Alson Alexander White was my mother’s grandfather. I won’t anesthetize you with his ancestors’ heroics in the Revolutionary War, or his connection to Stephen F. Austin, the “father of Texas”. I don’t think mother knew this history, or even cared. She lived in the present tense.
She mentioned that her grandfather loved biscuits, which he consumed in great quantities. Mother says Mary Trulucia, his daughter and Mary's mother (Sadie) didn’t know how to cook much of anything, with the exception of biscuits. Mary would make dozens on his request. She loved her father, but perhaps she overdid the biscuit-baking. Alson grew fat and, in my mother’s telling, his great girth aided and abetted his fatal tumble down the basement stairs. She omitted any details that could pinpoint the actual cause of death. It may have been the fall, or it may have been a heart attack. His death was premature in any case. He was only fifty years old.
My mother didn’t have much to say about her maternal grandparents. I found the restrained lack of commentary on them strange. Maybe it was the other way around. Her grandmother cried when she was born with dark eyes and dark hair, the stain of too much Italian in her genes. This initial response must have struck a painful nerve when shared with my mother at some later date. It might explain why my mother, emphatically, would point out that we were not from Sicilian stock. We hailed from the blue-eyed, fair-haired Florentine Italians. Amazing, the filters that blind the obvious in a mother’s eyes. Of the five she birthed, none of us had blue eyes or blonde hair. The most Italian looking of my sisters recently had DNA testing that revealed that she is less than three percent Italian. This, despite the fact that my mother’s grandfather was, we thought, all Italian--with a line traced back to the fifteenth century Florentine Alberti’s who were bankers to the Pope.
I found this less than three percent Italian DNA result perplexing. Perplexing enough to send my own spaghetti-enriched spittle to the same lab to see what’s up. The results from my sister’s test show a smidgen of Japanese, and an Indian or two in the woodpile, but European DNA overwhelms the pie chart. We must have come from the forested areas since a great number of relatives were involved with harvesting timber, milling it, making furniture out of it, and marketing it. Alson White, the deceased biscuit eater, was no exception. He was born in Iowa and worked at a store until, at the age of 19, he moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where he secured a job as a bookkeeper for a lumber wholesaler. They were rafting logs down the Mississippi from Wisconsin and piling it at Hannibal. Mother says he had a photographic memory, a gift which helped him and the growing lumber company to prosper. He became a major stockholder and, after siring four children in Hannibal, moved to the company’s headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri as the company’s treasurer.
As a side note, one of the lumber yards operated by Badger Lumber Company was very close to where I grew up: a five-minute walk to the Standard State Bank at the end of our street, another five minutes on 24 Highway, up and over the railroad bridge to the lumber yard. There, I would rummage through the bins looking for suitable two by fours for a suicidal cart or the lathe strips needed to plank the ribs for a kayak. If the help there had known my great grandfather was a founder of the company they might have treated me with less disdain and suspicion as I destroyed their neatly stacked bins of lumber looking for that perfect knot free board.
Mother didn’t say a lot about her mother’s parents but she noted that Alson was a 33rd degree Mason. This is where Alson becomes infinitely more interesting. I find online a squib in the Kansas City Architect and Builder’s Journal noting his death. He had his fingers in a lot of pies, a vestryman at the Episcopal Church, member of the governing board of Southwestern Lumbermen, Councilman for the City of Independence, and a member of the utility board there. The real pay dirt comes with his fascination with secret societies, especially if there was a little fun to be had. He was a Knights Templar, a Shriner with the little red Egyptian hat and black tassel, and was awarded the ultimate 33rd Masonic Degree for meritorious service. It appears he travelled to Scotland to participate in a Scottish Rite that rewarded him with some special award for outstanding service and dedication to the Masonic Brotherhood. All of his pallbearers were Knights Templars.
All of this is interesting to me, but the article on Alson’s death, after all the above memberships, mentions--almost apologetically it seems--that he was one of the organizers of a secret society called “The Concatenated Order of Hoo Hoos.” What? I had never heard of the Hoo Hoos. It brought to mind an image of the Whos, the inhabitants of Dr. Seuss’ Whoville. Turns out, I wasn’t that far off. I found that the term “Hoo Hoo” originated from an alarming tuft of hair that grew on top of the otherwise bald head of one of the “Hoo Hoo” founders. He became “Hoo Hoo’s” first member and the group's first snark. I’m not making any of this up.
It appears this secret society originated in 1892 when five men, returning from a Yellow Pine Manufacturer’s meeting, were detained for seven hours at a rail station in Gurdon, Arkansas. To kill time, they sat on a pile of lumber and shared thoughts on forming a unified lumber fraternity. In a nutshell--and these men might have been the nuts inside the shell--they wanted to form a lumberman’s group that furthered the interest of the industry, and at the same time have a little fun at the expense of some of the more serious secret societies. Thumbing their noses at superstition, they chose a black cat as their mascot. One of the nuts, possibly liquored, suggested the number nine would receive importance and reverence in the Hoo-Hoo society. For the logo, the cat’s tail would curl into a figure-nine. Nine men would sit on the Board of Directors, and their annual meeting would meet on the ninth day of the ninth month beginning nine minutes after nine. The original initiation fee was $9.99 cents. Their officers would be the Supreme Nine, made up of the Snark, the Senior Hoo-Hoo, the Junior Hoo-Hoo, the Boojum, the Scrivenoter, the Jabberwock, the Cuctocacian, the Arcanoper, and the Gurdon. The overall leader was the Snark of the Universe, a title that trumps the Mason’s Exalted Ruler. In summation, despite the possibility that these lumbermen were infected by some obscure fungal or mold disease caught solely by foresters, the Hoo Hoo’s have promoted the interests of the lumber industry and the preservation of forests, and at the same time had a little fun parodying other secret societies. Along the way, the society has had such distinguished members as Theodore Roosevelt and William Harding.
I have filled out my application to be a member, and am hoping to visit soon the international headquarters in Gurdon, Arkansas. I hope with my membership I will get more information on the secret ritual of “The Embalming of the Snark.” I will also receive, in compensation for the $69.00 membership fee, a bow tie with a black cat imprinted on either side, it’s tail twisted into a figure-nine. I’m not sure which suit and which occasion will be appropriate for this accoutrement.
To become a member, you have to be somehow associated with forest products, however tenuous that might be. I ran across a picture of one of the Hoo Hoo groups, promoting wood products, that created the Society for the Preservation of Wooden Toilet Seats. For good measure, the group posed for a picture with the products hanging around their necks. My pitch on my application to the Hoo Hoo’s is that I made hundreds of faux banjo’s from the cast off center piece of a wooden toilet seat. In the eighties, Singer Manufacturing in Monett, Missouri, used a CNC (computer numerical control) router to make hundreds of oak toilet seats. I would drive over there in my truck and buy the cast off center piece for ten cents apiece. I would make a red oak handle from scrap wood obtained from a church friend’s sawmill, add frets and other faux banjo doo dads, then Sharon would string it and add a straw flower arrangement and a bow on the front. It was a hit at the Silver Dollar City Craft Shows and I will be using this banjo to worm my way into the Hoo Hoo’s.
I can find nothing not to love about the Hoo Hoo’s. My geat grandfather's part in the formation of such an illustrious organization has moved Alson Alexander White up a notch or two in my book--despite the fact that he might not have approved of his daughter’s marrying an Italian, and her giving birth to my mother, who was a tad too Italian-looking in his and Sadie’s estimation.
Family connections, like second cousins thrice removed, might as well be calculus. I don’t have a mind for it. I can’t even fathom simple connections like great aunts or great nephews' so I’ll keep it simple.
Sarah (Sadie) Ann Robertson was my mother’s mother’s mother. I hate to convict someone without overwhelming evidence, but my mother didn’t have much good to say about her. So, since this is not a court of law, and my mother’s instincts are unimpeachable, I’ll proceed to prosecute her. All of the hard evidence comes from my mother’s hand. In clear black ‘ball point’ scrivening, she describes her mother’s mother (Sarah Ann Robinson) as selfish. She offers only one example, but it is so egregious, you may find you agree with my mother; at least you should. My mother’s mother’s father (Alson Alexander White) was well-heeled, and traveled widely in his business interests, so on his road trips he would buy bolts of quality cloth for Sarah, his wife, and his two daughters: Lucille; and Mary Trulucia (my mother’s mother). Sadie, selfish Sadie, would make dresses for herself with the expensive cloth, then buy cheap cloth to make dresses for Lucille and Mary Trulucia. This is back in the day when mothers actually sewed and, to give credit where credit is due, Sadie must have actually stitched the dresses herself, because my mother says Sadie would thump her on the head with a metal thimble. Ergo, she must have been sewing. Even as I prosecute my mother’s mother’s mother, I feel guilty, because the defendant is not around to defend herself. If she was, I’d squeeze in a question of why was she thumping Charlotte on the head?
My mother notes that Sadie favored her five sons over the daughters. Other notes indicate she never forgave Mary Trulucia for running away and marrying Wilford Alberti (my mother’s father). I can’t find information on a formal or church wedding so I assume they eloped. Wilford was 23 and Mary Trulucia was 21. A blessing from Mary Trulucia’s father was out of the question since Wilford was not gainfully employed--and was Italian to boot (pun intended...you know, Italy is shaped like a boot). Alson Alexander, Sadie’s dad, would have liked to give Wilford the boot. Italians were not held in high regard at the time, and Sadie cried when Charlotte was born, complete with dark hair and dark eyes, looking very Italian.
Two other words Charlotte uses to describe Sadie is a “belle”, and a “beauty”. With a little prompting I think my mother would have added “spoiled” and “supercilious”. (Supercilious is my word; my mother would have used snooty or hoity-toity). I’m just trying to divine the thoughts my mother really held of Sadie with my limited evidence.
Evidence for the belle comment is slim, but here it is: Sadie was born in Rensselaer, Missouri, at Oakland Farms, a plantation home of historical significance. Her lineage is chock full of old money and landed gentry that can be traced back to an immigrant from merry old England in 1630, Lieutenant Griffin Craft. Oakland Farms was situated in Ralls county in Missouri above St. Louis in a little pocket dubbed “Little Dixie,” because of the high number of slaves and slaveholders. The major crops were tobacco, cotton, and hemp: all requiring labor in planting and harvesting. Imagine the labor involved in plowing with a mule (or by hand for that matter), harrowing with a hoe, then harvesting the cotton, hemp, or tobacco. Oakland Farms was no exception to neighboring farms or plantations and their crops depended on slave labor. I have failed to find how many slaves, or a register of their names and genders. I don’t have hard evidence Sadie’s father owned or operated Oakland Farms; only that she was born and married there. Rensselaer was only a blip on the dirt road without facilities, so it makes sense they would reside in Hannibal, a long walk, or a short buggy ride due east of Rensselaer. Surprisingly, Hannibal was Missouri's third largest city when the Hannibal @ St. Joseph Railroad was organized in 1846 at the offices of John M. Clemens (Mark Twain's father). The railway connected to the state's second largest city, St. Joseph.
I’ve lost corroborating reference somewhere in a pile of papers, but Sadie’s father was involved in the booming lumber industry in Hannibal, where Alson Alexander White was working for the company that eventually became Badger Lumber Company. Somewhere in the comings and goings in Hannibal--in a church, on the street, or possibly where Main Street bends down to the wharf and the Riverboat Landing, Sadie and Alson crossed paths. You can picture the young Sadie; the belle and the beauty, in a long dress and antebellum hat, strolling the wharf. More than enough to catch the attention of the young up and coming man named Alson Alexander White. I’m sure she held a parasol, more fashionable than functional, on the day they met. White, preferably, with a pink fringe, to match her long dress and the pink ribbon on her hat.
Fast forward through courtship and the marriage ceremony to Sadie’s seven pregnancies. Eight, if you count the first baby which she lost after playing around and jumping off of the porch. The first four children, in order, were Lucille, James Edward, Alson Alexander Jr., and Mary Trulucia, all born in Hannibal, Missouri between 1879 and 1885. The next three were Paul Palmore, Charles Joseph, and French Robertson, all born in Independence, Missouri between 1890 and 1894. This information comes from an obituary for Alson Alexander, and the birth and death dates of the children conflict with other accounts.
At the far right margin of mom’s messy arrows, circled words, and looping lines at 45 degrees, is a list of Mom’s mother’s siblings. This would make them mom’s uncles and aunts. Correct me if I’m wrong. Only three have comments written beside their names. Allie, who I presume is Alson Jr., was alcoholic, James Edward was a stinker and a ladies’ man. Charlotte also notes that Charles Joseph was the favorite. Favorite of Sadie, or Alson, or herself? I don’t know. Tragically, Charles died a horrible death at 24 after being bitten by two dogs; at least one of which was infected with rabies. One of the dogs belonged to Charles, who was probably trying to break up a fight with another dog when he was bitten. Thankfully, he was still unmarried at the time of his death, so he did not leave behind a widow or children.
Dying of rabies infection is truly terrible. The progression of a rabies infection causes inflammation of the brain; the resulting symptoms include paranoia, terror, confusion, partial paralysis, and other horrible effects. I wrote a paper in college on the ethics of using animals for incubating the rabies virus vaccine. I visited a warehouse in the west bottoms of Kansas City and walked through a corridor of cages with infected dogs of all sizes and breeds in the full throes of rabies. The howling was unbearable. I don’t know how anyone could have lasted a day there. The back dock was jammed with barrels of decapitated dogs, the live rabies virus having been harvested from the dogs’ brains. Thank science and God the virus is now grown in embryonated eggs, and we now have vaccine to prevent the spread of infection.
Sadie made two claims of which Charlotte took note. She told my mother, and others I assume, that she was the inspiration for the fictional Becky Thatcher in Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” This isn’t likely, since parts of the book were written before Sadie was born. The fictional Becky is probably a composite of Becky Pavey and Laura Hawkins, close neighbors of the Clemens family in Hannibal.
The other assertion has more tread. She says she owned the first electric car in Kansas City. There were a number of smaller car companies based in Kansas City when Sadie was living in the eastern outskirts. These included Baker @ Elberg Electric, established in 1894.. Sadie would have been 40 years old. If this was the electric car she owned, it would have been a “Runabout”, a light, basic style with no windshield, top, or doors, and a single row of seats. If indeed Sadie owned an electric car, there is no corroborating evidence that I can find--but I’ll give her this one.
One last parting shot at Sadie, who has no one now to witness to her good character. Charlotte asserts that Sadie would intentionally set the brothers against one another. What kind of mother is this? This hearsay, and subsequent slander was collected by a very young Charlotte hiding beneath the entry steps of her grandparent’s home. What better place to overhear the Machiavellian machinations of her malevolent mother’s mother. I’ll let you be the judge and jury. In mitigation, my mother might have been seeking redress for the thimble head-thumping.
The intent of this blog is to share with Sherman and Alberti offspring anecdotal stories and photo’s they might not have seen, or stories they might not have heard of their more immediate ancestors. I’m hoping this becomes an open forum where you can share stories or pictures you might have with the group. I lean toward speculative theories and anecdotal stories and often wander off the beaten path. If you want solid no-nonsense information on who begat who, check with Lynn Cox, Ruth’s husband. He has done a lot of detective work and has traced our relatives back 25 generations. I’ll start with sharing what I have on my mother's great-grandparents. I want this to be a Wikipedia type of blog where you can correct, complain, or add to anything written here. I extend my mea culpa in advance for all the errors, omissions, and defamation I will undoubtedly be responsible for.
