The Children of Charles and Emma Garver

Previously I wrote about Charles and Emma Heilman Garver, my husband’s great-grandparents.  They had nine children, all of whom survived to adulthood, and all but one of whom remained in Michigan for most or all of their lives.  They are shown in this 1930 photo, standing behind their parents:  Alta, John, Bea, Forest, Florence, Roy, Mabel, Walter, and Ray.  I love to trace all the children in a family, not just one.  It’s called “cluster research,” and it gives me a better understanding of the family if I step back and look at the bigger picture...

Walter Garver dug ditches for his father-in-law as a young man—a photo survives.  He and his wife Hazel (Alwood) Garver had fifteen children, fourteen of whom survived to adulthood—one is my mother-in-law.  Walter was a farmer, raising hogs and milking dairy cows, but he also worked for the WPA during the Great Depression on a road-building crew.  He died at age 80, marrying a second time shortly before his death in 1971.

Clara Mabel Garver married Andrew McClellan Leeth when she was 17.  They moved to Colorado at the suggestion of Mac’s doctor, due to Mac’s tuberculosis, but eventually they returned to Michigan.  They had three daughters and a son, and she died in 1969 at age 76.

Forest Garver (pictured below) served in Europe in World War I.  Several photos survive.  On the back of one picture, he calls his flat standard-issue helmet “my little tin lid.”  He later married Aletha Allen and they had three children.  He worked as a repairman in a Flint, Michigan auto factory in 1920, but was a farmer by 1930.  He died in 1978 at age 82.

Florence Garver married Arthur Kever in 1916.  They were dairy farmers and had three daughters.  She died at age 79 in 1976.

John Jacob Garver married Naomi Burton and they had a daughter and a son.  John was a factory worker, and died young—compared to most of his siblings—at age 60, following a heart attack.

Ray Lester Garver drove his sister Clara and brother-in-law Mac to Colorado.  Ray remained there, marrying a Michigan girl named Martha Hutchinson.  He died in Colorado in 1986 at age 84.

Beatrice Garver married John Acre in 1904 when she was 16.  John worked as an auto mechanic.  She and John had two daughters and four sons.  She died in Michigan in 1981 at age 77.

Roy Russell Garver, the youngest son, helped his widowed mother run the farm after his father died in 1931.  But he contracted measles, and the complications that followed took his life.  After he died at age 26 in 1933, his mother was forced to give up the family farm.

Alta Garver, the baby of the family, married James Beattie; it was said in the family that it was love at first sight.  The marriage lasted 63 years.  They had eight children, two of whom died young.  They spent most of their lives in Michigan, where they had a grocery store called Beattie’s IGA Market in Marine City.  Alta was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star, a Masonic organization, serving as “Worthy Matron” (presiding officer).  She and James eventually retired to Florida, where Alta died at age 94 in 2009. 

Wayne, Walter, and the Model T

My husband’s great-uncle Wayne Nedry Alwood (1893-1948) had a model T automobile similar to this one, pictured.  Those puppies could be hard to start, and sometimes a person had to get creative.  But Wayne’s brother-in-law, Walter Garver, discovered a system that worked.

Dale Garver, a cousin of my husband’s and a top-notch genealogy researcher, wrote and self-published a book about the Garver family in 2002 which he entitled One Tree in the Garver Family Jungle—Past and Present.  Dale recorded some wonderful stories in the course of his research, including this one about Wayne, Walter, and the Model T... 

“Wayne Alwood drove his Model T Ford up for a visit (to his sister Hazel’s farm) one time, and parked it in the Grove.  After it sat unused for a couple of days during Wayne’s stay, he cranked it and cranked it and couldn’t get it started.  Finally he gave up in frustration, uttered a swear word, threw up his hands, and said, “I’ll walk instead!”  He then gathered up his traveling gear, got out of the car, and stopped by Walter and Hazel’s house.  He told his brother-in-law Walter, “I’m going home.  There’s a car sitting out there; if you can get the so-and-so to start, it’s yours.”  He never came back for the car.  

Walter kept it and he always used a horse to pull-start it.  He would get his trusty work horse Prince, not even bothering with a bridle, just putting the harness on him, and grab a chain.  He’d hook Prince to the car and holler, “Okay,” and Prince would pull the car backwards out of the garage.  “Stop,” Walter would say, and Prince would turn around and walk to the front of the car.  The chain was then hooked up to the front of the car and out the driveway they went, not even trying to start the car until they got out into the road.  Walter just kept talking to Prince as they slowly picked up speed.  Once a trot was established, the car was started.  Prince would then head back to the barn, beating Walter in his car, as Walter had to go on to the corner to turn around and come back.”

Is this story vitally important in the genealogical history of my husband’s family?  No.  Is it priceless to me anyway?  Definitely.

The Fourteen Garvers of Clare County, Michigan

I grew up with one brother and one sister—a typical 50s family.  My mother-in-law, however, grew up in a different world—she shared her childhood with five sisters and eight brothers.   

Walter Garver and Hazel Alwood were married in Clare County, Michigan in 1914.  Over the next 25 years, they had fifteen children—in order, they were Doris, Charles, Wayne, Forest, Lester, Fern, Donna, Walter, Virginia, Max, Robert, Rex, Betty, Marlyn, and William.  All survived to adulthood except the last, William, who died from congenital heart disease at only five days old. 

The family grew up in a small farmhouse on Adams Road in Clare County without much money, but with a determination to make the best of what they had.  Hazel managed to keep her ever-increasing brood fed; my mother-in-law Donna says, “We always had enough to eat—but it was a lot of beans and potatoes.”  She once told me that her mother’s attitude about the new babies was, “One more won’t make that much difference!”  (One of Hazel’s sisters, Floy Dell Garver Haring, had a brood of sixteen.)  Donna says that “Mom had one baby mid-bread-making—Fern stepped in and finished the bread.”  Walter was a farmer, raising hogs and milking cows on 40 acres, and in the 1930s, he did WPA work helping to build Route M61—by hand, with shovels. 

The Garvers in 1948 - Hazel and Walter front and center

The sisters were close, sharing everything.  In another story I told of Donna and Virginia writing to a sailor boy in WWII, who ended up as Donna’s future husband.  Two of the boys, Wayne and Forest, were in WWII on the Japanese island of Okinawa at the same time—and  one of them managed to slip away from his unit to see his brother—a story I should tell another time.

The fourteen surviving Garvers all grew up to marry and have children; my husband has 47 first cousins!  They all got along well through the years and as far as I can see, they still do.  Since 1948 the siblings have had a family reunion in Clare County every Labor Day weekend.  The group gets smaller every year, but no less close.  Last September there were only five of them still living—Forest, Donna, Virginia, Betty, and Marlyn—sister Fern being the most recent to leave this world.  This photo is from the 1982 reunion, when all fourteen were still alive.

Two of the brothers came to a tragic end…  In 2007 Max and his wife were killed in a fire in their house trailer, and that same year, Rex—who took over the family farm in the 1970s—was gored to death by a bull.  But through all the years and all the tragedies, the Garver siblings have stuck together, supporting each other in good times and bad, helping each other whenever they could, and meeting together on Labor Day to remember those who have passed and celebrate their strong family bond.  It’s a family I’m proud to have married into.