1909 Modern Father

For Father’s Day this weekend, I’d like to introduce you to my great-grandfather, labeled in my grandmother’s album as “dad”. The fact that my grandmother used the formal “mother” to label her mom and “dad” to label her father leads me to believe that she had a close relationship with him.

I also have a close relationship with my dad. Kind, generous, industrious and patient, I often give thanks that I have the father I do. However (there’s a however?) a life of experience has taught him to doubt that which he cannot personally confirm.

When I started looking into the family history and found his grandfather’s name spelled “Merit” rather than “Merrit” or “Merritt”, dad was not convinced. In fairness, it’s not an easy question. Thus, my great-grandfather currently hangs on the family tree with the unwieldy name Merit/Merrit/Merritt.

That’s not to say that I haven’t uncovered some information of merit (!). Merit’s mother, Clara Gardner, died in 1895. The newspaper obituary listed her sibling’s names as Floyd, Charles, Ira, Louise Merit and Emmet. It would make sense, then, that she named her son “Merit Emmet” after each of two brothers.

Lest you suspect that the newspaper got it wrong, here is Merit Howell Cash Gardner’s grave, with the spelling “Merit”. (A picture of sibling Emmet Van Rennselar’s grave can be accessed from the same page).

My theory is that my great-grandfather added an extra “r” at some point, and maybe an extra “t” to his middle name. His draft registration card for World War I, dated September 12, 1918, lists his name clearly as “Merrit Emmett Dunning”. Maybe he liked double letters and wanted all his names to have them?

Merrit (let’s humor him) was 34 years old in January 1909, when he became father to his first and only son, Walter Ferris. Here is a picture of the pair, likely on a Sunday, possibly on the day of Ferris’s baptism. He poses in front of his workplace, of course, the barn.

Although they named the baby Walter, he went through life by his middle name, Ferris. I grew up hearing him referred to as “Uncle Ferris” even though, properly, he was my granduncle. This is the first picture I have of someone that I actually met in person!

Ferris is only a baby in this photo so it seems unfair for me to draw a wrinkled man out of my memory but so it is. When he retired, in 1969 or so, he and his wife, Gertrude, moved to the Tampa area. Whenever he visited us in Middletown, my sisters and I would beg him to show us his stunning trick: Uncle Ferris knew how to wiggle his ears!

He had a way with children but never had any of his own. As he was the only boy that my great-grandfather had, the name Dunning (for us at least) died with Ferris in 1997. But what’s in a name? Merit/Merrit/Merritt would have to be the first to absolve his son for failing to to carry a given name into perpetuity!

Forgiveness, sympathy, demonstrable love:

fathers that learn to act with these qualities enjoy good relationships with their children. I only have sisters and daughters so the father-son relationship is not one I know about firsthand. I only have the clichéd image of the “tough father” to go by, i.e. “nothing I could do would be good enough for you, dad!”

I don’t think that was the case with these two. Ferris went to Cornell and graduated in the class of 1930 (Cornell itself was only 65 years old at the time) from the College of Agriculture. Perhaps he even went to college thinking he might work at the farm.

He worked for 37 years at the Household Finance Corporation, present-day HSBC, in consumer finance. He moved from Brooklyn to its headquarters in Illinois which (alongside a generous inheritance) suggests that he met with success there. He also served the country in World War II, as part of the United States Pacific Fleet.

I can’t imagine how a father wouldn’t be proud of a son that did all that. What’s more, his obituary states that he was “a member of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church”. The name Dunning may have fallen by the wayside but – named after a Presbyterian pastor – Ferris kept the faith.

Below, on what looks like the same day as the first picture, Ferris “relaxes” in a baby chair of the time. These never kept my kids happy for long, and mine had lights and music on it! Sure enough, the photo alongside this one in the album has Ferris standing up in the seat, likely crying to be taken out.

These pictures always fill me with happiness that – no matter how different from now – family life goes on perpetuating itself. Happy Father’s Day to you all!