Roscoe

Think about your brothers and sisters. My contention is that, in a biological sense, the people that you are closest to, on earth, are your siblings. They are the only people on earth that came from exactly the same DNA mix as you. Your parents have only half the closeness to you. And the same with your children. They are the people that you know the most intimately. Your knowledge of them spans lifetimes, and takes you from cradle to grave. You know everything about them, and they know everything about you.

So, think about how close you are to your brothers and sisters. Your parents cherish the photos they have of you and your siblings. And you feel the same way about your children. Grandparents love group photos of their children and grandchildren. And sometimes, they proudly display photos of their great-grandchildren, and even great-great grandchildren.

But what about the other direction? We may beam with pride at the photo of a grandparent. But rarely would we do that for a great-grandparent, much less someone further back. "Oh I'm not interested in dead people." Yet you have pictures of your great-grandchildren on your mantle! We model the behaviors of our great-great-grandparents, who knew and loved us, (even though we will never remember them), by paying it forward. But we stop when it comes to remembering our forbears, being proud of them, and even beaming when we think about them.

We can honor them with photos, as we do our grandchildren. But we also can honor them by carrying their name forward.

Enter Roscoe Darr, the curmudgeonly patriarch of a family that, 70 years after his death, has grown to over five hundred people, with a dozen new births every year. The family is still connected, and thanks to the social media age, has even expanded to a degree our grandparents never could have dreamed. They moved away, and forgot. We "friend-request", and remember.

When Roscoe Darr still lived, he likely had photos of this group framed and placed throughout his home on Milwaukee Street in Savanna, Illinois. Here is a sample of his grandkids, now mostly passed retirement age.

Few people remain, that remembered Roscoe. But if you want to know more about him, what he was like, then get to know these people. And they each have a lifetime of stories to tell, and they all represent part of what he was, and still is today.

Finally, since the birth of Roscoe and Elizabeth's first child, in 1896, none of the hundreds of babies added to the family, were given his name, until the year 2013, when this sharp young man, a Great-Great-Great Grandchild of Roscoe Darr, was named Roscoe.

Roscoe Darr is not that far away from us. He is as close to us as our cousins, or our great grandparents. We just never knew him personally.

But with a little effort, and a little interest, we can get to know him pretty well indeed!

The Making of a Close Family

It was always hard to think of my Grandpa Edgar Darr (standing, center, in the above picture), as a warm man. True, he died when I was barely 8 years old. I never lived close to Ann Arbor, while he was living, so I never formed a close bond with him.

My Dad's memories of his father affirm my impressions of my grandfather. He was always pleasant, and obviously worked hard to support his large family. But by all accounts he was close to his brothers and sisters (a trait that my dad shares with his father).

A lot of important traits get passed from father to son. Edgar Darr was close to his siblings. My Dad is close to his. I am close to mine. While curmudgeonly in character, still these men modeled the best trait of all: love for family. Earlier generations did not express it the way that we do today, but it was there nevertheless.

So let's talk about Edgar's parents: Roscoe and Elizabeth Darr (seated in the picture). According to Gene Halfman, his grandfather Roscoe was always listening to a ball game, shushing the kids so that he could hear. My Dad remembers Grandpa Roscoe only when he was on his deathbed. He rode a train to Savanna with his father (Edgar) and visited with Roscoe, who was wrapped in blankets on the front porch.

What about Grandma Elizabeth? Her niece, Mary Donegan, remembers her Aunt Elizabeth as a "warm, friendly, hospitable woman." She was always smiling, and always had lots of great food ready for company.

From Roscoe and Elizabeth Darr, came a set of children that always remained close. Their grandchildren stayed extremely close within their family groups. When the time came for the entire family to come back together, in 2007, there were 132 people that showed up on July 7, 2007, at the first reunion in fifty years.

They did something right.

One of the earliest insights I discovered in my family research, shed some insight into what my Grandpa Darr (Edgar) was really like. On the outside, he was a crusty guy. But he named his first daughter, Elizabeth, after his mother and grandmother. When he was on his deathbed, this same Elizabeth (my Aunt Betty) came to visit him, and he said "Thanks for coming, Betsy," a name he had not called her since she was a girl.

The man had a soft side.

Our family teaches us a lot about not being fooled by appearances!