Ribbons in her Hair
Faded photographs, covered now with lines and creases
Harold Hampton WWI uniform
with the braided Fourragère
The days and weeks flash by in our gallery while we sort, match, and fit the jigsaw pieces of the human experience together. A newspaper clipping, a photograph, a secreted ring discovered in the back of a dresser drawer promising eternal love, with engraved initials matching only one spouse. Secrets, souvenirs, shrapnel of lost moments lead us along a Hansel and Gretel path. Why do we do this each week? It is a time consuming endeavor indeed. But what really drives us? Is it purely profit or simply Facebook gossip? Perhaps the reason is bigger than all of us. Just maybe what draws us in is the same element that attracts you each Saturday. It is a personal quest, buried deep within our id, to touch our ancestors, for only through their experiences can we better understand ours. Blazed trails are never a given, oftentimes nearly impossible to follow. Marks fade with time, undergrowth becomes overgrowth, and the obvious obliterates into obscurity. It is what we call roots, where we came from hints to where we are going. From our home featuring the dog library comes an early twentieth century photographic journey through Bucks County, specifically Newtown, Pineville, Wycombe, and Penns Park, even across the pond to the fields of France and into the Dominican Republic with the Marines in 1920. Three brothers, three lives. The photos are magnificent, the stories incomplete. Although faded, the images still taunt us, tease us, knowing questions will be asked, information sought, outcomes disappointingly never reached. A bouillabaisse of human travails. Irresistible, isn't it. Let the journey begin.
A bicycle built for three
Newtown Clothing House, 25 South State Street, Lillian, Esther, & Peter Morris, ca. 1909
From a loose pile of ephemera, a black and white photo slips onto the table before us. Staring back are Peter and Lillian Morris, new owners of the Morris Clothing House, State Street, Newtown, Pennsylvania. Most citizens of Newtown remember the establishment as Savidge Brothers, but its beginnings were in 1906 when the Morris family constructed the store complete with second floor living quarters. Peter initially learned the business working with Frank Worthington in Doylestown. By the turn of the century, he landed in Newtown where he plied his trade through the first quarter of the twentieth century. In 1922, suffering from poor health, he entered into partnership with Morris and Clarence Savidge, his nephews. Returning to the photograph, we note a little girl sitting in her stroller at her mother's side. This is Esther Morris, Peter's and Lillian's only child, who arrived in 1907. She was born in the family apartment, lived there her entire life, then died at ninety-four in the room she was born. Today, all three family members rest together in the Newtown Cemetery. Miss Morris remains a Newtown institution, her life having spanned a most remarkable century.
Ribbons in her hair, souvenirs of days together
The missing link
As our ephemeral trail continues, we discover a photo album assembled by the Hampton family of middle Bucks County, circa 1918-22. Brothers Harold, Cecil, and Leonard left us a photographic record of daily life in their rural community. The question becomes apparent - how did a 1909 Morris Clothing photo become entangled with a 1920 Hampton album? Riddle me this has long ago become our daily mantra in the gallery. Fortunately, inside the album's back cover, we find the answer. Here, each brother had glued his calling card: Harold, Penns Park, Pa; Cecil, Pineville & Wrightstown, Pa; and Leonard, with the Newtown Clothing House. Bingo. Here was our sought-after link. Again, we returned to the album. Tucked deep within its black pages we discover a photograph of Esther Morris, age approximately 10, with ribbons in her hair. A beautiful young lady, she would live her life unmarried, sequestered in the time capsule of her second floor apartment. Our process always raises more questions than answers.
Semper Fi
The Battle of Blanc Mont Ridge was one of the most powerful and effective blows struck under the direction of Marshall Foch against the retreating Germans. It was where I was wounded. I [have]seen enough dead men on this mountain to fill a five acre field if they were laid side by side....
...Journal of Harold Hampton, 47 Co., 5th Regt. Marines, October, 1918
Pvt. Harold Hampton's WWI dog tags
Harold Hampton's Great War experience is relived for us through his written words. Miraculously, his dog tags, war souvenirs, and uniform have survived to us. His home in France was the celebrated 47 Company, 5th Regiment, a legendary Marine unit still revered today. They, along with the 6th Regiment, earned the coveted French Fourragère, the only American units ever to receive this honor. The award was bestowed upon them after their battle against the Germans in Belleau Woods in June of 1918:
This day will long be remembered by the members of the 5th and 6th Regt. Marines. We charged through the woods that the Germans held and drove them far beyond it, taking many prisoners, although we lost many of our men in this charge we gained our objective...I was gassed here in this woods on the night of the seventh.
Hansel & Gretel trail - World War I mess kit engraved
"Verdun, Chateau-Thierry, St. Mihiel, Champagne"
Despite mustard gas and an overwhelmingly outnumbered position, the Marines fought ferociously, at times challenging direct machine gun fire, then bayonet-to-bayonet, even hand-to-hand combat as they swept back and forth across the disputed landscape. The cost was cruelly high. Post battle, the French renamed the woods - Bois de la Brigade de Marine(Wood of the Marine Brigade) then awarded them the Fourragère. The award is simple, highly honored, and recognizable worldwide instantly - a braided rope intertwined with green and red cord sporting a brass tip. It is worn across the left shoulder. From Belleau Woods, Harold Hampton would push through St. Mihiel in September, Champagne in October, then Germany itself in November. There he stayed as the occupation force until the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Almost two years after he reached French soil, he was finally heading home.
We landed in Hoboken Aug. 3...on the eighth our brigade paraded in New York City...on the twelfth we paraded in Washington, D.C., also passed in review before the President [Wilson]...on the thirteenth...I was discharged from the service and returned to my home in Penns Park. This ended my army life and I am very glad to be a civilian again.