Enos

            Enos, the youngest child, was born in Ixonia ,  Wisconsin , on August 5, 1853.  By the time he was four years old, the family had moved to the River Farm near Spring Green, and by the time he was ten they had moved across the Wisconsin River to the Valley.   He grew up as a farm boy and died as a farmer and farm manager .  By the time he was old enough to notice,  the family was relatively prosperous after the early harsh years at Ixonia, but rural prosperity in the final third of the 19^th century was still a life of very hard work.

              Enos went to a school of sorts in Spring Green.  He was one 15 pupils in the beginner’s class;  there were 60 children in the school.  His class “recited” four times a day, and the rest of time was spent waiting.  There were few books, and the teacher was harsh.  Spelling seems to have stuck in his memory, perhaps because sister Anna helped him, perhaps because the system of teaching emphasized the oddest elements of English spelling and that made it harder, or perhaps because he triumphed in a spelling bee.  Despite the limitations of the school and perhaps because of the hopes of his father, Enos aspired to become a physician. 

After the family had moved to the Valley, he and a neighbor boy went to the newly established Academy in Spring Green.  A brother would take him in a wagon to the river where the boys would row across, or to New Helena, where they could walk across the railroad bridge, or (in the deep winter) to the edge of ice.  The boys then stayed the week in town, eating mostly foods they brought with them from home. From the account of his eldest son, Chester , one imagines that it was much like an impoverished vocational school of our time, if that good.

Still it was good enough to prepare him for the trip to the University of Wisconsin in 1872.  He had to stay to help his father harvest the crops, for his brothers had their own farms to care for, and thus he arrived after classes had started.  The train was late, so he reached Madison late on a cold night.  He persuaded the station agent to let him sleep in the locked and barely heated depot, but he was restless, so around daybreak, he crawled though a window and headed for the ramshackle campus.  No one was up.  Finally a man came to draw a bucket of water—that was plumbing—and Enos sought his aid.  The man was an instructor, who brought him to the custodian, who in turn took him inside to his own quarters.  Eventually the “Superintendent” came and took him to his bare room.  Enos rented furniture and bedding and went to the store for food. His possessions were meager, so he didn’t need much for furnishings.  He was admitted to the preparatory department, for the Academy had not quite prepared him. His first term was devoted to arithmetic, algebra, and history.  Only the latter was a problem. The second term included algebra, geography, and grammar.  By the middle of the second term he had removed his deficiencies.

 The academic victory was short lived.  Financial reverses used up money that might have helped him stay in school, and anyway his labor was needed on the farm. The next six years were a problem. Although h is brothers prospered, he had no capital.   He considered moving to the Black Hills , where there was still government land, but his brother Jenkin talked him out of it.  Living with Jenkin and Susan, he took a business course in Janesville , and did well, but he was not enthusiastic about business. He worked in the general store in Arena (perhaps keeping the books), and he bought a share of his brother John’s milling business, which was growing, but he didn’t see that as a career for himself.   He became licensed as a teacher and taught for a time.

The good part of this period was being drawn into a family of Welsh descendents in Arena.  Enos’ widowed sister Margaret had married Thomas B. Jones of Arena in 1873.   Tom, later known as Uncle Jones, had four children: one by his first wife, and three by his second wife, Margaret Morris.    Margaret Lloyd Jones Evans had succeeded Margaret Morris.  The oldest daughter of Margaret Morris was Eleanor, a lovely and energetic red head. She and Enos were married on September 22,1879, and thus created the continuing riddle of family humor about sisters and mothers-in-law.

On September 14 he reported in his diary going to Arena to make arrangements for the wedding. “Had a very pleasant time,” he says.  On the 22^nd  Thomas Carter drove Enos and Ellen to Mazomanie to catch the train to Madison , where they were married.  They paid a fee of $5.00 to William Cary Wright, who performed the ceremony.  Enos’ diary for this date merely records, “Got married, then went to Baraboo.  Stayed all night.”  Apparently Thomas Carter and Annie Joiner met them on the train to Baraboo and stayed with them on the wedding trip.

After the brief honeymoon in the Dells, they called on Jenkin in Janesville, stopped at the Jones farm in Arena to pick up a horse and a heifer, and went on to the Valley to stay with John until they could get their own farm.  Since there was no open land, they had to buy an established farm.  They much wanted to stay in what had become a family compound.  As it happened the Bernard farm across the road was available.  It was twice as big as Richard’s farm, well developed with buildings, crop lands, and woods.  It was expensive, but after much discussion and  help from Richard and John,  they bought it and Enos was officially a farmer of his own land.  There they had five children and were active members of the family community. 

Eleanor turned the bright house into a gathering spot for the clan and, later, for children at Hillside Home School .  She organized picnics and games and taffy pulls and soap making and general sociability.  She also was a stalwart in the Lend-a-Hand group of women who studied issues of the time and helped neighbors in need.  “She did hard things the easy way and work to her was essential as laughter”, said a nephew.  She seems to have been a model of affirmation.

When the Chapel was built in 1887, Enos was in this middle thirties.  His father had died after a  period of decline, and the home farm was left to daughters Jane and Nell.  Jenkin had moved to Chicago and was building a major reputation as a religious leader and social reformer, but he urged the sisters to leave their teaching positions  and establish a school on the farm.  He also supported the building of the Chapel and hired J. L. Silsbee to design it.  (Silsbee, a major Chicago architect, had designed other buildings for Jenkin.  As It happened Silsbee had also employed Frank Wright, who apparently delivered the plans to his uncles.  How much the “boy architect” had to do with the actual design is a moot question.)  John was a successful businessman with a farm adjacent to the Chapel site, a mill, and the post office, and sometimes kept financial records for the group.  James actually owned the land upon which the Chapel was built.  Thomas, a farmer and a builder, constructed the Chapel as well as a building for his sisters’ school.  Although Jenkin was the non-resident minister and spiritual leader, all of the family seems to have been active participants and Enos accepted a good many chores.  In his early years he helped raise money to build it, and in his last years he was the person who tried to find money to maintain it.  From the start he seems to have been involved in its weekly programs, often leading the service.  At various times his three younger children served as janitors (sextons) for a nominal fee. 

            The  eighties were years of great growth and change in American farming, and Enos and his brother James were much a part of it.  They were part of Farmer Institutes that encouraged rotation of crops and careful breeding of grains and animals. They enlisted support from people at the University, and both were later appointed Regents of the University with a special interest in support the school of agriculture.  Enos had 40 Holstein cows and directed the operation of a cooperative cheese factory.  He had the first silo in the area, and used the farm machinery that was augmenting human labor.  The children worked on the farm, but with the help of machines.  He became business manager for Hillside School and farm after Andrew Porter left.  Perhaps the expansion and entrepreneurial spirit of the family were overly ambitious, for prices fell in the last decade of the century.  The American born children had been optimistically expansionist and supportive of each other, so when James died suddenly in 1907, the size of their obligations became apparent.  Hillside Home School was closed.  Enos and Eleanor lost the farm and most of the equipment, although they still had the farmstead and some machines.  In the thirties they moved to Lake Bluff to live with their oldest daughter, Agnes.  Eleanor died in 1934, and Enos died in 1941, shortly after the death of his son Chester .  After Enos died, the farm was sold to a Taliesin architect, Eugene Masselink.

 Enos outlived all of his siblings by a decade and a half.  When in 1935/6 Chester wrote an account of Enos’ life,  The Youngest Son,  the others had been dead more than a decade, so although Chester’s book is the best source of the details of the lives in Valley, it also is a product of fading or embellished memories as well as a few documents.  Chester himself augmented the accounts with historical backgrounds for context, but even such scholarly care is not entirely free of the pre-conceptions of the era.  The pioneer dream dominated the American self-image.  Several of Richard’s children made a point of saying that evening entertainment in the family often consisted of reading the Bible, singing, and story telling, and the favorite stories were those of life in Wales and of the movement westward.  Around the fireside, stories grow, and a child’s memory is selective.

             Given that disclaimer, consider some of the stories of life in Sauk and Iowa Counties .  Life on the River Farm for a pre-teen was mostly routine.   Feed the chickens,  call the men for dinner, bring the cows in at dusk, watch the foresters’  logs float down the river in the spring,  note the change of the seasons.  A special privilege was riding a horse in the team when brother John was plowing or cultivating.

             On one occasion he went from the plow to visit a lumber drying business started by a brother and neighbor. Green boards from King’s lumberyard (which had supplied the lumber for the River Farm house) were cured in a shed built for the purpose. When Enos arrived the shed seemed empty, but shavings had burst into flames.  The youthful Enos tried to put out the fire, but air from the now open door sent blazes higher.  The partner, who had been sleeping, awoke to rescue the boy and send him for help, but the business was a total loss.

              Another time he and John stopped after plowing in a nearby slough to cool off themselves and the horses.  Enos was riding Kate, and she was so pleased with the cool water that she went on into the river, slipped, and dumped Enos under the water.  John rushed to the rescue, and both were drenched and late for supper.  Kate was a good companion, though.  Once  when Enos was watching the sheep, wolves attacked.  The sheep panicked and ran, as did most of the horses. Enos himself was unable to raise an alarm, but Kate used her hooves to keep the wolves at bay, until the general noise brought adults to the scene.  Three sheep were killed, but Kate and Enos survived.

             Once the boy Enos was left alone at night while all of the others joined in a charivari for a newly married neighbor couple.  The noisy party was prolonged, and the boy awoke with terror, searched house but found no one, and sought comfort in a neighbor’s house, also almost deserted. Fortunately, at that house some older people, who had left merry making to the young, were roused and took the boy in and put him to bed.  When Richard’s family returned, there was no boy to be found.  Since a band of Indians had been camping nearby for a week, there were fears that Enos had been kidnapped, but before a posse could be organized, the boy was found.  To be sure, the family had generally respected the Native Americans.  When on one cold night Richard had found an Indian drunk and sleeping on the road, he brought the man home and left him in front of the fire.  By morning the Indian had left, but a few weeks later Richard found a side of venison at his front door, a kind of thank you note.

            Enos was fond of dogs, and in a memoir he wrote in his early 80s he biographized   dogs he had known as a way of helping his grandchildren relate to the world of his own childhood.  The first dog of his own was “Major,” a companion when he watched sheep.  During the winter Enos trained Major to pull a sled to bring wood from the woodpile.  When in the spring he and Major went for the cows, they greeted Blackie, a favorite.  Most of the herd simply followed the usual route home, but one occasion Blackie suddenly charged, knocking the boy down.  There was a calf, and Enos was sure that Blackie has misunderstood Major’s barking.  Enos was not badly hurt, and Major and Blackie managed to get themselves back to the barn.

             After the move to the Valley, when Richard was sowing grain by hand on the newly broken land, and James was following with Kate to harrow the seed into place, pigeons began to take the new  planted seeds.  Enos was bringing a jar of buttermilk for his father to drink, and he and Major were set to driving the birds away. Richard and James soon joined them, but the birds prevailed.  Sowing was delayed until t he flock moved away.  Major died after protecting James from the attack of a boar owned by the Bernards.  The boar had a way of breaking through fences to get the grain.  James on a  three-year-old colt, Fleetfoot, tried to move the boar away, but the animal charged them, just missing James’  foot, although tearing his new denims.  Fleetfoot departed and James cleared out, but Major kept trying. After a lengthy battle the boar won.

             Quito was brother John’s dog, and a faithful attendant at the mill.  When John was dying over a long period, Quito lay by his bed occasionally licking his fingers.  Enos was a frequent visitor in those last days.  When John died on June 6, 1908, Quito left that farm and came to live with Enos.  Although Aunt Nettie and Cousin Dick tried to get her to return, Quito remained a faithful companion to Enos.

            Gwen, a collie, was the last dog and a favorite.  She had been the dog of Cousin Grace, but when Grace died, Gwen adopted Enos.  He was manager at Hillside, and Gwen would go with him on his rounds.  On Sundays, however, Gwen knew that Enos would be going to church, and she did not think she wanted to go to church even when Enos urged her. She stopped at the corner of the yard.  But she was a guard dog by temperament and would not allow strangers near the house.  Especially peddlers.  But she also was known to refuse to let houseguests into their bedrooms.  She even brought in the cows on her own.  When Eleanor and Enos went to Lake Bluff, they could not take Gwen.  The first renters accepted her habits and they got a long well. The second renters considered her merely a dog and kept her in a shed.  When Enos came to visit, the dog was beside herself, but by then the time was short for them all. Gwen was buried with the other family dogs.

             Enos kept a diary for at least sixty-three years.   Chester notes that the early volumes had been lost, but he excerpted some items from the volumes he had available in addition to what he recorded in The Youngest Son.  All of the originals subsequently disappeared, and the excerpts come from1873 to 1887—that is, from the time just after Enos left the University to come help with the farms to a time shortly after the birth of Alice but before the birth of Ralph.  As Chester notes, these are not literary records, nor a place for speculation or self-examination.  Some major events are passed over, such as the marriage of sister Margaret to Thomas Jones although he records casual meetings with Orren, Margaret’s son.  So too he reports the price of a pair of shoes or a suit.  Still, one can put details together to get a picture of a young adult becoming middle aged.

             From the time he left the University in 1873 until the time of his marriage in 1879 one sees a young man searching for a way of life.  He works on the farms of his father, brothers, and brother-in-law, carries on several business ventures including shared ownership of the mill with his brother John and working in the general store in Arena, and teaching school.  He goes to a business school in Janesville on a scholarship while living with his brother and sister-in-law (he contributes to the cost of eating.)  He is active in the Lyceum in Janesville, becomes its president.  He takes part in debates, and regularly attends church—especially when Jenk is preaching, although he later goes to hear William C. Wright.  He rarely elaborates the experience, although a couple of times he records Jenk’s subject and once he notes that Wright gave a “very good” sermon. 

He seems to have had a large number of friends, and he frequently mentions activities with Orren Evans (Margaret’s son) and visits with the “Jones sisters” (Ellen and Annie, Margaret’s step-daughters) and Ben Williams (who later marries Annie.)  While he is clerking at the Arena general store, visits to the Jones household are convenient, but it is not until April of 1878 that he first mentions Ellen by name as a particular companion.  After that he mentions her quite frequently, and in December he buys a ring for $5.50.  He gives it to her on Christmas.  “Crowning joy of my life, “ he says, but it isn’t clear whether the joy  refers to the event or to Ellen herself. 

His work at the mill with John takes him to various towns to buy and sell—often by bartering.  They seemed to have constant trouble with the mill dam washing out and so they were often re-building and at least once spent three days in Dodgeville dealing with a law suit.   As befits a man of business, many of the entries in diaries deal with buying and selling.  There a big items such as buying a horse and equipage  (in 1878 he spent $34 for a harness and $75 for a horse, apparently on a loan from James) or buying farm equipment, but there are also many details of minor purchases.  I n 1875 he sold wheat for $0.80 a bushel, sheep for $3.00 a head and potatoes for $0.20 a bushel and he bought a suit for $18.00, an overcoat for $20, and boots for $7.50. He notes a theater ticket for 25 cents, a hair cut for 35 cents, heels for his boots at 30 cents, and box of collars for 25 cents.  When he started teaching school (to 16 “scholars”) he bought a pair of boots for $4.25, and he bought another suit. In December he bought a suit for $14.50, apparently in preparation for working in the general store.

In the year after Enos and Ellen were married, the entries more often deal with household purchases. Almost as much space is devoted to get a stove ($25.00) or a bedstead as in buying the farm from the Bernards ($8000.00).  He later mentions getting a loan from Robert(?) for $1000 to make the down payment on the farm; it was co-signed by Richard and John.  They bought a plow for $19.00 ($1.00cash and 600 pounds of flour), a harness  ($6.00 and 600 pounds of flour), and a sewing machine  (1000 pounds of flour).  Enos was still a partner in John’s mill.  They were constant in visiting Richard and his children as well as Thomas B. and his children.  That included dinner and often “staying over.” Aside from going to church regularly, they participated in “sings” at various houses.  They bought a hat for “father” ($1.00) and a subscription for him to Y Drych,  then written in Welsh, for $2.20.  In October of 1881 they sold their interest in the mill to John for $1500. 

The birth of Chester in March of 1881 opened a new era in the  diaries.  Chester apparently was a bit sickly, for he needed a doctor several times (25 cents a call) and required various unnamed medicines.  Both Enos and the baby were vaccinated in December of1881.  Not until December of 1882 is Chester identified by name; he needed medicine for 75 cents.   When Agnes was born on December 17, she is merely identified as a little girl.  In September of 1884 a baby boy (Orren) was added to the family.  By that time Chester is regularly identified by name.  Apparently  when Orren was born, Mrs Hickcox served as midwife.  Chester (at 3 and a half) and Enos had gone to a temperance lecture in Arena a few days before, and perhaps Agnes stayed with Jones household in Arena.  Several entries suggest that Margaret must have served as a baby-sitter although she is never named.  Enos frequently notes that he has gone to a temperance meeting.  By May of 1886 Orren is mentioned by name (he has the croup) , but Alice is not mentioned by name when she is born October 10 (Dr. Pelton attending.)   Alice is still not mentioned by name by the last diary still in existence, and Ralph was not born until 1891.  There may have been a miscarriage between Alice and Ralph, but the family was complete within a decade.  Perhaps one should note that there are frequent entries dealing with hiring a “girl” while the babies were small, but it is also worth noting that the girls sometimes worked in the fields, as did Eleanor.  There are also many entries dealing with hiring “men” for farm work, although some of them may have had duties at the mill.

             The building of the Chapel is a common entry in the diaries of 1885-6-7.  Mary had died in August 1870 and the family had conducted regular memorial services each August.  She was buried in Spring Green, and apparently Enos had bought the grave marker.  By 1885 Richard was in failing health, and the family was well established in the Valley.  They had had picnics and meetings in the grove at the edge of James’ farm, but the gathering at the grove on August 16, 1885, was especially large and included many neighbors.  Jenk,  Simmonds, and Gannett preached.  Apparently the family led by Jenk had agreed to build a “church” while Richard still lived. (“Church” is the term Enos regularly used.) On October 18 they met at Hillside (where Richard still lived) to discuss the church, and for the rest of the month, James, Enos, and Philip (“Uncle Philip”, James Philip, Mary’s husband) were hauling rock to the site.  On October 25 James and Enos were checking the plans.  By the end of November the masons had been busy, but by December 6 on a very cold day Richard died.  Enos went to Arena to tell Margaret.  Jenk and Susan, Nell, Jenny, and Gannett arrived by the morning of the 8^th, Orren Evans, Tom Jones, and Jones girls came by evening.  The weather was so bad that the “women folks” did not go to the burial.  After the Chapel was finished Mary’s body and two others were brought from their initial burial places to rest in the Chapel yard.

             On February 2, 1886, “the boys” met at Thomas’ house to consult about building the church.  On the 16^th  Enos went to Spring Green to get a load lumber for the church, and a group of neighbors helped haul it over. On April 14 he was laying out the churchyard, and on the 19^th  and on May 25^th he went for more loads of lumber.  Among these trips were visits to Orren Evans in Dodgeville, for he had been diagnosed with throat cancer.  Ellen, Mary, Anna, , John, Nell and others often went along. One visit in May proved in vain, for Jenk had arranged for Orren to see a doctor in Chicago. The last visit on August 8 (with John and Nell) was indeed at the end; Orren’s funeral on the 13^th was merely recorded, as had been the death of his brother Charles much earlier.  There had been steady work on the church through July and early August, and it was ready for the dedication just two days after Orren’s funeral.   Enos notes, “The chapel was dedicated this day. Babies baptized and Ellen joined the society.”  This is the first time he used the term “chapel”.  It housed the “Liberal Christian Society of the Wyoming Valley,” and members signed a bond of union.

            Enos was a convinced supporter of temperance and apparently organized several temperance groups. He also served as an election official and attended caucuses.  He regularly attended church, sometimes twice in a day when Jenk was preaching. He also mentions once that Nell read the sermon, and he also did the duty.  Ralph recalled that although all of the siblings read sermons, and sometimes the children at Hillside Home School read them, still Enos was the most frequent reader.