SEPTEMBER 5, 2024 – (Cont.) When Susan and her husband Bob pulled into the yard, I had no idea what to expect. She was such a young kid when we’d last met on the deck of her family’s swimming pool in New Jersey, she’d made no lasting impression. We’d had no contact since. Jenny, who’d been present on that same occasion at the swimming pool, likewise had no recollection of Susan and no subsequent contact. All we knew about her was what Carol had shared the day before: Susan and Carol were very close and . . . or rather, but . . . they agreed to disagree when it came to politics. Fair enough—to be forewarned, I thought, was to be forearmed, or in a spirit of diplomacy appropriate to this first encounter in 60 years, forewarned was to avoid saying anything about politics that would be impolitic.
In short order we got acquainted, covering some of the same ground we’d traversed earlier with Carol and Barry, but now hearing an expanded version involving Susan and Bob. Of the four Henry Holman grandchildren—Carol, Susan, their brother (another) Bob, named after their uncle Robert (the third “Bob” of the total story), and their oldest sister, Kathryn—Susan, the youngest, is the most interested of the four in family genealogy. We soon learned why: she’s assembling her application for membership in the Daughters of the Revolution. This fit perfectly with our plans to take our newfound relatives to the Ely Family Cemetery, a small, quiet country graveyard a mile and a half from Lyme Light, where nearly two dozen Revolutionaries are buried, including our common ancestor, Ichabod Spencer.
Before we set out on that expedition, however, we combed through boxes of old photos and mementoes that Jenny had pulled from the Rutherford warehouses[1] several years ago and hauled up to Connecticut for closer inspection. As we passed around the non-catalogued, non-curated surviving fragments of our forebears’ photographic and documentary record, I pondered what—if anything—of our day might survive 10 years, let alone 100, inside the equivalent of a few banker boxes; and who among our descendants will find any of it compelling enough to look at before tossing. The random pieces that passed from one of us to another covered the gamut: labeled and unlabeled photos of ancestors we recognized; unlabeled photos of people we didn’t recognize; long letters written in “long hand”; the original recorded deed to the first parcel of land acquired by a Holman (our great-great grandfather) in Rutherford in 1871[2]—a full decade before the borough was established by an act of the state legislature[3]; a photograph of the Lincoln Day Dinner in Rutherford in 1914[4]. When I wondered aloud how the scores of men in attendance might have reacted to the outbreak of World War I less than six months later, and America’s entry into the war three years later. In response Bob, Susan’s husband, quipped, “Just like today, there were lots of isolationists.” I left the comment there, though I would like to have pursued it. Bob’s tone suggested disapproval of isolationism, which would’ve been contrary to his politics, as intimated by Carol[5].
Inevitably in sharing our family history, we devoted time to the Huntleys. Our great-great grandmother was a Huntley, and when we were growing up Grandpa often talked about the Huntley side. The Huntley National Association was established in 1947 to unite the descendants of our pre-Revolutionary ancestor, John Huntley, and the organization still holds annual reunions. Grandpa was president in 1953 and 1954, and for years my sisters and I received official membership cards, paid for by Grandpa, of course. Out of curiosity mostly, my sisters attended the reunion in Groton several years ago. The existence of such a formal, family association was complete news to Carol and Susan, and I kidded them about joining—and hosting a future reunion. I emphasized the thousand-dollar stipend available to the hosts. Our newfound cousins were underwhelmed, especially after Jenny described in hilarious detail the decidedly “old school quaint” style of the reunion she and our sisters had attended.
In due course we drove to Elys Family Cemetery. With little effort (since 2017 I’ve made annual pilgrimages to the site) we found Second Lieutenant Spencer’s gravestone.[6] Susan wanted a photograph of it for her DAR application, and several of us struggled for an angle that would capture the inscription favorably. Ultimately, an online photo proved best.
From the cemetery we meandered down to Elys Ferry Landing across from Essex. If Carol and Susan’s grandparents had taken them there as kids, they couldn’t remember. Jenny and I had distinct memories of our grandparents doing so—and grandpa, at least, swimming with us, amusing us by floating on his back but with his toes sticking out of the water. After recounting these memories, I felt a twinge of sadness. Carol recalled visiting her grandparents—next door to Lyme Light—when she was quite young, but then the visits stopped. Her grandparents sold their property and bought a lake home in northern New Jersey, ending her side’s connection to Hamburg Cove. The night before we’d speculated that Henry and his wife Kay had ended that connection in large part because the cove was a dark reminder of their heartbreak. The effects of that loss, I realized, were still playing out 80 years later.
After repairing to Lyme Light, we joined in the great feast out on the verandah overlooking the cove and talked and laughed late into the night. Our little reunion had been a memorable occasion, and each of us felt enriched with a more complete picture of who we are and how we’d landed where we have.
After everyone dispersed, I stole back outside to the front yard where in the darkness I had a grand view of the starlit heavens. There, alone and filled with awe, I expressed to the cosmos . . . my gratitude for the exceptional occasion just passed and my hope that many more like it would follow.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Carol and Susan were familiar with another warehouse: the one in Hackensack, New Jersey. After our elders split the business, the Henry Holmans (Henry, his surviving son, George, and eventually Henry’s two oldest grandchildren, Bob and Kathryn (Carol and Susan’s older siblings) took sole control of that facility, while the Griswold Holmans (Grandpa and Uncle Bruce) assumed sole command and ownership of the Rutherford warehouses.
[3] Named after John Rutherfurd, a large local landowner who served in the U.S. Senate from 1791 to 1798. The surrounding area, which would later include the Borough of Rutherford, was referred to as “Rutherfurd” until the late 1870s, when the spelling was changed to “Rutherford,” to conform to the spelling more familiar to people after Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, became the 19th President of the United States. The first European to the area was the Dutchman Walling Van Winkle in 1687. His descendants still played a prominent role in the life of the borough when my sisters and I were young.
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[5] Throughout the day, Bob revealed an understanding of history that was nuanced and way above average.
