Part 5
Just before the end of World War I, the Wilsons left the Philippines for good.
This is where the family history regarding Great-Grandfather Fred dries up. His days as the young leading man of the story are over. He becomes a supporting player who makes the occasional appearance while others take over the starring roles. Jennie’s part is larger, but, even so, she is mostly relegated to the background. She also drops out of the forward action of the plot. As she becomes older and heavier, her function becomes that of the storyteller keeping the past alive rather than forging a new path to the future. She appears in many scenes but is always on the sidelines in a chair looking on.
Among my great uncle Scott’s stuff was a program of activities onboard a ship called the Shinyo Maru. It had dates but no year, so I hadn’t paid much attention to it. It could have been from a trip he took at any point in his life. Yesterday, as I was looking for something else online, I stumbled across a passenger list that included Fred, Jennie, and Scott. It was the landing manifest for their arrival in San Francisco on May 23, 1918. They had made their way from Cebu to Hong Kong where they boarded the ship called, yes, the Shinyo Maru. They stopped in Yokohama and then in Honolulu before finally arriving back in the United States. When I looked at the program closely, I saw that I’d missed the fact that F.L. Wilson was given billing as the Chairman of the entertainment events. From San Francisco, they then took the train across the country to Lynchburg and met up with my grandmother who at that time was a sophomore at Randolph Macon Woman’s College. All told, the whole trip took them nearly six weeks. Mystery solved. That part of it, anyway.
All that the information in my father’s writing and the family papers said about this time was that when Fred got to Lynchburg, he liked the look of the place and decided to stay. He either took over or started a Buick dealership and when that folded, he moved away. That was all I had. Some sleuthing was required.
Why did they leave the Philippines? My guess is that after running the lumber mill on his own, becoming merely an employee of it after he sold the controlling shares to the British firm, was not something he could stomach. He’d left the government to go into business to make some money. You don’t make money as an employee. In terms of what he was looking for, the Philippine Islands had become a dead end. When they get to Lynchburg, they move into the Parkmont Apartments rather than a house. Did they plan to stay or was it a temporary stop?
Then there was the war. World War I started in 1914 but the United States did not join in until much later. In 1915, a German U-boat sunk the passenger ship Lusitania killing many Americans, but that isn’t what got us in. The Germans stopped their submarine warfare for a while, and we let the resentment simmer. It was only when they resumed attacking naval vessels that President Woodrow Wilson decided that it was time to fight. We declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. Two months later, General John J. Pershing was made commander of the American Expeditionary Forces and went to England.
On June 14th, 1918, about a month after they got to Lynchburg, Fred sent General Pershing a letter. I don’t have the letter, but I do have the one that he got in return from France on August 18.
“Dear Wilson,
I was glad to receive your letter of June 14th, and to learn that you had left the islands and were going to take a hand in the big war game. With regard to your application for a commission as Major in the Reserve Quartermaster’s Corps, it is the policy of the War Department not to grant commissions of field rank. So I can do no more than bear witness to the faithful and efficient service which you gave to the Philippine Government when I was Governor of the Moro Province, to state that I have the utmost confidence in your integrity and ability, and would gladly recommend you for a commission in the Officers’ Reserve.
I hope that you will use this letter if you need any letters of recommendation to accompany your application for a commission in the Reserve Corps.
Wishing you and Mrs. Wilson the best of luck, I am,
Sincerely yours,
John J. Pershing”
I don’t know how long Pershing’s letter took to get to him, but on September 12, 1918, Fred registered for the draft. I know that because I found his draft card online as well. Under “Present Occupation,” Fred writes, “Mngr. Leftwich Motor Company” which he says is located on Main Street in Lynchburg. Fred and Jennie are still living at the Parkmont Apartments, unit Number 2. My guess is that Fred is trying to figure out his future and the Leftwich Motor Company is something for him to do to earn some money while he figures it out. During this time, he is writing letters to many of his Philippine government contacts.
On October 31st, Fred writes one to Major General Mark. L. Hersey.
A fortnight later, on November 11, the Germans sign the Armistice which ends the fighting – exactly 104 years ago as I write this. The Allies have won the war and now they must figure out how to structure the peace.
On December 2, 1918, Major General Mark L. Hersey responds to Fred’s October letter. He writes from Luxembourg and asks him to be part of the military government. “If we are going into this military government business very extensively, which is of course one of the things we know nothing about, there are few people in the United States more capable than yourself to take up a large part of this important work. In addition to being an excellent man in the Treasury Dept. we all know you as the horse-sense lawyer who makes few mistakes and whose judgment is sound. What the future may bring forth is uncertain, but I hope you are not so tied up in business affairs that you could not respond to a call if anything should suddenly drop on you.”
That’s the last letter of Fred’s that I have. Either nothing was ever offered to him after that, or else Fred decided that he couldn’t face going back into government work. He stayed with Leftwich Motor Company, and the family moved out of the apartments and into a house.
Fred wanted a social life but by now Jennie was already passed it and wasn’t interested. The wagon that she’d hitched her horse to was no longer driving through the best neighborhoods. He joined several fraternal organizations either for companionship or business connections or maybe both. This is when Jennie witnessed him in his long underwear banging a toy drum in the middle of a parade on Main Street. It was part of his initiation into the local Shriner’s club. This is also when his drinking started getting serious.
In the early to mid-1920s, Fred, Jennie, and Martha moved to Memphis. My father had said that he believed that the car business failed. Again, a search online. I found a court case titled “First National Bank v. W.D. Crockett and the Leftwich Motor Company 1923-1925” which looks to me like the end of it. The family story is that Fred sold Buicks, which were prestige cars at the time, meaning they were expensive. Many years later, my great-uncle Scott tried to open a store in town that sold expensive objects d’arte and it, too, failed. The good people of Lynchburg were clearly a more thrifty and pragmatic lot than my family thought they were.
One of my father’s earliest memories is from when he was three and he went with his parents to Memphis to visit his grandparents and baby aunt. “He must have been about 50 at the time (he said of Fred). I have an image of him as a large man with a bow tie, smoking a pipe. I always referred to him as Grandaddy Fred, but don’t ever remember talking to him.” It’s the only time my dad ever met him.
Right around this time, Jennie and Martha left Fred and moved in with my grandparents in Rustburg. Maybe that trip to Memphis was arranged for Eunice and Morris to pick them up. Jennie and Fred never got back together.
A couple of years later in 1930, Fred was seriously injured in a car crash. Despite whatever differences they had, Jennie made the trip to Memphis to visit him. When she got to the hospital, however, she saw that the woman who’d become his girlfriend was in his room. Jennie left without ever seeing him.
Fred died days later, on January 18, 1930. He was only 52. Jennie would live on for another thirty-seven years. He seems to have had a real knack for government work, but he wasn’t satisfied with it. It doesn’t seem that he had a talent for business, and, in the end, that was his undoing. If he objected to the government work for moral reasons, then his leaving it might have had some nobility to it. I can’t see any evidence of that, however. He left to become rich.
Did Jennie support his venturing into the lumber business? How much of that ambition and greed did she share? In an era when wives had no real agency of their own and had to be content to share in their husbands’ successes, she seems to have been happiest when Fred was working as Treasurer. While he was doing that, she was in the swirl of society. Her life after that appears to have been rather boring and lonely. It stopped her from moving forward. She always said that Fred never should have left the army because he did best under strict discipline. Without it, he foundered.
Maybe that’s why my grandmother Eunice decided to marry my grandfather instead of her beau Pete. Pete was on his way to a fascinating and important international life. Had she gone with him, she would have ended up living all over the world, but she would never have really partaken in it. She wouldn’t have been able to do anything more than stand on the outside and watch it all happen. With my grandfather Morris, she found a partner with whom she could truly share everything. They lived their lives together and grew old together. I do wonder if Pete reminded her of her father. I can certainly see the similarity. In that same vein, I wonder if Pete reminded Jennie of Fred. Did she and Eunice ever talk about their men with each other? Hm.
I’ll probably never have the answers to any of that, but I’ll keep looking. You just never know. After all, the past never really vanishes completely, it usually just gets misfiled.
What an amazing sleuth you are, Richard!