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Inside the Archives
ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S FOREBEARS
Anson Hemingway’s account of his family history
Among the notebooks in Oak Park’s archives is this brief family history by Anson Hemingway, Ernest’s paternal grandfather, all of which is transcribed verbatim and some of which can be seen in the accompanying figures (figs. 4–6).
Anson Tyler Hemingway
August 26, 1844
1844–1854
My father Allen Hemingway was born July 6______in Plymouth Litchfield Co. Conn. My mother, Harriet Linsley Tyler was born Aug. 23rd1 in Branford, New Haven Co. Conn.
She was my father’s 2nd wife, his 1st wife Marietta Linsley was my mother’s 1st cousin. When father asked Pastor Timothy Dwight of Branford Conn. to marry my mother and him, the minister refused because mother and Marietta had been 1st cousins. He said he didn’t believe in cousins marrying. My mother was a brave beautiful Christian woman only 19 yrs. old when she & father were married. He was 45 yrs old & father of 2 boys Rodney A. & George Riley and 2 girls, Mary Anne and Roselia L.
Geo. was only 1 yr. old, his mother having died at his birth—My mother cared for these 4 just as for her own—and the children of our 2nd group would never have known that there had been another mother if we had not been told about it.
I was the oldest of my mother’s own children[,] my brothers and sister were Willie R., Harriet L. & Adelbert. The later died when he was 3 yrs. old.
My father kept a country store in East Plymouth, later in Terryville[,] drugs, groceries, dry goods, boots & shoes etc[.]
He was also the village postmaster.
He owned 2 stores for 22 yrs. before we moved to Chicago in 1854.
I will mention a few things of my earliest recollection: I remember the very 1st day I ever went to school. I walked with my older sister Roselia. We walked about a mile to the school house, I carried the tin 1 quart lunch pail. We had in it large pieces of bread spread with butter & brown sugar, and doughnuts. I also remember wearing nankeen pantalettes & a little blue checkered apron. I think that I was 4 yrs. old—
We always went to Terryville to the Cong. Ch. My mother had always been an Episcopalian in Branford before her marriage[.]
It was necessary to drive over 3 miles to ch. Mother always packed up a lunch which we ate in the church between the morning and aft. services. [not pictured]
I was born in East Plymouth, Aug. 26, 1844. I think I was about 6 years old when we moved to Terryville. As we rode on top of the load of goods, I remember carrying a bunch of white feathers which I held up high. These feathers belonged to my father. He used to wear them in his hat. They belonged in a sort of candle stick right in the center of the front of his hat, which he wore upon training days. He belonged to a Company Militia.
Anson Hemingway’s and Ernest Hall’s Civil War records, 1890s
Both of Hemingway’s grandfathers served in the Civil War, as these brief records (figs. 7–9) show.
Fig. 10. Dr. Clarence “Ed” Hemingway.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S PARENTS
Dr. Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, doctor and outdoorsman
Called Ed by his friends, Clarence Hemingway was a graduate of Oberlin College and Chicago’s Rush Medical College and later headed the obstetrics department in Oak Park Hospital. He battled depression all his life and often would take separate vacations away from family to restore his health.
Ernest Hemingway had a complicated relationship with his father. He both loved and pitied Ed, viewing him as the victim of bullying by his wife. Ed’s ill health and depression led eventually to his suicide. More than a decade later, Ernest vicariously expressed his feelings for his father through a lengthy meditation on his father and grandfather by Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls. “He was just a coward,” Jordan concludes of his father, “and that was the worst luck any man could have. Because if he wasn’t a coward he would have stood up to that woman and not let her bully him.”2
Dr. Hemingway worked out of the family home, as documented by this combined rate sheet and blank receipt form (fig. 11). He charged $1 for office visits, $3 for night calls, and “extra” for “Dressings and Medicines.”
Fig. 11. Dr. Hemingway’s rate sheet and blank receipt form.
Fig. 12. Known as the Honeymoon Owls, these stuffed birds get their name from family lore about Ed and Grace’s honeymoon. Their nighttime peace was disturbed when these two owls made so much noise that an irritated Ed Hemingway emerged from the cabin with a gun to make an example of them. The rest of their honeymoon was much quieter and without incident. They are now a permanent display at the Ernest Hemingway Birthplace and Museum.
Fig. 13. Ed Hemingway on Walloon Lake, date unknown.
Fig. 14. This prescription for a Joseph Ratner lists both Dr. Hemingway’s office and his residence, and it shows that even in 1900, a doctor’s handwriting was illegible.
Grace Hall Hemingway, artist and musician
A classically trained opera singer, the young Grace Hall was accepted by the Metropolitan Opera Company and debuted at Madison Square Garden in about 1896. However, her weak eyes, further weakened, she claimed, by a childhood bout with scarlet fever, contributed to her decision to leave the bright lights of the stage to teach.
Grace Hall’s income from teaching voice lessons in the family home was usually larger than her husband’s. Marcelline remembers her mother earning up to one thousand dollars a month. As Hemingway biographer Michael Reynolds writes, “If Grace Hemingway had a large voice in the family’s affairs, it was proportionate to her contribution.”3
Grace held recitals in the music room she had built in the Hemingway’s home at 600 North Kenilworth. She was herself a composer, whose work was published by such sheet music companies as Chicago’s Oliver Ditson Company and Henry Detmer Music House and New York’s Summy Company. Although “Grace’s royalties never amounted to any great figure,” according to Reynolds, “she quite rightly thought of herself as a professional musician.”4
Fig. 15. Grace Hall Hemingway.
Fig. 16. Grace in front of porch steps.
Fig. 17. Painting of Grace, artist unknown.
Grace was a contralto and found plenty of venues in town at which to perform, from the ...
