One

    

James Knox Stark and Sevilla Stark

    Jennie May Stark leaned her back on the carved oak archway between the dining room and the parlor,

Jennie May Stark

surveying the knots of people here and there. It could not be more crowded, except,

possibly, to admit a wandering mouse coming in from the cold.

In a few hours, it would be 1913, a year

she knew she would always remember. Her grandparents would be married over fifty

years (this being the last day of 1912, the very day they married back in 1862). But

1913 would be a watermark year; in the spring she would graduate from college.

    Ten-year-old Calla Wright stared up at the gold-framed photos on the dining room wall, newly hung for the occasion.

J.K. Stark

    “Aren’t Grandma and Grandpa just adorable? I’m so glad they got their picture taken recently. And look at this one of Grandpa Stark when he was young and dapper! But,” she giggled, “look how his feet are propped on top of books in this one!” She pointed to a third photograph. “I guess he is kind of short. I wonder if most Irish are little.”

Sevilla, JK Stark

Jennie did not respond. She had not thought of her grandfather being Irish. He was born in Maryland, spending much of his life there and in Pennsylvania before coming to Missouri back in the 1860s.

    Jennie was eleven years older than Calla, and the younger girl looked up to her. It was endearing that Calla followed her everywhere. She had not before considered how much of a role model she had become to her female cousins being the first of all the relatives, male or female, to attend college. She hoped she would not be the only one.

Aunt Ella Stark edged her way to where the two stood. The crowd of people coming to wish her parents well was not dissipating. She would have to raise the windows soon, even though it was a cold December day. The pungent odor of perspiration was getting overpowering.

“Miss Calla, your grandpa’s pa was born in Ireland. But your grandpa’s ma was as American as they

Ella Stark

come, from a good family in Pennsylvania. I suspect she raised your grandpa to not live in his father’s past. Even so, though your great-grandfather was born in Ireland, truthfully, he was more German than Irish. Just as the name ‘Stark’ suggests.”

Jennie was always learning something new from her maiden aunt who, in her mid-forties, stayed with the grandparents to look after them. Actually, her Aunt Ella had never left home and naturally assumed the role of caregiving, not that the very alert and able-bodied Grandma and Grandpa Stark needed any help.

“Aunt Ella, I learned from my German studies in college that ‘stark’ means strong. Powerful. Did you know that?”

Ella frowned at Jennie. “No, I did not. But, though nearly our entire county seems to have come from the German empire, we all should put it behind us. I have been reading in the newspaper how unfriendly they are with the French and British. Not that anyone in our family has lived there in decades. Maybe centuries.”

Emblem for the German Empire

Jennie studied about the German Empire in earnest her first and second years of college. She learned from Grandfather Stark that the Stark family had left Germany two centuries prior for England, then Ireland. Over 100 years after that, most Starks went to America. However, German influences still permeated, and since both her Grandmother and Grandfather Stark’s ancestors were Germanic, her interest was sparked.

Just as Calla idolized Jennie, Jennie loved and respected her Aunt Ella who had been as much a mother to her as anyone. For many years after her mother’s death, Jennie lived with Aunt Ella and her grandparents, even, for a time, after her father remarried and moved to Chillicothe a few miles away.

“How could Grandpa be more German if he was born in Ireland?”

“Miss Calla, that is a story for another day.” Aunt Ella was in charge of several days of festivities, though she had help from countless female relatives. She ruled the house like a general. Wiping flour off her palms onto her apron, Ella made her way into the living room, assuming a position near the back wall.

“Jennie! Come over here and sit by me.” Grandpa Stark beckoned her. His voice was strong and steady, despite being over seventy years of age. Seventy-three, was it?

She reluctantly left her post at near the center of the two rooms, but several feet away from her grandfather. She had to excuse her way past tall and more diminutive men in overalls and suits; women in dresses from plain to fancy; and children everywhere. In the corner stood a six-foot Christmas tree. Many brought presents to lay beneath it for the anniversary couple. Grandpa and Grandma Stark, in turn, had presents for the 21 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. The stash took up nearly half the room, requiring most of the crowd to remain in the dining room and the rooms beyond. Plus, those outside.

Grandfather Stark raised his voice to get the crowd’s attention.

“Now, everyone—or most everyone—knows our Jennie is in her final year at the University of Missouri.” Murmurs of assent came from two or three.

“You might not all know she is a mathematician, or soon will be when she gains her degree.”

“But it will not help her to find a husband!” The small crowd chuckled at her Aunt Anna Jane’s words as Jennie blushed, equally in anger as embarrassment. Jennie was named after her aunt, though her aunt went by “Jane” instead of “Jennie Ann.”

“Oh, but it will indeed help her find a better class of husband, just you watch! No ignorant farmer for her!” Jennie could always count on her brother Jay to take up her cause. Everyone took his answer humorously since Jay was himself a young farmer, yet hardly ignorant. A year younger than Jennie, he had been a champion debater while in high school. He did not follow his sister into college, choosing to help the family with what employment he could find. Their brother John, the youngest, would soon graduate from high school. Only their cousin Linnie had also gotten all the way through high school. So far.

Their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents—none ever got past eighth grade. Most cousins quit between the fifth and eighth grades, too, although many were not yet old enough to go further. Eighteen chances for Grandpa and Grandma Stark to have grandchildren who were better-educated than elementary school. Time would tell.

“Who says I need a husband,” Jennie muttered underneath her breath while maintaining a smile. “How might I be of help, Grandfather?” she asked, a scintilla more loudly.

“My girl, come closer. I have a question.” As Jennie drew near, her grandmother patted her hand, and her father arose to give her his seat next to Grandfather who turned to address her. “How many do you calculate are here today?”

She looked around the two rooms she could readily see, plus part of the kitchen beyond. Upstairs, she could hear children’s footsteps clambering about, with the sound of high-topped boots following close behind. Just outside in the cold were several men, their breath rising in little clouds.

“Maybe fifty would be my estimation.”

“Then, one for every year I have been married to your grandmother!”

The crowd broke out in a cheer, “Hear! Hear!”

“Grandfather, I need not have studied calculus to know that, since Aunt Ella has been telling everyone for the last year this day would come!”

Grandfather Stark hugged the slender young lady as a young lad chimed in, “What is calc’liss?” Before she attempted an answer to what she hoped was a rhetorical question, her two slightly older female Bailey cousins marched in with a cake. On the top was a golden “Fifty” standing in cardboard, surrounded by curly-q’s of piped icing. The delectable was placed upon a table in front of the elderly couple.

The Bailey family had traveled en masse from Kansas to be with the couple, except for Roy, who had a farm nearby and daughter Ada Gardner whose husband Ira was a lawyer in Brookfield. Most of the extended family was staying with either Roy or Ada and would come the following day when only relatives would be present for dinner. Their sisters Ruth and Effie, however, wanted to ensure all the guests had refreshments of some sort, so they had arrived early in the morning to bake the cake.

Short speeches followed, then a longer tale which Jennie could almost recite by memory.

“Father—christened as James Knox Stark, but known to most as ‘J.K.’—traveled to Missouri by train as a young man before the Civil War to work as a farm laborer, then returned in three years to Maryland to marry Mother. She lived on the other side of the mountain from where he once lived,” Jennie’s Uncle Dave began.

“You mean, he rescued her!” shouted a youngster. “And she rescued him!” another replied. “I always heard he was hoping to avoid the draft!” cried yet another as most laughed, but not everyone.

“Now, now,” Grandmother Sevilla Stark spoke up. “He could have gone to war. Like several of our relatives including Grandpa’s little brother. But your grandpa had responsibilities at home.” Her emphatic nod signaled an end to that particular discussion.

The tale continued, outlining the trek back to Missouri with three young children and the buying of good farmland upon which they continued to live forty-four years later.

Then, Uncle Dave named each of the couple’s eight living children including himself. A moment of silence was called for the fourth oldest child, Elizabeth Etta Stark, who did not survive childhood.

The younger children then unwrapped their presents from under the tree as most of the men roamed the rest of the house and yard with a piece of cake and hot apple cider. By five p.m., yawns could heard, and each mother rounded up her brood and said goodbye, although most of the adults would return the following day for a celebratory dinner.

Jennie, her father and her brothers all were spending the night, however. Since Aunt Ella stayed with her parents and was an “old maid,” she had a room of her own she was not volunteering to share. She unceremoniously went upstairs to the chamber, closing her door behind soon after supper. She, Jennie, and Grandma had made fried chicken that evening—Jennie’s favorite dish.

Jennie’s father, Orval, left at about nine, not saying where he was going or when or if he would return that night. So, Jennie and her brothers drew up chairs by the fireplace to talk. Grandma and Grandpa, exhausted by the excitement of the day and intending to arise early the next, bid their grandchildren goodnight and exited.

“Thank goodness, some peace and quiet!” Jennie exclaimed. Her brother Jay threw some firewood on the fire while John crossed his arms over his chest and sulked. He tilted the ladder-back chair so it rested on the wall behind him.

“Kind of boring, if you ask me. I should have followed Pa out to wherever he went off to. Had to be more interesting.” Thud! The chair John had tried to balance upon slipped a bit too far and he found himself on his back. Jay found the situation hilarious, while Jennie rolled her eyes. John picked himself and his chair up, then declared he was going for a walk around the farm.

After he left, Jennie nodded toward the fire and addressed Jay. “Sure is preferable to be in here by the fire with you than out there in the chill. Hope he doesn’t trip on anything. He didn’t take a lantern.”

“He’ll be fine, sis. Hey, I have something I’ve been wondering. You know the family story about how Grandma and Grandpa rescued each other? What do you suppose that is all about?”

Jennie mulled the question over a while.

“Jay, I suspect Grandpa didn’t get along with his father back in Pennsylvania. I heard Aunt Ella once, talking to Aunt Lucy, saying the old man was a ne’er-do-well who got kicked out of his wife’s—their grandmother’s—house.”

“No kidding!”

“You know, she died just a few years ago, maybe fifteen years after he did. I don’t remember Grandpa ever talking about either of his parents. Aunt Ella said her grandmother claimed her son William—the one who died just after the Civil War—bought her house with his enlistment bonus. I don’t think their Grandpa Peter Stark was around much.”

“Hmmm. Interesting. How do you think Aunt Ella knows this, if Grandpa never talked about his parents?”

“Well, she said she keeps in touch with her namesake and cousin, Ella Griffith Rush. She is maybe six years younger than Aunt Ella and was a teenager when Great-grandpa Stark stayed with them awhile. Aunt Ella also writes to her Uncle George who is just ten years older than her. Anyway, he is the one who stayed home with Great-Grandmother Stark. Still lives in the house. He never really knew Grandpa, because he was only five when Grandma and Grandpa got married. And it wasn’t much after that Grandma and Grandpa left Pennsylvania and Maryland for Missouri.”

“That certainly must have been a long conversation you overheard, Jennie,” Jay chuckled.

“Well, maybe I asked Aunt Ella a few things over the years…”

Jennie then was the one with the folded arms while Jay rubbed his chin.

“Jay, do you remember the years we spent living here with Grandma and Grandpa?”

“Of course! Some of the happiest days of my life!”

“Me, too, Jay. Me, too… Say, does it bother you we moved to Chillicothe with Father? When it was time for me to go to high school?”

“I have mixed emotions—don’t you, Jennie? I did not like leaving Grandpa’s farm. We had a good life here. And although we could still go see them very often since they were less than thirty miles away, we still had the school week in that very small house.”

Both grew silent for a few minutes, staring into the fire. Jay got up and put another log on, sending sparks flying.

“Wet pine. Never a great idea. But at least it burns hot for a while. Anyway, Jennie, we have never talked about Willie.”

Willie was Jennie’s and Jay’s step-mother, not that they liked to acknowledge her as such.

“What is there to say?”

“Let’s see, you were about eleven and I was ten when Pa

Orval and Willie Stark

married her. I’m guessing after Ma’s death in’97, then him going to war the next year [Spanish-American], he was plum depressed. Didn’t know what to do with himself. Living here at the farm with us and Grandma and Grandpa.”

“I suppose, Jay, when you put it that way, I almost feel sorry for him. And I remember Willie’s mother was a widow at the time with five or six kids at home.”

Jennie sat up straight and uncrossed her arms.

“Say, it just dawned on me.”

“What?”

“Willie probably was nicknamed that after her father. Wonder why she didn’t just go by Nancy. Well, she is harmless enough. Took care of Pa when both were around at the same time, I suppose.”

Just then, the pair’s brother John jiggled the front doorknob, finally finding a way to open the simple but sturdy oak door. Jay got up, yawning, and stretched.

“I’m turning in, Sis. So should you. John, you coming?”

John glanced at his sister. “Don’t sit here by yourself moping, Jennie. Tomorrow’s a big day. All our relatives crowding into the dining room. Better be more than one turkey and a ham!”