Look Back with Me: A collection of memories written by Frances Brooks Chase
Biography: Frances B. Chase was born December 15, 1873, the daughter of Edward Henry and Elizabeth Taylor Chase. She was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pa, the last of 5 children. She was baptized on September 28, 1874 by Rev. F.B. Hodges. She never married, living with her brother Samuel Cogswell Chase, until Samuel’s death in 1938. In 1919, she lived at 186 South Franklin. Then, she lived at 76 West South Street in Wilkes-Barre, PA. She died December 26, 1964 and is buried in Hollenback Cemetery in Wilkes-Barre, PA.
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We were a close-knit family. Our meal-time approached the “Feast of Reason” and the “Flow of Soul”. Nothing annoyed father more than to have us disappear all over the house when the dinner-bell sounded.
We were brought up on stories that centered around the dinner table, - mother’s consternation, for instance, one night when “Sally Lunn” was our main supper dish.
Father, a staunch (almost BLACK,Republican) had brought home, unexpectedly, a tall, shy, awkward farmer, a political leader in the lower part of the County. Father was taking him to an important campaign rally. Katie, our comely, fresh-cheeked maid-of-all-work, came in bearing aloft the steaming dumpling-like dish, and mother (to cover up the simplicity of the meal) said jauntily: “I don’t know if you are acquainted with Sally Lunn.” Getting awkwardly to his feet, the young man bowed jerkily: “Pleased to meet you, Miss Lunn.” Father’s black look and the children’s suppressed giggles depressed Mother exceedingly. Her friend and neighbor, Mrs. Isaac Hand, found her mooning over the fire after the man had left, and asked her what was the matter. Mother told her of the tragedy, dejectedly. At first, she could not understand Mrs. Hand’s wild peals of mirth, but soon she was joining in the contagious laughter. When father and Mr. Hand, coming in after the meeting, found their wives in high spirits, they only shook their heads and never acknowledged anything funny about the episode. It might have cost the Republicans some lost votes! Mother always said that father never acknowledged a Democratic victory. “The votes are not all in as yet” , was his steady refrain.
Then, there was the time I pulled mother’s chair from under her just as she was about to sit down, - I had heard that it was a vastly funny thing to do and would make everyone laugh.
Mother, who was not strong, having had what was called a delicate spine, did not find it funny at all. I received a delicate spine myself that day? - - - -
Cards were banned by my strict New England grandfather, Deacon Samuel Chase. However, father had learned to play behind the barn. Mother decided she preferred to bring such practices right into our house and as a result she accepted much that the other boy’s mothers would not allow. For instance, when the boys held an indignation meeting in our long sitting-room, because the constable had chased them off the River Common opposite our house where they had been playing foot-ball, mother was not entirely sympathetic. “I thought you always played it here,” she commented, pointing to the gas chandelier they had recently broken with the same ball.
Our house was on the site of a tavern, standing as it did at the end of the original town. The drovers from the many farms down the valley came up Saturday to sell their produce on Public Square. They had an awkward way, when returning late at night, of beating on our front door with their whip-stocks and refusing to believe that father was not wilfully depriving them of a last night-cap when he apologized for living in his own house, which was in no sense a tavern.
Our big old barn at the end of the grape arbor, had a cupola to which we loved to climb. It was chiefly inhabited by pigeons, and to reach it we had to climb more than one ladder inside the barn. We had a delightful neighbor, older than we were but young and beautiful, who rescued us from many a predicament. One afternoon, our cousin, Will Taylor, had reached almost to the big beams high up in the roof, when he slipped: he was only saved by the seat of his short pants catching on a nail. Minnie Emory arrived as he was spread-eagled on the beam, just in time to save a big splash, as my sister Ethel had found a long pole and was trying to unfasten him from the nail. She was small, but determined, and was poking away with all her might!
I, being the youngest, was the victim of many experiments, and it was Minnie, coming around the house one day, who found a fine funeral going on, and spied me well buried in the sand-pile. She pulled me out, quite purple in the face, and full of nice seashore sand.
Minnie and her mother traveled extensively abroad, and in Russia she had a most romantic experience. A close relative of Czar Nicholas 1st, the GRAND DUKE ALEXIS, was desperately determined to marry her! - - -
Our right-hand neighbor - a widow - had a kind heart in a large body. Father had bought a chair especially for her use. It was semi-circular, conveniently open except for a top railing all around. I admired the chair very much and felt aggrieved when I was not allowed to jump up and down on its plump gold upholstered seat. Mrs. Bennett played cards in it many evenings, and being a good business woman rather than a good whist player, she would hold onto her high cards, to lay them down at the end of a game, triumphantly, her aces and kings intact, though they had long outlived their usefulness.
Mrs. Bennett had a daughter whom in those days we called crazy. No one trusted much to institutions then and she was kept at home. She was a brilliant musician, could read the most difficult music at sight, but she had no idea of keeping time and would run mercilessly over the keys, hour after hour, to the distraction of her father, reading in his study just across the driveway from the piano.
Mrs. Bennett gave delightful parties for her other daughter, whom we all loved, and who did not marry but devoted her life to poor Sadie and to all good works. She was a generous donor The Children’s Home of Wilkes-Barre. In fact, she died in her thirty-fifth year, worn out by her responsibilities. Sadie, however, lived happily on into her eighties, on a cousin’s farm in the West.
Mrs. Bennett was a shy woman. Tired and embarrassed at the end of her long receptions, when we went up to say our goodbyes, she would speed the parting guests with a cheerful: “How do you do!”
One hot summer afternoon, after such a reception, a brother and sister, making a party call, were ushered into the long tree-shaded parlor. They were greeting by a plump white figure at the piano at the other end of the room - Sadie had slipped off all of her clothes, it was so hot, and had settled herself ably on the piano stool. The callers, Miss Gussie Hoyt and her brother Harry, quietly disappeared!
My brother Sam and Sadie had a common bond in their chickens, for they both raised the same kind.
I was supposed to look like Sadie (a family joke I did not appreciate). One evening at dinner, the maid brought in a package just left at the front door. A dozen cabinet pictures of Sadie. The family’s uproarious agreement that it was quite natural for the photographer’s boy to leave them at our house, sent me in tears from the table.
Quite a different family lived on the other side of our house. Mr. Reuben J. Flick had made his fortune from one of our few drygoods stores. He lived in the beautiful stone house on the corner, pride of the town, built of the warm mellow stone from Campbell’s Ledge, a historic spot up our Susquehanna River. The Flicks had shown some eccentricity in naming their five children. Our dear Dr. Hodge christened the first born son “Welcome Liddon”, sister Helen Jessie followed, to be succeeded by brother Warren. The next unwanted son was baptized “Extra Harry,” but when “Double- Extra Reuben J.” arrived instead of a sister, Dr. Hodge rebelled and refused to accept the “extra” titles. Whether it was due to this handicap or not, the boys were not much comfort to their parents. When one was suspended from college, he was considerate enough to send his weekly letter to his mother, mailed from college instead of from the town where he was rusticating.
Mrs. Flick, telling her troubles to mother, would wipe her eyes and complain: “I don’t understand it. I do so much for my children and you do nothing, and yet yours turn out all right.” It may be her’s had to learn to play cards behind the barn! - -
Sunday was a quiet day when I was young. Father generally took us for a long walk to the cemetery. Many other Wilkes-Barre families did likewise. My brother Sam, rather shy and sensitive, was nearing home one Sunday, trotting along holding father’s hand. Suddenly he looked up to find that somehow he was holding the hand of a stranger. He looked back and found us all smiling. That hurt his pride. Quickly dropping the stranger’s hand, he walked deliberately into the deep mud of our non-macadam road, and lay down, kicking with rage, in his best Sunday suit! I think a strap helped clean those white pants.
Ethel was like quicksilver, and her punishment was to be put to bed in the daytime. One day, after she had thrown her sixth summer hat off her head as a nuisance in running after a passing hand-organ and monkey, father and Mr. Hand coming down River Street from their offices at noontime, saw a little white-clad bare-footed figure fly by. “Why Chase, that looks like Ethel” said Mr. Hand. They were just passing the fashionable Wyoming Valley Hotel, with its long rows of porch rockers full of summer visitors. Father decided not to claim such an embarrassing child; so she had her fill of the monkey and music. To be sure, she was put back to bed on her return home - but this time with happy memories.
Father had a strong philanthropic interest in the welfare of our Valley. He wrote the charter of our General Hospital and was its Secretary all his life.
When father moved to Wilkes-Barre from his home in Haverhill, Massachusetts, on the Merrimac River, the chief doctor was an allopath and his cure for all ills was blue-mass pills, given in quantity.
Owing to its anthracite coal beds, Luzerne County was then the richest County in the world.
Our lovely Valley was full of black diamonds, and the discontented of Europe poured in looking for work. First came the Irish, Scotch and Welsh. As they prospered, the left the mines, and the peasantry from the Balkan states took their place. Many of these Slavs were from Hungary and in our callous indifference, we called them “HUNKIES”. Many were injured in the mines and came to the hospital. We heard many funny stories of their abyssmal ignorance of hospital rules. A doctor told a nurse one day that he was sending in a foreigner about four o’clock and to give him a bath and get him to bed. When a foreign-speaking mild mannered man arrived at that hour, nurse did as she was bid. Vainly the man protested, she carried out her orders and scrubbed him well, removing as much accumulated mine dust as possible. It turned out that he had come to call on an injured cousin. He had been warned that there was much red-tape to be gone through but did not expect the indignity of being given a bath, but the nurse’s indignation was greater.
The foreign population settled around the coal mines, furnished many of father’s tenants. They were very fond of “Mr. Chasey” and soon discovered that he was not a hard landlord. “Oh, Mr. Chasey, next month we pay the rent.” So many things to buy in America; and their small back-yards were full of empty cans that had held choicest peaches and other fine fruits and vegetables. They fed their babies almost anything. Father would remonstrate with a housewife, begging off on her rent while holding a little babe sucking on a large cucumber, telling her how bad it was for the baby. “Oh, Mr. Chasey, he like”; and the next month, on father’s collection trip, his inquiry for the baby would be greeted with tears. “Oh, Mr. Chasey, we bury baby.”
Because our Valley had a reputation for malaria in the old days, father built the Wigwam, three miles up the mountain at Laurel Run. We had a view below us of the whole Valley. When we drove down to school in the early autumn, before moving back to town, we went into a fog that from our ridge looked like the loveliest pearly clouds, not a steeple or tower showing through. The Wigwam was made of Georgia pine, and when the sun shone into my dark closet, the resin glowed ruby red. It was one of my childhood pleasures to wake up and see it.
Life on the mountain was primitive. We pumped our water, and father would always remind the prevalent Katie (the same name for all who came - and went), at mealtime, to be sure to pump the water from the north corner of the well. Huge red-painted hogsheads stood at the corners of the house to catch the rain water, in case of fire. Our mountain was a great huckleberry and rattlesnake country, and our old cook, Louise Lambert, picking up a stick from the woodpile outside the annex door one day, unearthed a coiled rattler. Louise was thin and irritable. She and the boys had carried on a long unspoken feud, she hiding the cookie box and they discovering it. The time it stayed hid the longest was when she buried it among the soiled clothes in the laundry basket.
Our nearest neighbors at Laurel Run were the Palmers. Mr. Palmer was our Congressman - a tall, very handsome man. Madeline, Harry Palmer and I had played house one hot summer morning under the front porch, and towards evening someone called out that there was a large rattlesnake in the corner under the porch. We children were fervently caressed and fairly prayed over because of our miraculous escape. The snake must be killed - neighbors gathered -- Mr. Palmer stretched his long length on the lawn, gun in correct position - a terrific bang. A couple of the bravest ventured under the porch, and brought out -- a large braided straw hat! To Mr. Palmer’s disgust the story got into our local paper.
The Palmers were an interesting family. Mrs. Palmer started The Boys Industrial Association among the breaker boys of the coal mines. The B.I.A. flourished for years and was really the forerunner of The Boy Scouts. Many of its members who turned into very successful men, said they owed their start and ambition to Mrs. Palmer. The lovely Carrara statue of Mrs. Palmer that decorates our River Common, was made in Italy and erected by her children.
We used to have wonderful all-day picnics over at the Bear Creek Pond, where Mr. Lewis had a fine boathouse with canoes and boats for our use. A crowd of children would go, and some were always falling into the water. Mrs. Palmer was very cold-blooded and though a dainty small woman, gave the impression of plumpness. She had been known to furnish seven petticoats as well as several pairs of stockings taken from her person, for the children while their own clothes dried.
The ponies used to take us to this ideal picnic spot. They were a pair of little Kentucky horses, the homeliest and smartest little pair; they could run up and down the mountain and pass all the big horses who had to go slow. They were called the “Chase Rats”. Bill had a lovely disposition, but Pet was practically vicious. Sam had to put pebbles in her oats to slow her down as she would gobble her own and then kick Bill aside to eat his. The ponies ran away periodically, Pet lashing out and kicking the harness off. It even drove father to use his strongest swear word - “Drat it!”
Her sense of irony must have been strong, for after having been treated with the greatest kindness by us and responding with constant ugliness, when she was finally sold to a milkman she was meekness itself. Her owner found her so well behaved that he mistrusted us and our treatment of her when we told him of her misdeeds.
Our three mile climb up the mountain to the Wigwam, took us through a rough mining villiage, aptly called “WHISKEY HILL”. After school one day, father was taking us children and Nan and Grace Phelps (two elegant young ladies - our neighbors at Laurel Run) home, and we had to detour around a circle of men surrounding two large, ugly white bulldogs locked in a deadly and bloody struggle. The young ladies were naturally horrified, and begged father to try and stop the fight. Father, not being of bruiser size himself, had no desire to get into the melee. “But, Mr. Chase, can’t you get the constable to stop it?” “Unfortunately,” said father, “One of the dogs belongs to the constable!”
As I took myself quite seriously in those days, I felt it my duty to try to educate the family by sharing the ernest articles I read. To this day, I never can say: - “I read an article”, without mentally hearing a groan from the family. “OH, SHE’S BEEN READING AN ARTICLE AGAIN!”
Father generally withered my well-meant efforts by saying, as he slammed his fist down on the table: - “Fan, I call that INFORMATION.” He had his own ideas of information and had a nice wit of his own. Years before strikes had become chronic, I passed his chair as he was reading the morning paper, and heard him say, sotto voce: - “So, the barbers are going on a strike - well I must get up town and get some shaves in advance.”
Mother had a good friend who kept house for a widower. Her housekeeping was sketchy, such as letting her shawl hand over the banister as she came down to breakfast to dust the stairs, but her fund of information was not. She had the habit of filling her newsbag and emptying it at a friend’s house. She would come in without ringing, rattling off 100 words to the minute before she even found mother. “Poor Eliza”, father would shake his head from his safe vantage point in the library, and murmur: - “One has only so many words to say before one dies, and how she is shortening her days!”
When mother and my Aunt Mary were girls, Wilkes-Barre was a small town and they had to make a good deal of their own fun. One afternoon they decided to look for a fictitious “Maria Mulligan”. They rounded up the “Rutter girls”, always ready for mischief; dressed like plain country women, the four made the rounds of the town inquiring for Maria Mulligan. They even rang the doorbell of the highly respected Judge Conyngham, and when the Judge opened the door, he was met with indignant demands for Maria Mulligan. Their shrill invectives ran on till he finally managed to close the door on Mag Beaumont, who had thoughtfully stuck her foot over the door jam. The dignified Judge never discovered that the fiery old women were the young maidens who bowed so demurely to him passing in the street. Finally, the girls reached the milliner shop kept by two maiden sisters, and demanded why Maria Mulligan’s bonnet wasn’t ready as promised several days earlier, for Easter Sunday. The elder sister, who had a slow, drawling voice, called to her sister behind the curtain at the end of the shop: - “Sister, is Maria Mulligan’s bonnett ready?” Naturally it was not produced. However, the wicked girls raised such a hubbub that they finally had to run to escape the town constable who happened along.
Old Zion Church, on Northampton Street, held meetings for other denominations than the Presbyterians. In passing, these lively girls heard loud “HALLELUJAHS” and “AMENS” steaming up from the basement where a sect, perhaps similar to our present “HOLY ROLLERS” was holding a revival. Aunt Mary went down to peek through the glass door.
Mother and the others, tired of waiting, spied a broom at the head of the stairs. This they shot down, bumping on every step and finally hitting the door with a mighty bang which brought the end of the world right to the meeting. Aunt Mary had a great time not getting caught as her long full skirts hindered her wild dash up the stairs. Aunt Mary sang in the choir, as did Mr. Samuel Lynch, who wrote in her hymn book one Sunday: --
“This Church, as I have oft been told,
In summer’s hot, In winter’s cold,
Not so the folk who worship here,
For they are cold throughout the year.”
The Rutter girls were full of pranks and their niece, Hortense Beaumont, was a true descendant. She and Ethel were great friends, seeing each other almost daily. One afternoon, they were playing alone in Harold’s gym on the third floor, to the disgust of Harold and his boy friends who came in for exercise and wanted no girls around. Ethel was all for leaving, but high-spirited “Tonsie” Beaumont would have none of it, as they had come first, and pleasant insults were hurled back and forth. It had begun to snow, and with the dusk it was time for Tonsie to start for home, several long blocks away. Suddenly, she turned her ankle; there was nothing to do but put her on a sled. Harold and Bud Palmer dragged her that long distance over rough pavement with too little snow to make it easy going. When they finally reached her door, she jumped off the sled, made a bow, and skipped into the house, on two uninjured ankles.
Ethel always had “things happening to her” as we used to say. Once she was on the train going from Aunt Mary White’s in Haverhill, Massachusetts, to visit her great friend Ethel McClure at Gerrish Island, Kittery Point, and the train went through a tunnel so short they did not bother to light it -- suddenly she felt a man’s whiskers at the back of her neck. At that moment the train came out into the daylight. Blushing and profusely perspiring, the brakeman gasped: -- “I ax your pardon, Miss, I thought you was Miss Johnsing,” who was in a state of giggles across the aisle.
When visiting Annie Thompson, Harold’s fiance’, in Topeka, Kansas, she was invited one summer night to go to the theatre by the great catch of the town, a young Harvard graduate and Easterner. Annie’s mother advised her to take a wrap, so she rushed upstairs in a hurry and grabbed her white shawl off the bed. It was quite chilly in the open trolley and her escort turned to help her put on her wrap. To her horror, she discovered that her shawl had apparently turned into one of the little scalloped petticoats that we all wore in those days. At the young man’s frequent, no doubt malicious urgings to put her wrap on, she insisted, with chattering teeth, that she wasn’t C-O-O---LD A- A-T A-L-L!
Ethel really was one of the women who threw an umbrella out of the car window, just as the train started, to a lady on the platform who had been sitting with her, and had to appear perfectly innocent when the man who owned it came strolling leisurely in from the smoking car to get his umbrella before getting off the train.
Grandfather Taylor’s house was at the corner of River and Northampton Streets and had a lovely big backyard full of fruits trees and currant bushes, as well as flowers. One very snowy winter afternoon, Aunt Mary was entertaining a not at all exciting beau, at the end of the long parlor, and mother was sewing by the front window. It was snowing hard, but every little while mother would smile, bow and wave her hand to someone passing. Aunt Mary would raise up in her chair trying to get a glimpse of the passerby, only to fall back disappointed to her boring young man. Of course, no one had passed at all!
The only recollection I have of Grandfather Taylor was when I was very little. I had been playing by myself in our backyard one summer evening, and suddenly I realized it was getting dark and my only companions were fireflies. I rushed indoors to find no one at home. In a panic, I flew across the street to the River Common, bumping into a rather stout elderly gentleman taking an evening stroll along the river. Kindly Judge Taylor looked down at the bawling child to comfort her. “Good gracious” said he, “Why this is Lizzie’s little Fanny.”
Grandfather was very good company and when the businessmen of the town went to Easton by stage-coach, and then on to Philadelphia by train, to get their supplies, they always like to include Edmund Taylor in the party.
The house where I was born on River Street, faced the Common along our broad Susquehanna River.
There were many fine old homes on this street, and in one of the largest lived Judge and Mrs. Stanley Woodward and their two sons. Mrs. Woodward was a handsome, slow-moving and dignified lady of much simplicity and very absent-minded. She had been known to call on a neighbor who lived near our Church, who had been about to start for midweek prayer meeting, and during her visit, hearing singing, asked what it was. On being told, she said: “Why, this is where I started for.”
Another of our pet stories was about her having a nice morning chat in a store with a certain Judge in our town, and after leaving him she crossed the street to Regan’s Oyster House to continue her shopping and found Judge there. “Well, Judge” she greeted him, “We seem to be of the same mind this morning.” But the Judge, not being a bigoted prohibitionist, was in the saloon next door to the Oyster House, which she had absent-mindedly entered.
The chairs in our Presbyterian Sunday School faced the entrance doors, and one week we were entertaining an Evangelist. Mrs. Woodward, late as always, saw the congregation standing, and after seating herself in the only remaining seat in the front row and adjusting her wraps, rose to her feet, not having heard anything the speaker had said. He had asked those who were Church members to stand and most of us had risen as Mrs. Woodward came in. He had then asked those who would like to join the church to rise. After Mrs. Woodward had stood long enough, she looked around to see no one, alas, but herself standing. So she placidly sat down, while the Evangelist welcomed one good sister to the Church. Mrs. Woodward had not taken any of this in, and was slightly nonplussed to find many of her friends almost having to leave the meeting, in trying to suppress wild laughter.
In my old age, no longer do the sleighs race up and down River Street in front of the house. Nor does anyone skate on the river.
We heat our houses with steam, and I can think of only one friend who keeps a glowing coal fire in the grate of her sitting-room.
Mother found my older brother, Harold, then a little boy, quietly slipping off his paisley flannel dressing-gown before the coal fire in our sitting-room, the tail of it having caught fire.
One of our friends kept a little old man busy all day tending the coal fires all over the house. His sole occupation.
Gone are the days when everyone called on everyone else; Always leaving cards. If a household consisted of three daughters and they had three girl visitors, we left six cards. But nowadays, if anyone came to see me, I would faint away with joy.
We are very much more sophisticated. Time and space seem very little. No one has time to be bored, but are we so much happier? I wonder.
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| Frances Brooks Chase January 1901 |
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| Frances B. Chase January 1901 |
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| Frances B Chase, October 26, 1892 |
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To Frances L Chase
423 College Street, Winfield, Kansas
From Frances Brooks Chase
“Wild Goose Chase”, R.F. D. No. 2, Dallas, PA, near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
August 16, 1934
Dear Frances: --
Today I looked out the window and there I saw eleven robins all trying to get into the bird bath under the apple tree all at once ! Three got in and how they do splash! Rather than wash themselves. I hope you can get here in September to help me keep it filled.
Ned Milligan has a tiny donkey and there he was in our yard, eating all yellow flowers. I hope you will be here the next time he runs away to eat our grass and help me send him home next door.
Your father’s letter came today and I am so glad your grandmother is better.
Love to your mother, father --
Much love Frances
From Aunt Frances
P.S. I can wait until you can surely find out if you can come in September.
(August the sixteenth)
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| FBC with Hamilton Chase August 1958 |
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| FBC with Hamilton Chase at 76 West South Street, W-B, Penna, August 1958 |
