An Ancestor to Remember, Part I

Every now and again a family historian runs across an ancestor that comes as something of a surprise.  Perhaps you trace your geneology to Richard the Lionheart, to a Mayflower Pilgram, or maybe to a famous Civil War general.

Researching my maternal grandmother's Blake-Gumz family line, I found an ancestor who really amazed me.  He was an uncle of my grandmother, Fern Gumz Stratton, the brother of her mother, Allie Buella Blake.  While he was not a crusading King of England, he had just as much courage and fortitude.  I share his story now as an example of the amazing people family historians run into as part of this fabulous geneology hobby.

Guy Evan Blake

Oshkosh, Wisconsin, 1867

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched...but are felt in the heart."  ~~ Helen Keller.

The family of John Arza Blake and Ann Eva McCammond was already well established by the time their tenth child, Guy Evan Blake, arrived on the scene.  John Arza Blake, born in New York in 1851, had come to the frontier community of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Winnebago, when he was just a toddler.  Ann Eva McCammond was born in Canada and immigrated to the United States when she was just six years old, settling with her parents and siblings in Janesville, Wisconsin.  By the time she was 16, she, too, was living in Oshkosh.  We will never know how the two met, but on September 15, 1875, John Arza Blake married Ann Eva McCammond in an Episcopal ceremony in Oshkosh.



By June of 1877, John Arza and Ann Eva welcomed their first child, son John Orva Blake.  In quick succession, a series of brothers and sisters appeared for John Orva, including:  Allie (1878), Franklin (1880), James Harvey (1881), Eva Ann (1883), Elbert (1885), Margaret (1887), Mary (1889), and Willie (1892).  





C&N W Railroad Depot in Oshkosh

On October 24, 1894, another son, Guy Evan Blake, joined the family.   At that time, John Arza was working as a yardmaster for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad in Oshkosh.  The family lived in a home at 346 10th Street.  With so many children in the home, the new baby would have gotten the lion's share of his mother's attention, while older sister Allie would have played a large role in helping to care for her younger brothers and sisters.  Older brothers John Orva, Frank, and James Harvey would have been responsible for the upkeep of the home and yard, in addition to jobs outside the home, while their father worked hard at the railroad.

By the time Guy Evan was two years old, his mother was pregnant again, this time with her eleventh child.  On January 4, 1897, the family welcomed son Lester, but the happiness brought by the new addition was tinged with sadness.  At 43 years old, Ann Eva did not seem the same after this last birth.  In fact, her condition deteriorated rapidly, with her doctor diagnosising a case of peritonitis, an inflammation of the membrane lining of the abdomen. 

Ann Eva's suffering would not have been easy for her family to watch.  According to a 1911 encyclopedia offering, a patient suffering from peritonitis:

[symptons] usually begin by a shivering fit or rigor, together with vomiting, and with pain in the abdomen of a peculiarly severe and sickening character, accompanied with extreme tenderness, so that pressure, even of the bed-clothes, causes aggravation of suffering....the breathing becomes rapid and shallow....  The face is pinched and anxious. These symptoms may pass off in a day or two; if they do not the case is apt to go on to a fatal termination. In such event ... the temperature falls, the face becomes cold and clammy; the pulse is exceedingly rapid and feeble, and death takes place from collapse, the mental faculties remaining clear till the close.

For two-year-old Guy Evan, the illness and then death of his mother must have been devestating.  The new baby, Lester, was sent to live with his material grandparents, Charles and Mary Ann McCammond, while John Arza kept the rest of the children with him, relying more than ever on his older sons and daughters to help run the household and rear the younger children.

The Blake family would not bid farewell to the nineteenth century without more turmoil.  The year 1898 saw labor unrest across the nation, including in the lumber industries in and around Oshkosh.  At this time in its history, Oshkosh had grown to a population of 28,000 and was known as the "Sawdust City" thanks to the proliferation of lumbermills and other outgrowths of the timber industry.  There were seven companies in town that manufactured doors, blinds, sashes, and custom millwork, between them employing approximately 2,000 workers--over seven percent of the total population. 

John Arza's father, Norman, and his brother, Charles, both worked for one of the mills in town, Robert McMillen & Company.  When workers at the mill went on strike, Norman and Charles were two that chose to cross the picket line.  On June 23, 1898, during the second month of the strike, a crowd of approximately 1,000 demonstrators took up a position outside the fence of Robert McMillen & Company.  The strikers and their supporters waited for the whistle marking the end of the work day, then began to taunt those workers who had crossed the picket line and were now leaving the mill.  Violence erupted, and Norman Blake, then 70 years old, was struck on the arm, which was broken by the blow.  Charles, seeing his father attacked, became enraged and joined in the fray, suffering a bad cut to his head.

The Paine Lumber Mill is an example of the conditions
in which mill workers labored across the city

Both Norman and Charles would recover, but the events of that June day would have been extremely trying to John Arza, as two of his own sons, James Harvey and John Orva worked at another mill in town, also suffering as part of the citywide labor unrest, while son Franklin was employed at a local match factory.  John himself was working by that time as a teamster for H. J. Christenson, a wood and coal dealer.  With the whole family dependent in some form or another on the lumber industry, the impacts of the labor unrest would be unsettling at best--financially devestating at worst.

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In Part II of An Ancestor to Remember, Guy Evan Blake, his father and siblings, will move into the twentieth century, a time of exciting change for the family and for the entire nation.