ME -- BEGINNING TO BE -- CHAPTER 4

 CHAPTER 4 

Francis Fizz Brown the Second (pictured left on horseback, man on the right is Bill Hall, 1920) didn’t particularly like William Wilson Meredith the Second. “He didn’t trust him,” my Grandmother said. I don ‘t know why. They were kin. Maybe my Grandfather knew of William’s lay-about reputation from family get-togethers. Members of the Wilson and Meredith sides of the family often appeared as guests at the same functions.

Monday, January 3, 1916, being the 50th anniversary of the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. B. F. Meredith, of 221 West Chestnut Street, West Chester, 

(pictured right as it appears today) their children and some other near relatives planned a social surprise for them.  Accordingly, as each party  reached town, they called to see them.  They being accustomed to their friends calling, they suspected nothing until several families had assembled, when it dawned on them that it was something unusual for so many to call on the same day.  Being informed why, they entered into the spirit of the occasion, and a general good time followed.  At dinner the host and hostess related their experience of the day fifty years ago, telling of their marriage, their round-about ride to the train that was to take them on their wedding trip to Ohio to visit relatives.  Music followed and all too soon farewells had to be said.  Those present were:  B. F. Meredith, and wife, of West Chester; W. W. Meredith and daughter, Ella, of Modena; B. F. Meredith, Jr. and wife, of the old home farm, West Caln, Fred Wilson and wife and daughters, Clara and Esther; Wm. F. Wilson and wife, J. Evans Wilson and wife, S. Heber Wilson and wife, all of Anselma; Herford E. Downing and wife of Malvern. Greetings were received from their absent children, they being Mr. and Mrs.[Anna Evans Meredith] Wm. Gibbs and family of Shelby, Mich.; Charles Meredith and family, of Orchard Home Farm, Michigan, and Mr. and Mrs.(Ivagene Meredith] Horace Sessions, of Hollywood, Los Angeles, Cal.  Daily Local News. 1/5/1916.

Perhaps he was only an over protective father. Surely Francis

wasn’t critical of the circumstances of William’s conception, his own daughter’s conception being a similar  circumstance. Esther Wilson and Francis Brown (pictured right at Whitford in 1920) married on February 26, 1920. Their daughter Mildred was born in June just short of four months later. My mother was conceived when Esther was 20 and Francis was 19. It is my understanding, Esther a farm girl with a strong will, was the aggressor in the affair. My mother and dad had more in common than being Second Cousins. 

 Mildred Brown (pictured left, 1939) graduated from West Chester High School in 1938. William Meredith got down on a knee and proposed a year later. On June 21, 1940, Mildred’s twentieth birthday, they were married. (My dad was 22.)

It was not an elaborate affair. The Reverend Hackman wed them in the Grove Parsonage, not in the church. There were only two in the wedding party. Millie Wilson, my mother’s First Cousin and best friend, was the Maid-of-Honor. William Hill stood as best man. (In the wedding photo l. to r. Bill  Hill, Millie Wilson,

Mildred Brown Meredith and William Meredith.)  On that day at 7:00 PM they became the team of Willie and Millie officially. (Willie and Millie, it’s a wonder they weren’t married on Sesame Street.) Despite the simplicity of the service, the marriage lasted for over 72 years.

Millie’s father drove them to New York City for a weekend honeymoon.

 My dad’s work status at the time was unemployed. After returning home from the CCC he worked at the scrap yard in Modena, but just before the wedding he was laid off. They were  too poor to set up housekeeping together and for several weeks after the marriage each lived at their own family home. At some point, perhaps when my dad landed employment, they moved in together at Modena.

They rented a second floor apartment next to (and probably on the wrong side of) the railroad tracks. Now they not only had comic names, Willie and Millie, they had a comic situation. Every time a train rolled through town their dishes chattered and pictures fell off the walls. (By rhe way, my Great Grandfather owned both the scrap yard and the apartment building, of course.)

Sometime in this period dad got a job as a stoker at Lukens Steel in Coatesville. Lukens is one of the oldest steel manufactures in the United States, a maker of alloy steel plates. Stoking the furnaces was hot and heavy work, something my dad grew use to doing in the CCC. No more was he lollygagging on the Modena Bridge. Hard work became his life long habit.  

There was a welder working in the steel mill at the same time. He was a tall fellow with light-colored hair and a Southern hills accent He was a section foreman named Isaac Tipton (pictured right in 1940, and boy does he look like his oldest son Ronald in this photo). Neither man was a father yet, but one day they would have sons who would become life-long friends.

Actually both men’s lives soon took dramatic changes.