The Convergence

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      It is funny how things converge, and how a thousand, thousand decisions happened to bring each of us here, to our particular time and place. Consider this: 


In 1880 – 


  •  One of my great-grandfathers was living in Pierceton, Indiana. (Clyde)

  • His future wife lived on a farm in Fawn Creek Township, Montgomery County, Kansas. (Melissa)

  • One great-grandmother was still in Bavaria. (Francisca Maria)

  • Her future husband was in Canada. (Stewart Neil)

  • One great-grandmother was working as a domestic servant for elderly widow, Mrs. Lucretia Sang, in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania. (Mary Savilla)

  • Her future husband was leaving Mulfeld, Germany to immigrate to Pittsburgh. (John Casper)

  • Two great-grandparents were still in Sorkil, Norway, in the “Land of the Midnight Sun.” (Sigurd Hilmar Pedar and Huldah Karoline Matilde)

     

     Thirty years later, in 1910:


  • Clyde and Melissa Barbour farmed just outside of Lenapah, Oklahoma. They had six kids and Melissa was expecting twins.

  • Stewart and Francisca lived in Chicago and had three children.

  • John and Mary lived at 1812 Broadway in Everett, Washington with their nine kids. A few years before, they boarded a train in Medix Run, Pennsylvania, bound for Everett with ten kids. (Their nine, plus Ferry Varga, an Italian boy who was friends with the family.) They bought the house with the premise that the sons would work to help pay it off.

  • Sigurd and Huldah had four kids and lived in Nome, Alaska, above the Arctic Circle.


     Think what else had to happen to bring people together in the ways that they did. 


  • A fire killed Melissa and her twins, and Clyde’s crops failed two years in a row. His aunt Alice Hatfield Barbour and cousins Jesse and McKinley were homesteading in Wyoming, and he decided to join them. His daughter Grace was seven. 

  • In 1925, Clyde decided to move to California, where his aunt and cousins had gone. Grace begged to stay in Sheridan to finish high school. Arrangements were made for her to live with her best friend, Willicene Harrington, and her family. 

  • After being raised in the Lagrange (Illinois) Masonic Children’s Home, due to his father Stewart abandoning the family, Malcolm Sr. went wandering out west. One day, he walked into the Lotus Cafe in Sheridan, where Grace was working as the cashier. 

  • John and Mary finally had the economic stability to keep their youngest two sons in school instead of having them leave at fourteen to work, as most kids did then. Their youngest, Ray, went to Everett High School.

  • Sigurd and Huldah moved to Everett, and Sigurd made a living leaving home for months to fish the Alaskan waters. They wanted their children to excel in this new country, and all of them went to high school.

  • Raymond Blair met the quiet, shy Hildur Signe at Everett High School. 


And then….


  • Malcolm Sr. and Grace, had traveled from their Fort Collins, Colorado home to visit Grace’s sister Vera in Everett, Washington for the Christmas of 1948. Malcolm got desperately sick and died in Everett in January. 

  • Grace decided to stay in Everett with her son, Malcolm F., where her sister could help her get on her feet, rather than return to Fort Collins.

  • In 1949, Barbara Rae, Ray and Hildur's daughter, worked hard as the leader of a committee that planned a dance at Everett High School, but she didn’t have a date. A teacher suggested to the new boy, Malcolm F., that he ask her to dance. 


What are the convergences that brought you here?

     In Stevie Wonder’s song “As,” he said:


We all know sometimes life hates and troubles

Can make you wish you were born in another time and space

But you can bet your lifetimes that and twice it's double

That God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed

So make sure when you say you're in it, but not of it

You're not helpin' to make this earth

A place sometimes called hell

Change your words into truths

And then change that truth into love

And maybe our children's grandchildren

And their great grandchildren will tell

I'll be loving you until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky


Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023

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