The Manuscript
I obtained this manuscript from Bill Mutch of Slaterville. Bill remembers that many years ago he walked into the Chanticleer Bar in Ithaca and sat down with an old friend, Harry Lawless. Harry said that he had something to give Bill, went out to his car, and returned with the manuscript of Silo Saga.
I wrote to Harry asking where he got the document. He replied that “I met this fellow at the Chanticleer maybe ten years ago. He said he worked on his uncle’s farm on Midline road as a teen.” This fellow was Charles Chandler Biddle, Jr, who inherited the manuscript from his mother or aunt.
I thought that it might be of interest to readers of Silo Saga to have a bit of background about the players.
Florence Isobel James Henry
Florence was born on a farm in Almonte, Ontario, Canada, on November 8, 1908. The 1910 and 1920 censuses show her living with her parents in Almonte. In 1931 she attended her sister's wedding to Charles Chandler Biddle in Irvington, New York. On February 3, 1934, she married Alton Thomas Henry in Yonkers, New York.
Charles Biddle studied civil engineering at Penn State, a classmate of Alton Henry. They probably worked together when they both lived at a boarding house in Port Chester, New York, in 1930. Florence attended the wedding when Charles married her sister, Elizabeth, in 1931. It doesn't seem improbable that Alton and Florence met through Charles and Elizabeth.
Florence and Alton lived in Mount Vernon and New Rochelle during the rest of the 1930s and early 1940s. She detesting all aspects of farming, much preferring city life, “the bright lights, the availability of the museums, the galleries, the theaters, the excellent restaurants and hotels, the plush offices and working conditions” and the view from her thirty-ninth floor office at an advertising agency in Rockefeller Center. Maybe she learned her extraordinary writing skill in advertising; maybe she was in advertising because she wrote well.
On April 10, 1943, a deed recorded the sale of the farm from John Wilk to the Henrys. A few days later, Florence, dressed in her gray wool suit and high-heel pumps, stepped off the bus into the mud at the intersection of Slaterville and Midline Roads, and found her husband waiting for her. So began her new life.
In addition to her work on the farm, she became closely engaged in Slaterville affairs. She was a member of St. Thomas Church and, at various times, served as the head of the Service and Hospitality Committee of the Grange, was a member of the Woman’s Auxillary and treasurer of the Slaterville Fire Department, helped out at blood banks, trained as a Civil Defense warden, served as a director of the Tompkins County Tuberculosis and Public Health Association.
From 1952 until school consolidation in 1956, she worked as clerk for the Union Free School District No. 21, Caroline.
In 1965, she and Alton retired from farming, selling off the heifers and machinery. In 1966, they sold most of the farm property to neighbors, Walter and Helen Allmandinger, keeping a five acre lot around the house. In 1967 they sold the house to Lee and Sylvia Miller and moved to East Greenville, Pennsylvania, the area where Alton had grown up. She died in Montgomery, Pennsylvania, on July 19, 1997.
Alton Thomas Henry
Alton was born on January 17, 1905. In 1928 he graduated from Penn State with a B.S. in civil engineering. The 1930 US census records that he was living in a boarding house in Port Chester, New York, with his Penn State classmate and fellow civil engineer, Charles Chandler Biddle, who married Florence's sister. Alton married Florence in 1934. They lived in Yonkers and Mount Vernon. The 1936 Yonkers city directory lists him as employed as an “agent”. In the 1937 Mount Vernon city directory, he was working as an assistant manager of the Colonial Life Insurance Company. In 1943 he moved to the farm on Midline Road.
Besides working as a farmer, he participated in public life. One of the reasons the Henrys chose Ithaca was the Cornell Ag School. Alton had a scientific bent, using the expertise at Cornell and Cooperative Extension to improve his farming. He was a director of the Pioneer Co-operative Dairy Cattle Breeders’ Association. This was the first organization of its kind in New York State and one of the first in the country to provide artificial insemination of dairy cattle in Tompkins County. He served as director of Tompkins County Milk Producers Cooperative, was a founding director and treasurer of the Slaterville Fire District, chairman of the Hub Dairy Herd Improvement Association, helped organize the Tompkins County Dairy Fair in 1952, and was active in Farm Bureau affairs.
In 1946, he was appointed by the Board of Education, School District No. 21, Towns of Caroline and Dryden, along with two other men, to come up with plans to alleviate the congested condition of the school and recommend plans for improvement and repairs of the school building. They also looked into the district’s possible participation in a centralization with other districts in the future.
Although he was a Democrat in a heavily Republican town, he ran for several town offices. In 1945 and 1947, he ran and lost against Lamont Snow. In 1955, the Town Board appointed him Justice of the Peace to fill a vacancy. In 1957, he was nominated as Justice Of the Peace by both the Democrats and Republicans, the latter due to 14 write-in votes, indicating the respect he had earned in the community. He won that election, serving as justice until 1961.
As recorded above, he and Florence got out of farming in 1965 and sold the house in 1967, moving back to the area in Pennsylvania where he had grown up. He died on March 20, 1988, in Royersford, Pennsylvania.
Elizabeth Duffield James
Sister of Florence, born August 25, 1903, in Lanark, Ontario, Canada. In the 1930 US Census, she was living with her older, married sister, Alice York, in Manhattan, working as a nurse. She married Charles Chandler Biddle, a Penn State classmate and then housemate of Alton, in Irvington, New York, on February 28, 1931. The couple moved to Williamsport, Pennsylvania. She gave birth to Charles Chandler Biddle, Jr. (infra) in 1933. She died in York, Pennsylvania on June 21, 1977.
Charles Chandler Biddle, Jr
Chandler, known as Chan, was born on May 9, 1933, in Pennsylvania. He visited the farm for the first time in 1943. He returned so regularly that he was listed as a resident of the farm in the 1950 US census. There was some expectation that he would become a farmer. In fact, he joined the army and made a career in it, reaching the rank of Sergeant Major. He died on May 17, 2014, and was buried at Arlington Cemetery.
At some time before then, he encountered Harry Lawless in the Chanticleer bar in Ithaca and passed to him the manuscript of Silo Saga.