Friday, March 29, 2013

Drummerboy Dreams: Harry Henry Harrison Haynes

FamilySearch has a new service that allows you to store photos and stories/bios about the people in your family tree, so I am going through my things again to see what I have to contribute.  A phone call to Grandpa Happy Jack was in order since I know very little about the Haynes side of the family, not even having a picture of Jack's Haynes grandparents, even though they lived well into the 1930's (Grandpa says he thinks he has seen one before, hopefully whoever has one will contribute soon.)
I was right.  Here is one a distant relative came up with of Henry.

(Me>Dad>Happy Jack Haynes>Harry Raymond (Roy) Haynes>Harry Henry Haynes)
Here is what little I know about this immigrant patriarch of my family.

One of the reasons Henry Haynes and his wife Charlotte (who went by Lottie) are so unfamiliar is because they only met my Grandpa Happy Jack once, at a train station in Ogden when Jack was a tiny boy, sometime between 1927-1930.  He said that they were very nice.  They were on their way to Lane, Eugene, Oregon, to retire.  By the 1930 census they were living with Lottie's sister Maude, who worked in some woolen mills in Lane  Happy Jack says one reason they left Minnesota was because of the severe Midwest winters.

We're not even very clear on what his actual name was--maybe someday we'll find the christening record.  It may have been as long as Harry Henry Harrison Haynes or as short as Henry.  In the 1880, 1920 census he went by Harry, in 1900 by Henry.  My guess is that they called him Harry, short for Henry, at home because Happy Jack's dad Harry Raymond (HHH's son), went by "Roy" at home, maybe to differentiate the two?  We'll call him Harry, Sr., here.

We know he was born in 1851 in Brentford, Middlesex, England.  This area borders London on the west.  His parents immigrated ?, possibly first to Canada--Happy Jack says this was because it was easier to immigrate from England to Canada.  On the 1920 Federal Census Harry Sr. says that he was naturalized in 1870, but the 1900 Census says they immigrated in 1865.  This may mean that they moved from Canada in 1865, not England, because on the 1930 census he says he immigrated in 1852.  Someday I'll find the immigration records and we'll know for sure.  In any case, we know the family was living in America before the Civil War because Grandpa Happy Jack just shared this charming story with me.

Apparently, young Harry, Sr., declared that he was "gonna be a drummer boy" for the Union Army.  He would have been between 10-15, probably close to 15 if they really came from Canada in 1865, toward the end of the war.  They were living in Iowa at the time.  When his parents told him no, he ran away to find the army and join it. 

He didn't make it far, they caught up with him at the next town or river over, and his dreams of glory were dashed forever.

Well, Harry Sr. grew up and married Charlotte Waddington, also an immigrant from Canada, and they raised a family in Iowa, later moving to Minnesota and then Oregon.  His son Harry Raymond Haynes, "Roy", mentioned a little about his dad in an interview, probably around 1980, mostly that he had been crippled and got a pension from the railroad in Iowa, then turned to farming.  I'm guessing he was a railroad employee; his sons also worked for the railroad.

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