Richard C. Cornelison Memories of his Grandparents

James Henry Wellington Cornelison (Eben’s father)

“My grandfather sold honey and Baldwin pianos as his main source of income. He may have sold other items, but I know that he sold those two. He and I got along very well, we always had a lot of fun together and I stayed with him a week one time. He was pretty religious (a lifelong Methodist). He also was a member of the International Order of Odd Fellows. He was a mason. He was a very principled man, straight as an arrow. Both he and his wife Mary taught my father to be absolutely principled to the point that my father often was heard to say that he would not steal even a pin. He didn’t steal even a pin in his life, using that a pin as an extreme example!

“I was close to my grandfather. I called him “Grandfather”. I called my mother’s father “Grandpa”. Both grandmothers were called “Grandmother.”

“The children (of Henry Wellington and Mary) in the order of birth was Eben and then Alma, then Boyd, and then my uncle Harold and then Meroe was next and she still lives of course and she is the only one still living. I think Alton was the baby and younger than Meroe, but I’m not certain.

“To just go back and cover those for a moment. Alma was the one who married Harold (I believe) [actually Carol] Pope. The next would be Boyd and he married and lived in Lewiston which was an hour and a half from Moscow. He was one of the owners of Camas Oil Company, I believe, an oil distributor. And the next would be Harold and he sold insurance in Moscow. Aunt Meroe married Stanley Smith and lived in various parts of Idaho—first in Gooding, Idaho then later near Gallup, New Mexico. Her husband, Stanley Smith, was with the government all those years and was the manager superintendent of those government sheep stations. Alton lived in Moscow and at the time of his death—he died of stomach cancer at about 30—he was just getting into the frozen food business which was having its start about 1938 which was the last time I saw him.

“So those were the kids, yes, they stayed mostly around Moscow and in fact the next generation of the Pope’s stayed there. My Aunt Alma had three sons and a daughter or two. My Uncle Boyd had no children. He was injured playing college basketball and I think it hurt his reproductive organs. My Uncle Harold had one daughter Mary who lived in Redmond, Washington. Meroe had one son, Lyle, who is a little bit younger than me. Alton, of course, had no children. So, out of that whole group I’m the only one to carry the Cornelison name.

“Most everyone has moved away from Moscow, now. I think some of Alma Pope’s children live there. I know they do. I used to talk with Jack Pope. Dean Pope I saw a couple of years ago. He was my age. Mary is dead, she died two or three years ago. So, there aren’t many survivors now. Dean Pope is still alive—the one who’s my age—and he lives and works in Tucson as I recall.

“I don’t recall my grandparents talking about their parents.

—from 1/22/92 JHC (sick with flu) “interview” with Richard C. Cornelison during a busy rush hour (!) drive from Cleveland to Hiram

H. Mary Elizabeth Beddall (Eben’s mother)

I don’t remember much about the Beddalls except when I was about 7 years old there was a Beddall family reunion in St. Croix Falls where the potholes are in the park there. My mother took me and I don’t think my father was around at the time, but I’m not certain. I think he was working in Salt Lake City in the summer which he always did. My mother took me and there were about 70 people there. It was very, very warm and a gomotlick (?) type of an affair. Everyone brought their own food and there were picnic tables there at St. Croix Falls and we just occupied a whole big part of the park. Little kids were running all over the place. It was a lot of fun. Most people came from the Wisconsin area.

I don’t recall my grandparents talking about their parents.

—from 1/22/92 JHC (sick with flu) “interview” with Richard C. Cornelison during a busy rush hour (!) drive from Cleveland to Hiram

Robert Alva Cleveland & Jennie Bashute Smith (Ella’s

parents) Q: Did you know all your grandparents? A: Yes, I spent most of the time with Robert Alva Cleveland and his wife Jenny Smith but I was with my paternal grandparents quite a bit between the ages of 3 and 8…

I was close to my (paternal) grandfather. I called him “Grandfather”. I called my mother’s father “Grandpa”. Both grandmothers were called “Grandmother.”

My mother came from the Cleveland family in Glenwood City, WI. The Cleveland’s were royalists. They were-from what I know about the genealogy- they had moved from England to somewhere around Boston before the American Revolution. When the revolution started they didn’t want to be disloyal to the King so they left Boston and went to St. John, New Brunswick, where they lived for a couple of generations—2 to 3 generations. After the Civil War was over, the family members decided they would take the train across the continent and settle in Wisconsin.

Robert Alva Cleveland was a sharp, brainy practical guy. He was wiry, he was lean, even a little mean. He was pretty hard nosed. He went about his dealings with a lot of vigor and a lot of humor in the way he handled things. He was a proud man and somewhat aristocratic. He had a lot of success when he came to the United States as a young man. He had gone to college and graduated from the business college at Halifax. Not too long after that he moved to Wisconsin. Jenny Smith went with him. I visited the ancestral home in New Brunswick, it’s called Alma specifically, near St. John. I have the location on the maps. My mother and I visited there in 1948. In fact I was there again with your mother [Margaret Hawkins] in 1952.

I don’t know that the Cleveland genealogy—which says Robert Alva moved to St. Paul, MN and sold cigars—is accurate but I possibly wouldn’t have been told about that. When I was 9 months old my mother took me first to Wisconsin and I went every summer thereafter for 16 years. So the year I first got to know him (Robert Alva) would have been about when I was three years old. I spent every summer, at least two months, with them for 16 years.

My father wanted me to have an experience living at a cottage on a lake in Wisconsin. My grandfather and grandmother owned a large cottage. It was very hot in Salt Lake City and my father wanted my mother and I to have the opportunity of getting out of Salt Lake City in the summer time. Well, it may have been to afford Eben a better opportunity to do business but it wasn’t likely. He was pretty selfless in what he did and my mother always enjoyed being with her father and her father doted [on her] to some degree-or my mother was the apple of his eye.

His wife Jenny was a mild mannered person, again sort of a prototype of a home keeper wife of that era. She and I got along famously. We never had any cross words. When I was a little kid she used to very kindly help change my diapers. I remember her presence in my bedroom when I was very little and I was sick, why she was always there, helping. She was a very marvelous person—patient to a point.

They had out of their marriage—the children they had—were my mother, Ella Lulu, then there was Bliss Cleveland, the next was Uncle Everett who was married to Lucy. Incidentally, Bliss was married to Aunt Bernice. There were three names that need to be understood in our family. Bernadine is the wife of Boyd Cornelison, Bernice [i pronounced with a hard e] is the wife of Bliss Cleveland, and Bernice [i pronounced with a soft i] is the daughter of Henry Wellington and I left her out of the lineup of children.

My grandfather Cleveland had an inboard motor boat in Wisconsin.

—from 1/22/92 JHC (sick with flu) “interview” with Richard C. Cornelison during a busy rush hour (!) drive from Cleveland to Hiram

So the Clevelands that moved from New Brunswick to Glenwood City were Alva and Robert Cleveland and Jenny Smith Cleveland. They were married in New Brunswick. They moved somewhere around, I would suppose, 1880. [Marriage date of 1886 implies they moved at a later date. Richard said earlier that they moved after the Civil War (1861-1865).] My mother was born in 1887 and she was born in Glenwood City and I assume they had been there a few years. They were pillars in the Methodist Church and by the time that I came along in 1926 my grandfather owned a lot of lumber holdings. He owned a lumber mill and part of a creamery. And so I would go in and see those companies and see the belts and the creamery going around. He was a man about town. He owned quite a bit of property including a big home in Glenwood City across from the high school. He owned a cottage on Balsam Lake, Wisconsin about 40 miles to the north east. He used to go up there every summer for, more or less, three months. He had a big ice house. There was electricity there but the ice house was in use even when I was last there in the summer of 1941.

My mother was born in 1887 in Glenwood City and then was born Bliss, followed by Everett, followed by Helen. That foursome ultimately… My mother moved to the west, and that’s talked about separately. My Uncle Bliss moved to Austin, MN where he owned a hardware store. Uncle Everett moved to Oakland, CA where he had solid administrative responsibilities with a wholesale lumber company. My Aunt Helen married Lymann Payne and they lived in Glenwood City.

The spouses and offspring are as follows. Eben D., my father, courted my mother in Glenwood City. They met at Lawrence College in Appleton in the Epworth League, which was the Methodist youth movement. The general idea was that my mother’s father wanted her to marry somebody that was a little more aristocratic—my father basically being a farm boy, a pretty bright one at that. But he won over and they were married probably in 1912. They were married in a Methodist Church in Glenwood City. They got on the train and went all the way to Spokane where they lived for a number of years until my dad was promoted and moved to San Francisco and ultimately to Salt Lake City in 1924 or 1925 approx. Anyways Robert, their son, died when he was 9 years old, about 1923, in Oakland, of polio.

—from Jan 22, 1992 after dinner JHC taped “interview” with Richard Cornelison. Priscilla helps with some tidbits.