the guards with my numbered pass, got directions to my floor and “aisle” and was reminded that I had about an hour before “we close”. I gotta tell you....I have never done well finding things with combinations of letters and numbers ......libraries love letter- numbers...you know like m-74-h or bt17 or k136-p.... and that’s just what Behold Me Once More was at the Bobst.. ..a letter- number..... letter- numbers were instant angst for me. Especially with the “....we close” ringing in my head.

I missed my Retrieval Window.

I was determined....angst or no angst I was gonna find this book.... and unequivocally verify my ancestral self-worth!!

Here I was on the twelfth floor....back and forth.....section M, aisle 32, book(s) # 114 to 245.....hhhmm....no, no I want section N, aisle 32b....or is that 32a?..ugh!

Lo and behold....I found it, all 138 pages of it. Down the aisle, in the back, a letter- number within a letter- number.....whew! Here it was. I pulled it off the shelf with an electric reverence, sat down at a little desk beside the aisle and began to read and read and read as fast as I could.

Behold Me Once More.....the true confessions of James Holly Garrison.

Edited by Walter McIntosh Merrill - Houghton Mifflin Company-Boston

It turns out that James Holly Garrison was the older brother of William Lloyd and these were his memoirs. Born in 1801, Died in 1841. A story of a man haunted by alcohol from the age of thirteen: “ My first commencing to drink was at Lynn (Massachusetts). I came there to learn the trade of cordwainer (shoemaker) with Mr. Robinson. From him I went with Samuel Mansfield. This was the first shop I saw liquor introduced as a drink. Mr. R being a teetotaler and a member of the Baptist church, never allowed such in his shop. I was now in my thirteenth year and always in my life so far had detested liquor. At this time in Lynn I might almost say, everyone drank what is called black strap, New England rum sweetened with molasses.* I had never tasted liquor, but was persuaded by my fellow apprentices and like wise my master, to drink a little as it would not hurt me. I took a drink, it was sweet, and from that fatal hour I became a drunkard.”

( the editor edited the book as James Holley wrote it, spelling, vernacular and all. Likewise for me here.....)

* drinking hard liquor was a universally popular occupation in early nineteenth-century America.

‘......at eighteen he goes “down to the sea” and for twenty two years was a merchant seaman and sailor of the American and British navies. It’s a dramatic and cruel picture of life afloat in early 19th century. Mathew Calbraith Perry, who later opened Japan, was the first lieutenant on the North Carolina when Garrison served on that ship. We catch Perry’s ugly side as he gives thirteen lashes to an old sailor who “was too ugly to be seen about decks”, or punishes men for having black eyes which he, himself, had given them....’

His battle with alcohol and insanity is chronicled throughout.......... “....We had about forty Irish passengers and 4 barrells of whiskey. This we sold to them by the gallon and between the capt and them our vessel was hell afloat. We were eighteen days with a fair wind running it. Which could have been done in 70 hours. Our capt became crazy with drink, and we was compelled to confine him. One night I had been drinking and was returning aboard when my foot slipped and I fell into the dock, up to my neck in mud. The more I strived to get out the deeper I sank. Catching hold of a projecting timber I hung on to that and calling for assistance as loud as my lungs would allow, but no one came. The tide was riseing fast an nothing but death stare’d me in the face. Again I shouted with all my strength but all was still save the advancing tide, which was to be my winding sheet. I thought of mother and the past scenes of my life flitted before my imagination in all their horrows......”

“....We arrived at N. York and I drank and carried on so bad, that my landlord turned me out of doors saying I owed him 9 dollars. He kept my clothes as security. *Behold Me Once more I stood upright in all I had......”

Alcoholism took it’s insidious toll on James.....spending the last year of his life in Cambridgeport with William Lloyd who for so long tried to rescue James from the pit of intemperance “.....and it’s kindred vices..”.

All that is known of that year is provided by a series of oblique references in Lloyd’s letters. In January he reports that James’s health does not improve and his spirits are sometimes low; he wishes his spirit were “reconciled to God”. In July his health seems no worse, but by September his body is much emaciated, his cough persistent and his lungs, Garrison fears, incurable.

About 3am on the 14th of October, while Lloyd watched alone by his side, James’s intense suffering seemed to pass quietly into sleep. His brother rejoiced that he could have some rest; it was half an hour before he realized what had happened. James “retained his senses to the last”, Garrison said, “and died with all the possible fortitude and resignation, being perfectly aware that his end was approaching”. James was forty one.

This was a sad, sometimes funny story, of a man racked and demonized by alcoholism, a bright man, an eloquent man....I related so well, having watched my brother racked and demonized by this “intemperance”, never mind my own bequeathed insanity.

My great-great grandfather J H Garrison was born about 1838, so according to Ancestral Age Arithmetic....James Holley would have been his elder, like a father or an uncle, so as I turned the pages, I expected the next one to jump at me with... “In 1837....James and his wife Tessy saw the birth of their son James Holly Garrison II....”. Oh God, there would be my verification, I thought,....... any page now ...my confirmation, at last, of my historical self-worth.

This would not be the case. I could find no mention of James ever having a family, except for the occasional romantic letter and references to unidentified women. There is a brief, mysterious mention of a “Lora” but that’s it!

Could my great- great grandfather JH be an illegitimate to James Holley?.....more research and time might tell.....

*Several months later I would find and possess a copy of Behold Me Once More through an out of print book search at my local book store.

I left the Bobst Library that evening tantalized and tired.

Next-- The Synchrondipity of Portia on a New York sidewalk

Best Buds---Barbara George, Susanna and Portia Nelson clowning on the Venice Pier, Venice, California 1943 on a break from the filming of ‘The Phantom.’