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| Notes for Philip Beyer | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Memories of Robert Thomas Beyer: "And now to my grandfather, perhaps my favorite ancestor. He was born in New York City on February 22, 1856. His family was not sufficiently moved by this date to give their son the name of George. Where the name Philip came from, I don't know. It has certainly been popular in the family ever since. As I mentioned above, his sister Elisabeth named her son Philip in 1876, and there has been a Philip Beyer in every generation since, including Philip Beyer, born in Seattle, WA in 1970. Of what went on in this German immigrant family, I know only one anecdote. In 1863, there was a great deal of rioting in New York City against the Civil War draft, and against the blacks, who were perceived by the large immigrant population to be the cause of the troubles. This rioting led to smashing of store fronts, killing and burning. (You can read about it in Civil War histories.) In the midst of this turmoil came Jacob Beyer (age 10) and his brother Philip (age 7). They see a wallpaper store with its windows smashed. They enter, gather up rolls of wallpaper and march home with them. Now their mother must clearly have been a highly law-abiding person. The sight of her children with their loot must have been terrifying for her. Instead of welcoming the acquisitions of these young looters, she sent them out again, to put the paper back in the store. And they did so without incident. Thus ends the entire Beyer contribution to the Civil War. As in many families, I think that there was some hope for further education for Philip beyond the elementary level that was dashed by economic needs, and Philip went out to work early. Here my history of his activities is almost non-existent. I know that he became active in local politics very early, and served as a poll watcher in the Tilden-Hayes presidential election of 1876, when he was three months short of voting age. By that time, or a little later, he had a job in a cardigan sweater factory. Working at a somewhat higher position (and possibly his supervisor) was a young Anglo-Irish woman named Elizabeth Colcroft. And from that sweater factory came the beginnings of our branch of the Beyer family. Philip and Elizabeth were married in 1879. Children came early and fairly often Catherine in 1880, Philip in 1882, Lillian in 1885 and James in 1887. By that time, the Philip Beyers had moved to the town of Fort Lee, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from the upper part of Manhattan. Fort Lee is now best known today as the Jersey end of the George Washington Bridge, but it had a history of its own, going back to the primitive fort there in the Revolutionary War (named for General Charles Lee and easily overwhelmed by the British, in 1777). The town sat at the heights of the Palisades, the set of cliffs running close to the Hudson along its western shore, and Catherine (my Aunt Kate) was full of stories about the children climbing up and down the paths from one level to another. At one time the Beyers lived in a house of considerable size that had earlier been lived in, and apparently was still owned by a minor American poet, one Dr. Thomas Dunn English. An anthology that I have indicates that he lived from 1819 to 1902, so her was contemporaneous with their living in Fort Lee. English is best known for a single poem, a melancholy ballad that begins "Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt. Sweet Alice whose hair was so brownŠ" Until seeing the poem in an anthology many years later, I never did hear of what became of sweet Alice, but the first line above was a commonly used one in the Beyer household of my childhood. Before or after the move to Fort Lee, Grandpa had gotten into the butcher business, and that was his major work for the rest of his working life, in one way or another. I think that they (the Beyer brothers) owned a shop in Fort Lee, and there were stories of the annual making of large batches of sauerkraut. The community in which they lived must have had a large German section. The Catholic Church that they attended had an elementary school that taught German to the children. Aunt Kate, who left school after the first few grades (actually, after making her First Communion), a common practice for girls at that time, had to write a letter to her parents, in German, at the end of the school year. The result of this training, and the proximity of the older Beyers (always called Grossvater and Grossmutter by the Beyer children) meant that the older children mentioned above had a working understanding of spoken German for most of their lives, although they forgot how to speak or write it. I heard it said that German was the language of the household in the early years of my grandparents' marriage, since they lived in the early years of my grandparents marriage, since they lived with the Matthew Beyers, so that Elizabeth Colcroft Beyer perforce learned to speak and understand German, Irish born though she was. I mentioned Grossvater and Grossmutter. I kept hearing these terms as a child (although the old folks were twenty years dead), and I though that they were saying grossfather, grossmother. I had learned from school tables that twelve units make a dozen and 12 dozen make a gross, so I thought, O.K., a father's father is a grandfather, a grandfather's father must be a grossfather and so on. Somewhere along the line, I was straightened out on the subject, but I still think my terminology was a good one. Somewhere in this Fort Lee period, Grandpa's enthusiasms for politics reached a peak. He was eager to run for the New Jersey state legislature. Apparently he was told that it wasn't his turn yet, he should wait for the next time round, but Grandpa was impetuous and ran anyway, as an unendorsed candidate in the Republican primary. Of course, he had no base of support and was overwhelmed. He never tried running again. He never lost interest in the political scene, however. He remained an enthusiastic Republican through the Teddy Roosevelt era. He became such a strong Roosevelt supporter that when TR ran on the Progressive (Bull Moose) ticket in 1912, Grandpa supported him. That proved to be a weakening of his Republican ties. Apparently he supported the Republican Hughes in 1916 and Harding in 1920, but enough was enough, and in 1924 he bolted again, this time to support LaFollette who ran on the Progressive ticket. That was the end of Grandpa's Republicanism, and in 1928 he voted for Al Smith. I come on the scene at this point. I can still remember Grandpa writing, on the blank edges of a newspaper, to show to my Uncle Charlie, his prediction of states that Smith would carry, and thus win the election. Alas for Grandpa, he was hugely wrong. When Franklin Roosevelt came to the governorship in New York, Grandpa became an FDR supporter. In the language of the day, Grandpa was FRBC For Roosevelt Before Chicago (the Democratic convention was held in Chicago that year). I was caught up in his enthusiasms, and retain a vivid memory of listening to the radio and the state-by-state balloting, being properly resentful that two of the four ballots were taken in the middle of the night, so that I, as a twelve-year old, could not stay up to hear. It is probably also due to my grandfather's interest that I remember so many details of that election campaign. When Roosevelt flew from Albany to Chicago, to address the convention, thus breaking with traditions that went back more than one hundred years, I remember listening for reports of Roosevelt's plane it was seen over Sandusky, Ohio, then over Toledo, and, finally, it arrived in Chicago. (I also received another political lesson (partially learned at this time and more fully, later), when Roosevelt said, in his acceptance speech, "I accept your platform, 100%." That platform called for retrenchment of federal expenses, balancing of the budget and return of power to the states. Fortunately for the U.S. of that day, Roosevelt did none of those things when he became President.) Grandpa went to his grave undiminished in his support of FDR. I can still see him, sitting on the arm of the chair nearest the radio (he was rather deaf), listening to the reports of Roosevelt's overwhelming victory in 1936, and hear him saying, "my cup runneth over." That presidential campaign of 1936 had a strong effect on me. This was the period when I was being educated at home, because of my ill health. Grandpa lived with us, and his eyesight was failing, so that I read t him every day from the daily newspaper The New York Herald Tribune, a strong anti-Roosevelt sheet. I read all the speeches that were reported in full, the editorials, and also the news columns. And my grandfather would frequently interrupt my reading to express his opinions on the subject. I was well-trained in contemporary American history by those experiences. Another enthusiasm of Grandpa's was his love of the theater, especially the Shakespearean theater. As a young adult, he often worked nights as an extra or walk-on in the day when Shakespeare's plays were done regularly on Broadway. The great actors of the day Lawrence Barrett, Edwin Booth (brother of John Wilkes Booth) concentrated heavily on Shakespeare's histories and tragedies. As a result, Grandpa knew these plays virtually by heart, and he never forgot them. One might say of him that, while he never went far in school, he was well educated in and by Shakespeare. When my grandfather was lying in bed at home, in his final illness (1938), he was heard reciting something in his delirium. I was called in to listen to him and find out just what he was saying. I was pleased to be able to identify it as the soliloquoy of Henry the Fifth on the night before the battle of Agincourt, that reads in part, "And what have kings that privates have not too, Save ceremony, save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou idol Ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?" During the New Jersey period, the family moved briefly to Passaic, N.J. (I think, but possibly it was Patterson), but soon bounced back to Fort Lee. The Philip Beyers lived long enough in Fort Lee for the ninth child, Robert Beyer, to be born. Aunt Kate recalled that Grandma was in the care of a midwife, but there were complications, so that she (then aged 19) was sent over to Manhattan to get the doctor, one Robert Chapman. This was no easy task. She had to take a ferry over to Manhattan, and then find her way among the early trolleys that reached to the upper end of Manhattan. Aunt Kate was very unhappy about this event; she thought her mother was too old to have more children (or that she herself was too old to have a baby sibling). But find the doctor she must have, Grandma came through and (Uncle) Bob was born and named for the doctor, Robert Chapman Beyer. Not long after, the family moved back to New York, either to the Bronx or to upper Manhattan. This was the beginning of a twenty-year drift of the family, from Fort Lee to the Bronx, to Brooklyn and ultimately to Baldwin, Long Island. No one of these steps was much of a move by today's standards, but each one was no doubt warmly discussed, and each one undoubtedly left broken relationships and sentimental memories. Travel was difficult and money almost nonexistent, as were automobiles and telephones, so that each of these moves must have been far more disruptive than much larger ones today."48 Im 1880, Philip Beyer and his new wife Elizabeth (listed in the census as Lillie) lived on the north side of 40th Street in New York City, between 9tha nd 10th Avenues. His occupation was listed in the census as "machinist." Also living with them were William and Catherine COlcroft, though in the census they are listed, perhaps by accident, simply as Croft. William Colcroft's occupation is listed as clerk. Interstingly enough, although Elizabeth Beyer (nee Colcroft) is listed as being born in Ireland, her mother, Catherine Colcroft, is listed as being born in England. A mistake? An assumption of the enumerator? A mystery yet unravelled? No way to know. 49 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Modified 31 Mar 2002 | Created 20 May 2002 by Reunion for Macintosh |