"Impeachment Of Presidtnet [sic] Roosevelt By A People's Congress"

A kind reader and collector of ephemera passed along this image of a broadside promoting an important day for the subject of this blog

From the collection of Allison Burnett

Yale Class of 1899 - 50th Reunion, 1949

He graduated from Yale in 1899, at age 26. He seems to have spent some time earlier at Ohio State.

On the occasion of the fiftieth reunion of his class he wrote a poem. (There were other poems for other reunions - I'll have to gather them all eventually)

Those Hopeful Oldsters

So now it's full two score and ten
Of episodic years since when
The gallant crew of Ninety-nine
Did sally forth to rise and shine.
To battle on the fields of strife
And learn the mystery of life.
Full armed with crackling parchment each
Did look for things within his reach,
For what to seize and what to do
And what ambition to pursue.
Full armed with Prexy Timothy is homily,
With Irvie Fisher's fancy formulae,
With Billy Sumner's pregnant facts,
And Billy Phelps's lively tracts,
Full stocked with academic lore
They gazed upon the distant shore
Where hung the plume of light and win,
To combat evil, conquer sin.
Full armed with varied erudition
In the best old Yale tradition.
And as the rapid years rolled on
Two wars have come and two have gone
(Or nearly so, I dare to say,
I haven't read the news today.)
One war to stop the next that came
Another war to do the same.
And now of course we're better off,
A fact at which some cynics scoff.
We've learned to hate a lot since then.
We've learned to hate and love again.
We've learned to ride in motor cars.
We've learned the way of cocktail bars.
We've learned to soar the atmosphere.
Without a doubt or single fear.
We've weathered Prohibition's joke.
Our women folks have learned to smoke.
We've mastered bridge, likewise gin rummy,
And all the joys of double dummy.
We've witnessed pictures start to move
And talk and teach the art of love,
And then from Hollywood of course
We've learned the value of divorce.
We've learned to golf, we've learned to ski.
We've learned about the fickle she.
We've learned to foxtrot, learned to jive.
We've seen the radio come alive.
We've met a lot of varied jerks.
We've gone the limit, shot the works.
We've had a lot of great adventures,
Such as getting our new dentures.
And some are here and some are there
And some have left this scene of care.
And some are thin and some are stout,
And all are gray as all get out.
Arteriosclerosis grim
Has slowed the pace of many a limb.
We've looped the loop, we've fed the kitty.
We've tried the country, tried the city.
When the teeth fall out and the cheeks fall in,
When the nose grows down to meet the chin,
When wrinkled phiz looks like a griddle,
And comes a bulge in the old south middle,
When the old pump lags with weakened beat
And skimps the blood to hands and feet,
When bladders, kidneys, livers, lights
Disturb the days and vex the nights,
When sundry things like these and those
Demand attention, swell our woes,
Why then to all it doth occur
We're not as young as we once were.
But even so, you'll all agree
We're not as old as we hope to be.

(Presented by the author at the 50th Reunion of the Yale Class of 1899. June 1949)


This was the same year and month as the wedding of Anna and Ollie Jones.

"From the Boys"

Here is the inscription on the the gold-handled walking stick

New Year 1884
E. O. Jones
From the Boys

Given the date, I suppose this was given to Ellis Oliver Jones (1833 - 1894), rather than to Ellis Oliver Jones (1873 - 1967), who would have been about ten years old in 1884. I've always assumed that the boys were his three sons.

Click to Embiggen

The Testament of Henry Miller

Among the documents I have is a typescript of a testament written by one Henry Miller. This man was born February 23, 1819 in Mount Vernon, Ohio. He is the paternal great-uncle of the Ellis Oliver Jones who is the subject here. That man's mother, Eugenia Miller Jones was the daughter of Jonathan Miller, the eldest brother of Henry Miller. In this document, dated in 1884, a year before his death, and when my great-grandfather was about eleven years old, he recounts what he remembers of his family history.

You may click on each of the following pages to make them readable. I've tried this weekend -- unsuccessfully -- to abstract the data here into the family tree I'm building at Geni.com. Go, if you care to http://www.geni.com/people/Ellis-Jones/384809866210013734 . If you can't see it, let me know. I'll find a way to let you in.

There are redactions made after the fact (see the * notes on some pages, and the final page is directed to "my" branch of the family. I guess by the typing style that these are the work of our Ellis Oliver Jones.

Click and then click again on the following image to make it readable

Reading about the Sedition Trial of 1944

I have begin to read the historical and legal literature on the sedition trial of 1944. It's very interesting. It seems to be the general consensus that whatever the merits of the case against the extraordinary collection of defendants might have been, the process was mishandled by the prosecutor and the judge, and was manipulated by political forces at the highest level.

Very early among the legal analyses seems to be:

The Sedition Trial: A Study in Delay and Obstruction
The University of Chicago Law Review , Vol. 15, No. 3 (Spring, 1948), pp. 691-702
(article consists of 12 pages)
Published by: The University of Chicago Law Review
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1597541

There is a great deal more for me to read.

I can scarcely imagine what it must have been like to observe this process during war time. I can imagine even less what it must have been like to have been related to one of the defendants - one identified as one of the crackpots among them, let alone to have shared a name with him as my father and grandfather did. Dad was in secondary school during the war. Grandad was a safety officer in the Ethyl Corporation and from 1943 to 1945 was a Special Assistant to the Director of the Petroleum Administration for War.

Uncertainties

Life is earnest. Life is real.
As we go from meal to meal,
Searching for the rightful diet.
When we find it, we must try it,
Doubting if we can digest it
For at best we've only guessed it.
Whether patriarch or pope
We can only grope and hope.
Whether commoner or king,
Never sure of anything.

Life Begins At --

Life begins before you're one
When first you gaze upon the sun.
Life begins with book and rule
When first you toddle off to school.
Life begins at seventeen
When you behold a stunning queen.

Life begins at twenty-three -
You get your coveted degree.
Then life begins at twenty-four
Youe cease to be a bachelor.
And life begins at twenty-eight -
You enter the parental state.

Life begins at thirty-two -
You've found the job that suited you.
Life begins at forty-nine -
You're going strong and feeling fine.
Then life begins at sixty-five
And you retire much alive.

And then you reach three score and ten
To find that life begins again.
Life begins each morning bright
On waking from the dead of night.
Yes, life begins from day to day
As you go trudging on your way.