What Real Sacrifice Looks Like: Casualties of the Great War

 

The Canadian National Vimy Memorial

 

Recently the inexplicable sight of groups of ill-informed young men glorifying enemies of the United States made me think of family members who actually fought AGAINST the enemies of our country, and of civilization. One that I recently learned about was my mom's cousin, Jim McGillivray. 

Jane Orr, my great-grandmother, my mom's grandmother, was born in Canada. She and her Scottish-born husband Hugh McGillivray first set up housekeeping in 1875 in Paisley, Ontario, an area full of Scottish settlers, including Hugh's father, stepmother, and half brother and sister. All of these McGillivrays had children (though not as many as Jane and Hugh, who had 17), and then their children had children. So soon there were plenty of McGillivray cousins.  

My mom was much the youngest of four. Her cousin Jim, the son of her uncle Hector McGillivray, was the youngest of five. My great-grandparents Hugh and Jane McGillivray eventually moved their family to Grand Forks, North Dakota, homesteading on the fertile land that they got free as long as they agreed to work it. They all became U.S. citizens. Hugh even became the local postmaster. 

Hector McGillivray, Hugh's half brother, was also a farmer, and his family stayed in Canada, which was then still part of the British Empire. So when England went to war with Germany in 1914, to defend its allies right to self-rule, young Canadian men joined the armed forces in droves. And as soon as he was old enough, Jim McGillivray joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force, the CEF. It was 1916, and he was 18. 

 

Jim McGillivray joined up at the age of 18.

 

Jim went through basic training and finally landed in France in 1917, a private in the 54th Battalion of the CEF. The Canadians saw a lot of action. One of the most horrible battles of that horrible war had been going on for months, an apparently endless stalemate of death and destruction -- the Battle of Vimy Ridge. After several attempts to take this area from the German army, the Canadian forces, commanded by General Sir Julian Byng, finally did so, but at tremendous cost.

Jim McGillivray was seriously wounded and taken to a hospital in Pas-de-Calais, where he died of pneumonia on April 18, 1918, eight days after his twentieth birthday. No one can really imagine how his family felt when they learned of his death -- the youngest of a large family, healthy, energetic, and looking toward who knew what opportunities in the future. All of that ended in an instant with a few bullets or bits of shrapnel. 

 

The causes and explanations for World War 1 are obscure to most people now. But the Allies' cause was understood by most people to be protecting the self-determination of France, Belgium, and other European nations against German aggression. These soldiers sacrificed themselves for something -- not to oppress and control others, but to defend their freedom.   

The area where Jim was mortally wounded is now the site of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, because thousands of Canadian soldiers were killed there. Even now it is a dangerous place, the earth riddled with trenches, tunnels, and unexploded bombs that it is too risky to try and remove. In a sense, the Great War has never ended in this patch of France.

A Coincidence! Or is it!

Amongst the many ordinary business papers left by my grandfather are estimates from contractors, bills, and receipts, starting in about 1908. The actual letters are uninteresting; but this was the heyday fabulous business stationery, and a perfectly ordinary feed bill for a team of draft horses looked like this:

For many years, my grandfather, Will Carpenter, had threshing business with two of his brothers. When they first began, the big threshing machines were drawn by teams of draft animals. (Later, of course, they were replaced by motor vehicles.) My grandfather loved animals, so I'm sure their team was well-cared for.

Oddly enough, after quite a lot of investigation of the Swedish archives available online, I was able to discover that my 3x great grandfather in Sweden, ran a trucking business -- well, sort of trucking; he too used a  team of draft horses and a sturdy wagon for all kinds of haulage, from furniture deliveries to carrying livestock or produce to market.

And another great-grandfather owned a foundry in Mora, Sweden,and one of their biggest products was... threshing machines!

Now, I don't think my grandmother knew this about her grandfather's business , and I'm sure my father didn't. So it was pure coincidence that two descendants of expert team-drivers (because it was a recognized skill) with a special relationship to threshing machines from different continents met and married in the U.S.

"Noble" Ancestry? Really?

One thing I find quite startling after having been engaged in genealogical research for the past few years is the fact that many Americans really, really wish that they were descended from royalty. This seems odd; I mean, the reason a lot of our ancestors came here in the first place was to get away from royalty of various ilks. And a lot of the "nobles" you meet in history are not really the kind of people you want to be associated with.

Warwick Castle

And one thing DNA technology reveals is that it's not exactly unusual for certain early monarchs -- I mean, you would have to call Genghis Khan a monarch, wouldn't you? Not to mention the Irish Niall of the Nine Hostages -- to have descendants numbering in the millions. So what's the big deal? I can understand being proud of some great leader, like Charlemagne, but ordinary, garden-variety royalty? Why should an individual be admired for an accident of birth?

I will admit that as a person of Swedish heritage I'm sort of proud of the Swedish royal family; they seem to be modest, hard-working royals, and don't make any trouble. And in typical Swedish progressive fashion they have changed the primogeniture rules so that the next monarch will be Queen Sophia. The main stories I know about them are about the time the present King rescued a lady from a snowdrift on a skiing holiday, and the romance of the prince and the showgirl, which is rather sweet -- when Princess Sophia was officially named the heir, the King's brother was able to marry the former actress who had been his lady friend for about thirty years, because he was no longer in line for the throne. But I'm sure I'm not related in any way!

Pretty fancy Anglo-Saxon metalwork

I have also been rather charmed to discover that some few ancestors were, apparently, descendants of old Saxon nobility, before the Norman Conquest; this is pretty cool. But it's mainly because they all sound like characters from Ivanhoe -- Wigot and Gunhild and Edgitha. And being related to characters in Shakespeare -- not just people of the same name, like Lovell and Percy, but the actual guys -- is also pretty cool, but more for celebrity value than anything else. All of these people eventually picked the wrong side in English dynastic wars, so lost all their power and prosperity, anyway.
What I am proud of in my ancestors is a pretty strong tradition of usefulness and providing goods and services the community found desirable. The "noble" ancestor I am intrigued by was the last in the direct line of an old English family named Petley. By the early 1500's they had dwindled and only the widow and Agnes, the young daughter of the last Petley in the direct line, were left -- and to me, their next move was something of a triumph, because this aristocratic girl married John Manning, the head of one of the most prominent families in the area. And this family went into trade -- really, really skilled trade; one of Agnes' sons. Henry Manning, became the armorer to Henry the Eighth, and held several other pretty profitable offices; I'm a direct descendant of his brother, George.

Henry VIII's armor

It seems that this opened up a whole social world associated with the latest technology -- metalworking. Henry Manning's daughter, Phebe, married a promising young man, James Waters - an ironmonger. They had six children. James died in 1617. And then came what might have been quite  a romantic story; Phebe's oldest son, Richard, married Rejoice Plasse, the daughter of widowed ironmonger William Plasse. And then Phebe married William, thus causing a couple of centuries of confusion for their puzzled descendants.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony

The whole group decided to move to the New World, probably not for religious reasons but because their skills were very much in demand in the new Massachusetts Bay Colony. Metal tools and equipment -- and especially guns, of course -- would probably have been prized above rubies, if there had been any rubies. The colonial governor, John Winthrop, wrote to his wife about what she would need to bring with her from England, and topping the list is a frying pan. Imagine what it must have like in the colony, having to make everything from scratch without even a metal cookpot! The fascinating wills that are available freely online now usually mention disposal of all sorts of iron goods, from kettles to fireplace accessories to axes and muskets. And Richard Waters was a gunsmith, leading to his being provided with housing in Salem.

Very fancy pistols from 1650

Through the years the Waters family took up many skilled and indispensable trades, up to and including bootlegging hard cider. My branch of the family moved to Sutton, Massachusetts, where there is still a historically preserved Waters Farm -- where they did everything. They had a stand of timber which supplied firewood and building materials, which were milled right on the farm.

The Waters Farm Shingle Mill

They produced apples and cider, and had sheep and cattle for wool, food, and for use as draft animals.
In my family tree, the Waters family joined with the Carpenter family, who had both a comb-making business and later a broom factory.
Imagine how valuable all of these things were in early New England! You could make your own food from scratch, and to some extent your own clothing; but metal cookware, planked wood, cider, combs, and brooms -- how welcome they must have been! These people did more for their neighbors in the future Unites States than a dozen kings and queens.

Wild Blue Yonder: Wiley Post and a Bit of Family History

Wiley Post

Wiley Post is remembered today as the pilot who flew the beloved Will Rogers on his last journey. But Post   was famous throughout the late 1920s and 1930s as a dashing aviator who was the first to solo around the world -- and he looked the part, a tall, handsome man with a pencil mustache and a devil-may-care smile. His gallant appearance was enhanced by an eyepatch he wore after losing his left eye in a crash. But he was also a respectable spokesman for the practical application of advanced engineering to the new business of flying. He himself was particularly interested in high-altitude flying and developed an early pressure suit design. His work in aviation was practical; he trained as a pilot in WW1 but the war ended before he reached the front, and he spent several years in traveling airshows. He began winning important air races by 1930.
In those days, money for experimental designs of aircraft had to be raised privately, so competitions were held all across the country, a combination of fund-raising for actual development and ballyhoo. Post was a regular competitor, and also worked directly as a personal pilot for Oklahoma oilmen Powell Briscoe and F.C Hall, who put up the funds for Post's famous plane, the Winnie Mae (named after Hall's daughter). These air races had cash prizes, which served as salary for the pilots and money for equipment and development.
And throughout the 30s, Post took advantage of his personal fame and went on occasional fundraising tours, where he would appear at local airfields and offer to take anyone up in the Winnie Mae for $5.00 -- which was big money in those days. For that kind of money, he could pretty much count on eliminating the more frivolous joy-riders.
So one day in the spring of 1935, Wiley Post arrived in Bridgeport, Connecticut. And one of his passengers was a 14 year old high school student -- in fact a future valedictorian and winner of Bridgeport's famous Barnum Prize -- who had been saving his paper-route money for months. And  up he went, sitting in back of Wiley Post in his eyepatch, leather helmet, and white silk scarf.

The Winnie Mae

What has this to do with family history? The teenager was my father, Carl Sandahl, and for an extremely nearsighted, bookish type of kid -- he was a straight-A student from the moment he hit school -- he was pretty darned fearless. In his future were more adventures with skiing, skin-diving, surfing, mountain-climbing, and even folk-dancing with Baroness Maria Von Trapp. Despite growing up during the Great Depression, he had an amazing ability to take advantage of every amazing opportunity that came his way.

The Friendly Beasts: Life on the Family Farm

Many of my favorite Christmas carols when I was a child were those that told the story of Jesus' birth with a large cast of humble and gentle animals; they appear in The Little Drummer Boy, where "... the ox and lamb kept time," as well as such traditional ones as the English The Friendly Beasts, and the French (but with Latin words) Hez, Sir Asne, Hez. For one thing, they tell you something about people's familiarity with domestic beasts for hundreds -- well, thousands -- of years. It seemed only natural that these creatures should take part in an event as important as Christmas. They wee part of the family; we took care of them, and they took care of us.

The Three Kings on exotic steeds

Though traditions could get quite exotic; my aunt had a lovely creche which included not only the humble oxen, sheep, and and donkey, but the Arabian stallion, camel, and elephant that the Three Kings rode in on! I've seen others with a cougar, a raccoon, and a coyote, and one with zebras, elephants, and giraffes!
Like most people, most of my forbears were farmers who knew how to live off the land, and make the most of everything that grew, grazed, and laid eggs, and had intimate knowledge of working animals. My mom's parents, Maggie McGillivray and Will Carpenter, both grew up in rural situations, combining small businesses with small family farming, with their own chickens and kitchen gardens, home-made bread and vegetables put up every summer. My grandfather's family also kept a lot of draft horses, to be used not only on their own farm, but also to be hired out whenever neighbors needed heavy haulage.  My grandfather's grandfather, Simeon Carpenter, and his son, Tyler Carpenter, were well-known in their hometown of Sutton, Massachusetts, as expert team drivers and in fact usually won the "Large Draft Team" hauling event at the annual farming exhibition there, with enormous draft horses and even oxen.

It's been a bit of late 20th century worldly wisdom that a successful working farmer needed to be unsentimental about animals;  beasts in the field were given to us to work and make themselves useful, and if they failed in that, there was no place for them. Well, on the evidence of my grandfather's own words, I don't think so. When he was in his eighties, my mom wrote down some of his reminiscences of life on the farm. And from a distance of more than sixty years, he remembered with much affection the working horses he knew, not just their names, but the appearance and personality of each one!

These are Will Carpenter's own words:
"I have always been a great lover of animals, especially horses, and I may say there was one mare of Morgan descent that I loved especially. She was handicapped by reason of a serious barbed wire cut on her right foreleg, on the upper part of the arm and below the shoulder. We had named her Dollie. There was another filly named Jessie. Dollie was a spirited animal, and when there was a running contest she was the one to be in the lead!

Her injury was quite a while in healing, and Dollie never did get perfect control of that injured leg. But she was the smoothest one to ride on that we had.

There was another horse that we called Old Blind Charley. He was much lighter in color that bay, what you would call a fawn color. Then there was Old Nell. She had a balky streak in her make up.

Then there was Little Nell, of Morgan ancestry, a very energetic mare and a very good roadster, and there was another named Nettie. She was dark brown with a white star on the forehead and three white feet. Little Nell was a beautiful bay. She and Nettie were driven together quite a lot and Nettie was always willing that Nell should lead off.

Then there was a gelding by the name of Prince; he was a little lighter in color than a bay. He was an easy rider on the lope, but quite jouncy on the trot.

Nett was the mother of a brown colt that we named Dick. He had a white star on his forehead and two white feet.

Then we had a gelding named Ben, who was brown in color, and not very big as compared with the other horses, but was very tough for his size. I remember one time I had him weighed and his weight was 835 pounds, not much for a full grown horse. He was a sporty sort! He liked to tease the other horses when they were running loose together."

He mentions an injured horse, who never fully recovered, and a blind horse, who were kindly cared for despite their limitations. This certainly undercuts the image of farmers grimly determined to view their working animals as cogs in a machine!

The active young farm boy that Will Carpenter was admired and valued traits like spirit and energy in the creatures that he worked with every day. As a man, these were qualities he encouraged in his children, live wires all, and grandchildren, too!

He and his wife of more than 65 years, Margaret McGillivray Carpenter, also loved cats. Below is a photo of them in their later years -- they are both holding kittens:

Margaret McGillivray Carpenter and William Waters Carpenter