James S. Lawrence was my grandfather. He was born August 11, 1888 in Freedom Plains, NY, a small hamlet close to Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County. He grew up in Poughkeepsie where his father, Walter E Lawrence was employed by Lucky and Platt, a large department store. Walter put the finishing touches on the furniture sold there. I imagine that, if there was some assembly required, that was Walter's job. Grandpa's mother's name was Josephine Sherwood. There is a story that Grandpa was named Stringham after a rich man that lived in the area in the hope that the rich man would give them some money but he never did.
The Freedom Plains Presbyterian Church where Grandpa was baptized is still there located on Stringham Road. There is also a Stringham Park that has numerous soccer fields, but as far as what happened to the Stringhams or what property they owned or influence they had at the time of Grandpa's birth, no information seems to be available. Grandpa was probably inspired by the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, which was completed one year after he was born, to become a railroad man.
The bridge remained the southernmost non car float rail crossing of the Hudson or related rivers until the opening of the Hell Gate Bridge in 1914 (which crosses the East River and thus does not actually provide access to the western shore of the Hudson).
The bridge was considered an engineering marvel of the day and has 6 main spans. Total length is 6747 feet including approaches. The deck is 212 feet above water. It is a multispan cantilever bridge, it has three river crossing cantilever spans of 525 feet; 2 anchor spans of 525 feet, 2,200 foot shore spans and a 2,654 approach span on the eastern shore, as the eastern shore is lower than the western shore which has bluffs in that area. It formed part of the most direct rail route between the industrial Northeastern states and the Midwestern and Western states. |
Grandpa became a telegrapher and worked for the Lehigh and Hudson Railroad his whole life. His younger brother, William, became an engineer and was known as "Wild Bill." Grandpa had a sister, Roella, who married Walter Herring who worked for National Cash Register which later became IBM. That's Grandpa on the left, age 16, and his brother, William age 14, on the right. William lived in Maybrook, NY which was the last stop on the L&HR railroad before it connected with the Poughkeepsie bridge. From Maybrook the line continues southeast to Warwick, NY, the railroad's headquarters, and from there to Vernon, NJ where Grandpa was the station agent from the late 1940s until his death in 1952.
I've hiked the railroad from Warwick to where it crosses the Delaware River in Phillipsburg, NJ. The railroad continued from there to its terminus in Easton, PA. From Vernon the line continued through McAfee, Hamburg and Franklin, NJ where there was a rich zinc mining operation. Coal was hauled from Easton to Poughkeepsie where it could be put on a barge and shipped down the Hudson to New York City.
Grandpa served time at the one man Lake Station outside of Warwick where he met my grandmother as she traveled by train from Bellvale to Warwick to attend high school. They were married June 14, 1911. After that Grandpa was station agent at Sugar Loaf, NY. It seemed as though he was station agent at practically every station on the L&HR in the area. Grandma learned Morse Code and how to operate the teletype machine and substituted for Grandpa on occasion. Grandpa spent most of his days, when my Dad and Aunt Edie were growing up, at the Chester, NY station, and then later he was at the Warwick station before moving on to Vernon. One of Grandma's old newspaper clippings (undated) reads as follows:
"S. Lewis Conklin, a farmer living on the Chester-Sugar Loaf road, was visited by a burgler last Tuesday night. The lock on the chicken house had been broken and a lot of chickens taken. The thief also took a bag of feed from the barn. Constable James S. Lawrence, who was returning to his home near the Conklin farm at 11:45 PM met a horse and sleigh and recognized the driver. The bag of feed was in the seat and the chickens were in bags in the rear of the sleigh. The following morning Mr. Conklin, acccompanied by Officer Lawrence, called at the home of the midnight visitor and found him dressing chickens. Mr. Conklin promptly identified several of his fowls and the party admitted taking 24 and the bag of feed. This happened to be a white man. A negro would have been promptly arrested and tried. The same laws should govern where a white man commits a crime. The officers of the town are sworn to do their duty, and we expect some move to be made shortly. The charge of breaking a lock on an outbuilding is burglary in the third degree, the stealing of the feed and chickens is petit larceny. Of course this is not pleasant business but the laws must be enforced."
Grandpa was a numismatist and had a wonderful coin collection. I remember he had every Morgan Head quarter and every penny going way back including Indian heads and a very rare Lincoln head 1909 SVDB. In a 1957 article in the Middletown (NY) Times Herald on Vincent Van Duzer, Numismatist, it says: "A Mr. James Lawrence of Warwick (now deceased) had been a helpful mentor to Mr. Van Duzer, and his gratitude to him for his enthusiastic encouragement and assistance is translated into his desire to assist other collectors, young and old."
Grandpa loved his dogs and he used to breed cocker spaniels. When I came on the scene, Grandpa was winding down his dog raising operation but he still had three - Hoppy, Fanny and Suzy. I think Hoppy and Fanny were the parents and Suzy was the pup. He kept them in part of his garage in Vernon. I remember it was very dark in the garage because there was no electricity, and there was a dirt floor with about 6 inches of loose dirt. Grandpa had an old Terraplane car and those dogs would hop in the back seat to go for a ride. Grandpa never drove over 30 miles per hour. In the garage were a lot of old horse collars as if Grandpa was waiting for the day when the horsed carriage would return.
Before they moved to Vernon they had a rented house in Warwick which was a very nice town and headquarters for the L&HR. My grandmother used to take me to Akins Drug Store (which is still there!) for a vanilla iced cream soda. They had little glass top tables with merchandise located inside. Warwick has a nice park which was close to Grandpa's house on South Street where I used to play with Bunny who was a daughter of one of their friends.
Vernon, by contrast, was a little one horse town in those days with a two room school house. Today it has grown considerably, but in those days there was nothing to it. Grandpa had an outdoor toilet when they first moved there, and at the station down the hill within walking distance, the outdoor toilet remained until the end of Grandpa's career at which point, I think, they shut the station down. The whole railroad only lasted until 1974. Across the street from the house was a public pump, and we used to go over there to fetch water. Grandpa eventually had a well dug so they could have indoor plumbing and running water.
I used to spend a week in the summer with Grandpa and Grandma and one day I would go with Grandpa to the station. There wasn't much to do since only about two trains a day went through there. Grandpa would get messages over the telegraph and then would attach them to a hoop with a long handle. He'd have to stand near the track when the train came by holding up the hoop. The engineer would stick his arm out the window and hook the contraption, pull the message off and then hurl the hoop back out the window. Then Grandpa and I would have to go find it. Sometimes it went in the brook and Grandpa would have to wade in to get it.
There was a big passenger waiting room at the station, but there had been no passenger service for years before my Grandpa ever arrived there. I remember there was a poster in the waiting room with about four streamliners lined up on it side by side and staggered so you could get a good look at them. In Grandpa's office was a small pot-bellied stove, the only heat he had. The station was located on a medium size square lot with the out house in one corner. Every so often Grandpa would have to mow the grass. Grandpa's desk faced the tracks and there were some gigantic levers by means of which Grandpa adjusted the semaphores so as to give the proper signals to the trains coming through.
Grandpa had sugar diabetes and had to give himself a shot of insulin in the leg every day. He kept oranges in the back seat of his car in case he ever needed sugar in a hurry. There was a pond not far from Grandpa's house and the water went over a dam and then down a brook real close to the back of Grandpa's house. It was so close that you could barely walk around one corner of the house. Anywhere in the house you could hear that brook. It lulled you to sleep at night.
I remember one time in 1947 or 48 when Grandpa, Dad and I went to a baseball game at Ebbetts Field in Brooklyn between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was shortly after Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play major league ball, and Roy Campanella, the second, had joined the team. Dad and I were Giants fans and Grandpa was a Dodgers fan. We sat in a part of the stadium surrounded by black people rooting, of course, for the Dodgers but, in particular, for Jackie and Roy. In the late innings, the Dodgers were trailing, but we could hear shouts of "Wait for Campie!" and "Campie gonna hit a homer." Well, unfortunately, Campie struck out and the Giants won. Grandma told us that, when Grandpa got home and she asked him who won, he replied, with a dejected look, "The Dodgers lost."
Grandpa died in 1952. He must have retired shortly before because, in Grandma's clippings, there was a story about how he'd been elected to represent the L&HR vets. Grandpa had always been elected to represent the L&HR telegraphers at their conventions and in their union. He was a popular guy. His motto was: "Pay what you owe. Then you will know what you own." It must have been his Scottish ancestry.
According to my research, the 1870 census shows my great grandfather, Walter E, age 15, living in Pine Plains, NY with father William E (engaged in farm labor) and mother Eliza with siblings Ida, 13, Robert, 11, Edward, 9, John, 6, and Henry, 2. It shows William's place of birth as New York. William was born in 1826 and Eliza in 1828. Walter and Edward married two sisters, Josephine and Mary Sherwood, respectively. Ed and Mary had one child, Sherwood Lawrence, who had one son who, tragically, was killed by a bus while walking home from school. The newspaper report (undated) said: "[Mr. Sullivan, a passenger on the bus] ran to the Lawrence house, not knowing the identity of the boy, and Mrs. Edwin Lawrence answered his ring. He told her that a boy had been hit, and she asked if the boy had a little leather coat with a fur collar attached. Mr. Sullivan said he believed the boy had, and Mrs. Lawrence replied: "That must be our boy," and rushed out of the house. Mr. Sullivan found the telephone and called the authorities and Dr. Clifford A. Crispell.
When he returned to where the boy lay, Edwin Lawrence, the grandfather who was an eyewitness to the tragedy, had the injured boy in his arms and was rocking back and forth as he sat on the ground moaning "It's our only boy." When Dr. Crispell arrived, he pronounced the boy dead...
...The Lawrence family is widely known in Red Oak Mills and the vicinity, where father and son, Edwin and Sherwood, operated the prosperous Lawrence farm. The boy is a grandson of Mayor Alfred P. Russell of Beacon. His mother is a teacher in the district No. 8 school, town of Poughkeepsie..."
After that the grandfather, Edward or Edwin, hung himself in the barn.
The 1880 census shows William living in Pleasant Valley, NY, occupied as a carpenter. He and wife, Eliza are both 48. Children Henry, 12 and Virgil, 7, are still at home.
I went on a pilgrimage recently to the Dutchess County villages where the Lawrences came from: Freedom Plains, Pleasant Valley, Pleasant Plains and Pine Plains. I wanted to find something out about my ancestors, but there were no traces of them. I found the Freedom Plains Presbyterian Church where Grandpa was baptized and Stringham Park. From Freedom Plains I took Freedom Road to Pleasant Valley. It turned out to be a designated historic route. The countryside was beautiful, but it was left to my imagination where the farm that my great great grandfather worked on was. It was the day after a northeaster had dropped 8 inches of rain and flooded many roads. Wappingers Creek was rushing through Pleasant Valley.
Pleasant Plains consisted of a Presbyterian Church and that was it. All of these little towns had large Presbyterian churches. Pine Plains was the largest of the small hamlets with a huge cemetery, but I couldn't find one Lawrence. There were a lot of Hiseroots and Huysradt's but no Lawrences. There were some Lawrences at the Netherwood Baptist Church, but none of them seemed to be related. It was a pleasant drive through the Dutchess County countryside, and then I crossed the Hudson on the Kingston Bridge, route 199, and headed for Springfield, NJ and dinner with my friends Morty and Renee Geist.
The current appropriation bill that Congress is sending to the white House is a step in the right direction. Of course, as we all know, Bush has already promised a veto. I hope the Democrats then just don't cave in and send him what he wants: the money without a deadline for withdrawal. That would be caving. If they need to play a game of chicken with Bush so be it. These guys have to start getting serious. It's all about not backing down to the administration with the most disastrous foreign policy in history. They need to fight him in every way they can including ultimately not sending him the money at all to continue a failed policy which results in numerous deaths and mutilations on a daily basis. 
The Bush team wants you in a double bind, of course: If you don't vote to fund their war, you're not supporting the troops. If you do vote to fund their war, they'll drag it out to the end and label you as the party that lost Iraq and the War on Terror. It's not enough to just get out of this double bind. Turn it around and put them in a double bind. If Tom DeLay and Dick Cheney want to accuse Harry Reid of treason for saying the war in Iraq is already lost, call them treasonous for being lying, murdering, Constitution-gutting sons-of-bitches. If the Republicans want to call you unAmerican, call them unAmerican. Use exactly the same kind of language on them that they use on you or else you're conceding that ground to them. You're looking like they're right. Use psychology, for Christ's sake, like they do!
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