Bryon S. Latimer (1889-1917)
A story of us, the Sage’s
Whenever I get bad news about something in my life I think of the old ditty, “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet”. Whether it is pure chance or divine intervention we are all dealt a set of circumstances that we live with and ultimately die with. This is a story of a young man that is part of our (Sage) ancestry.
My father was adopted. He believed that he was actually the son of a sister of his adoptive mother. I started this journey of discovery from that simple declaration. His adoptive parents were Grover Cleveland Sage and Catherine (Pearl) Jones. I was having a difficult time finding Catherine’s parents until I found her obituary in the archives of the Towanda newspaper. Her obituary listed three sisters, each by their married name. Using those names I was able to locate Catherine’s father, George W. Jones, who had one son and seven daughters. This is the story Mabel’s husband Byron S. Latimer, Jr. Mabel is one of Catherine’s sisters.
Byron was born in Auburn, NY in 1890. His father was probably of Scotch English descent and worked as a machinist on the Lehigh Valley RR (LVRR). Imagine turning ten at the beginning of the twentieth century. Railroads are replacing the Erie canal. The only electronic media was the telegraph. People would rush to the telegraph office to learn about events. The newspaper stories of the day were delivered over those wires at the blistering speed of thirty words-per-minute. Mark Twain books are bestsellers. The automobile is just beginning to appear on the gas lit cobblestone streets of Auburn. When the “Lake Effect” snows hit there were no snow plows. Dog sleds were the snowmobiles of the day.
It is against this backdrop that young Byron meets and marries Mabel Jones. The third youngest daughter of George W. Jones. George and family lived on South Division Street that is now Columbus Street in Auburn NY. According to census data, George was a carpenter and may have worked on LVRR fixtures. I have no way of knowing but I do find myself smiling when I see Builder’s Choice Lumber Supply on the map of Columbus Street.
A couple hundred-yards away on Jefferson Street is young Byron who is already working as a fireman on the LVRR. Did he court young Mabel as we hear about in all the yarns of the time or did they sneak around and dream of a future together where their parents wouldn’t drive them crazy. Regardless, they stood up in front of Reverend W. H. Hubburd at the Jefferson Street home sneaking in a June wedding on June 27, 1907. Mabel had their first daughter, Dorothy, in 1908.
Byron is working as a fireman on LVRR. This is a position that hopefully leads to engineer one day. But I do not trivialize the job of a fireman. The railroad engines of the day were tremendously complex, expensive to purchase and difficult to maintain. The fireman, under the direction of the engineer, has to slowly rise the fire in the locomotive’s firebox to the right temperature and then maintain the fire and water levels within a precise set of parameters. This is a difficult job that is miserably hot in the summer and just plain hard work all year round.
It is in a miserable March snow storm of 1909 that Byron’s light engine, a locomotive and tender without any cars attached, are sent out to be a helper engine. They are to meet up with a freight train in Harford Mills. The records do not say why they were sent out in this horrible weather but one has to assume that it was business as usual on the RR. As they proceeded into Harford station where they were to wait, the engineer on Byron’s train cannot see the station through the blinding snow. He passes the station and collides with the freight train. The impact of the collision drives coal forward from the tender. That coal presses Byron against the hot boiler where he is pinned, smashed and scalded. His burns are serious and he is sent to Parker hospital in Sayre PA.
His wife is pregnant with their second child that will be born in October. There is a very good chance that she doesn’t even know that she is pregnant when she is informed that her husband of less than three years is critically injured and laying in a hospital bed a hundred miles away. As she suffers through that summer with a child, no income and a husband hoping for skin donations, I can only imagine her angst.
Byron loses one leg and the ability to earn a living. He sues LVRR and gets $10,000. I have no idea how much money he really got and how much the lawyers did but it is obvious that his health and life declines. Mabel was pregnant with a daughter who passed early. They go on to have at least three more children before he passes in 1917. When he passed Mable was pregnant with a baby girl.
Two years later after Byron’s death, Mabel is living in a boarding house and working as an inspector in a shoe shop. and the four children are in an orphanage. One of her children, George Latimer, is listed as living with Dad’s adoptive parents. He is also listed as being in the orphanage. Not sure of the circumstances but it could be simply that the orphanage did all the paperwork ahead of time and George happened to be visiting with Grover and Pearl when the census taker made the rounds. I was able to follow three of the children through the years but the youngest, Ruth, disappears. I can only assume that at two years old she is adopted. Mabel goes on to marry another man and has four more children who I am trying to track through the years.
As a footnote to this sad tale is what I believe to be the cruelest of ironies. I visited the Fort Hill cemetery in Auburn NY where Byron was laid to rest and this very unlucky man is in an unmarked grave next to his daughter whose foot-stone is simply labeled “Our Darling”.
John Sage approximately 2010
