Thursday July 30, 2020 Parental Rights 1869-1940 Part One

I never knew my paternal grandfather Charles Clinton Reynolds. Born in 1869, he died in 1940, eleven years before I was born. He is an enigma to me for descriptions of him and his behaviors portray an individual of polar opposites that could change drastically in a blink of an eye; a Jekyll & Hyde personality whose children expressed fearing; and even after whose death, talked about their relationship with him with some degree of caution, although allowing him the benefit of the doubt.

All I have to go by are the descriptions I’ve found in a body of family genealogy as a series of recorded and transcribed interviews and letters compiled by my first cousin Shirley Reynolds Metsker, of Colorado, in 2007. Interviews were unfortunately done late in life for several of the surviving siblings, so their vivid memories of the early days were limited. I’ve tried to substantiate historical comments mentioned as noted within these pages. History can be intriguing when family is involved, but is often times inaccurate.

Charles, herein referred to as ‘CC’, was the oldest son of Henry Edward Reynolds (1832-1900) and Leah Diebert Reynolds (1833-1905). He was born in Cavetown, Maryland on the outskirts of Hagerstown, as was his brother, William Henry, (1872-1950) and their oldest sister, Sarah E. Reynolds Alsip (1856-1933) known by her nephews and nieces as ‘Aunt Sally.’

Henry and Leah lost five infant daughters. Their first child, Lauretta, lived only two and a half years (1854-1857); Ann Rebecca (1859), Eyday Cathrin (1861), Emey Isabel (1864), and Margaret Elen (1867). Sarah was their second born; her brothers CC and ‘Will’ were 13 & 16-years younger.

It was said the Reynolds were of Scots-Irish stock, an ancestry, according to the two history books about them I have read in the past 10 years: “Born Fighting: How The Scots-Irish Shaped America,” by James Webb; Broadway Books, NY 2004; and “An Indigenous People’s History of The United States,” by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Beacon Press, Boston 2014, underscore the mindset of the period during which Henry and consequently, CC and Will, grew to manhood.

These families, the Reynolds and Dieberts were born and raised in the mountains of Maryland and Pennsylvania, where they had lived for generations. They had come over from England before and during the Revolutionary War, took to the mountains and stayed there.

Henry Reynolds had four brothers; their names unknown. The five of them drove six and eight-horse teams hauling freight from Baltimore, west to Cumberland, over the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains. Henry told his sons, CC and Will, that he and his brothers had the reputation of being the five strongest and best fighters in Maryland, and so CC would later try to instill these same abilities in his seven sons: This generational portrayal of what constituted a man, physical strength, courage, and fighting ability, bore out in my father’s mindset as well, although, (thankfully) exhibited in a far less degree by the time I was born.

Henry told of a story during the Civil War when the Confederates were coming up after The Battle of Antietam, scavenging for food and horses when he, and presumably others in the family, had gathered all the horses in the community and took them up into the mountains to hide them from the desperate soldiers.

It’s unknown who, if any, Reynolds or Diebert men served in the Civil War; but the family story about my Grandmother Anna Louise Barnhart’s father, David G. Barnhart, is that he paid someone a few hundred dollars to go fight in his stead, so he could go to California to pan for gold. Is the story true or false? Who would bribe someone else into going to war for them, much less be a person who accept any amount of money to potentially sacrifice their life?

My oldest sister Ann Marie Reynolds Baldner has a Reynolds family history notebook too that has a few different entries in it, one of them by CC’s sister “Aunt Sally.” Using a typewriter, she wrote that “U.S. Army Captain Charles Reynolds died with Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn, June 26, 1876.” She was 20-years old in 1876, so she may have eventually learned something about the battle, but according to burial records and U.S. history data, that although there was indeed a Charlie Reynolds who died there, he was not a captain in the army, and wasn’t enlisted as a soldier.

CC knew how to read and write, but attended school only to the 2nd grade. As well as being a teamster as had been his father and uncles, CC worked many years as a farmer, a security guard, a railroad worker for the Western Maryland Railroad, and the Great Western Railroad in Oelwein, and Des Moines, Iowa, as well as various other jobs, including being a policeman in Hagerstown, Maryland, as was his brother, William Henry Reynolds.

There’s a photo of them together. Note that CC is holding a billy club. My dad said CC could throw his club at someone running away and trip them up; that was how policemen were trained back then.

CC always had work, but didn’t like to take orders. One example my Uncle Deibert talked about was when CC worked for the Western Maryland Railroad and they were going up the mountain along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal.

“He was riding on the cowcatcher of the engine, which was against the rules and regulations, when the train he was on, and another, collided head-on on the same track.

“They weren’t going too fast. CC turned around to put his tobacco in his back pocket and when he turned back around, here was another engine on the same track. Water on one side, mountain on the other; he couldn’t swim, so he went for the rocks. He was lucky enough that he landed between two big rocks when those engines came together. When he looked out those engines were straight up, hooked together.

“He was the closest man to the wreck and he was hurt least of any man. When he jumped for the rocks, he had hit his head. I don’t know how many men died in that wreck, because the other train coming down the mountain was going pretty good.

“That was about as bad a wreck as he was ever in, except for the time when he was up toward Cumberland someplace and he was in the caboose. The engineer thought he was going to hit a car at a crossing so he threw on the air. If you’re not moving very fast and you throw on the air, you stop right now. If you’re moving very fast, when you throw on the air, you’d slide some.

“But Dad had just come through the door of the caboose when that thing stopped and it threw him the length of the caboose and he hit the door on the other end. He was hurt worse, than when he was a flagman in an earlier accident and while crossing the Potomac River bridge, was dragged across ties extending out from the track after he losing his footing getting on the caboose. He was just on the mend after those injuries.

One time when he’d been hurt on the railroad and he wasn’t working, he was tending bar. Something happened the night before, that he took and heaved two guys out. The next evening we were sitting out on the front porch and one of guys he had thrown out of the saloon, came walking by from work, carrying his lantern. Seeing CC, he swung that thing; Pop didn’t see it coming and it hit him in the head. That was the only time I saw my Pop knocked down. Them lanterns were heavy, you know? But when that guy hit him, he really took off. I don’t know if my pop ever got even with him or not, but I imagine he did. It was said of CC that “ ... he’d rather fight than eat.”

CC married Sarah Anna Louise Barnhart, of Leitersburg, Maryland, in Hagerstown, in 1892. She was 7th of 17 children born of two wives (sisters) in addition to numerous out-of-wedlock offspring of David G. Barnhart; her mother Anna Elizabeth Caroline Fry died in 1875.

CC was 23; Sarah (Anna) was 20. It appears theirs was a tumultuous life during an era when it became popular for young men to go ‘out west’ to help harvest crops; Charles went to Illinois for harvest one year before they were married. In 1892, after Charles and Anna were married they moved to Illinois, where CC was hired out as a farmhand for two years.

People said, “You can’t work for that farmer, he’s too mean.” CC said, “I’ll work for him.” Later the old man came out and jumped all over CC and cussed him -- and CC decked him. The old man said,” I don’t want you to quit! I don’t want you to quit!” CC said, “I’m not going to quit. I hired out to you for two years and I’m staying if I have to kick your ass off the farm three times a week.” When the time was up, the old man he was working for, cried. CC said he never worked for a finer man than him after that.