by Mary Wakefield Buxton –
URBANNA —
Learning I was a descendant of Anglo-Saxons was just the beginning of becoming aware of my paternal family’s history. Father talked a lot about our connection to “Mother England” and the early life of his father as a “young lad.”
My great-grandfather, William Wakefield, born in Stanton-by-Bridge, Derbyshire, England, in 1834, was F.W.’s father and the motivator to get his family to America. His son, F.W., with little formal education, had gone to work at age 9 in a brass factory in Birmingham in order to help care for his family, long before child labor protection laws were in place.
One summer when I was studying 20th century English poets at Oxford University, I traveled to this tiny village (population 200) to find if any relatives were still living there. I first stopped at the local Church of England to check tombstones, but did not see Wakefield mentioned there.
Next stop was a 12th century pub with a door so low I had to stoop to enter. I stood in the dim light to look over the few people standing at the bar. It was 11 a.m. “Are there any Wakefields here?” I asked just like you might expect an American to do.
“I be a Wakefield,” said a short, handsome, silver-haired man nursing his glass of ale. It was verb structure right out of Shakespeare. I gasped. He looked just like my father. I introduced myself feeling a bit silly. I noticed the man had dirty fingernails.
His name was George Wakefield, my father’s name. He was a laborer and lived in a duplex with his brother and their wives. Later I drove by to see the simple brick abode in a modest neighborhood. I had found a relative.
The experience stunned me because I realized the only path to the Oxford education I had just enjoyed for my English relatives would have had to have been through America. I understood instantly why my ancestors had left England.
My Anglo-Saxon ancestors, of humble means, had been held back for centuries by a rigid class system established after the Norman Invasion in 1066. Father had told me William Wakefield had left England during the American Civil War to try to find a job here in order to earn enough money to bring his family here. After nearly starving to death walking across Pennsylvania, he had given up trying to find employment and returned to England. His son’s wages from the brass factory helped fund the entire family’s next successful trip to the USA in 1872.
Fortunately, the child F.W. had been noticed by the owner of the brass company who picked him to accompany him through the factory one morning to help him look for imperfections. F.W. had immediately spotted a crack in a pane of glass and pointed it out to the owner. “You are my eyes,” the owner said and F.W. became the owner’s personal assistant.
Grandfather worked long hours and missed the childhood Americans think of when we grew up … building forts, crabbing, hanging out in a treehouse, swimming, or biking down to the ice cream store … and for this I feel sympathy. But F.W. was really a fortunate young lad because even though he worked while I played, he learned how to run a business and the secret of making brass fixtures, a secret he brought to America.
When he was 12, the family came to America and settled in Cleveland, Ohio. F.W. jumped into electrical lighting and soon operated a booming business as electricity was catching on across the nation. After he received a patent on a simple brass fixture that converted gas lamps to accept the lightbulb, his future was secure.
By 1910 the mansion known as “Harbor View” was built in the center of town on a crest overlooking lake and harbor, the factory was built that provided Vermilion families with jobs and the Lakewood Yacht Club’s annual regattas were even moved to Vermilion. That year my father was born boosting the family to six children with two more to follow. F.W. was also elected mayor of the town.
The issue was some bars in town were serving alcohol on Sundays ignoring Ohio’s Blue Laws. City folks were coming to Vermilion on Sundays to enjoy the party atmosphere upsetting the town’s citizens.
F.W. ran on the “law and order” issue, won the election and ended illegal Sunday sales. A major employer in town, successful businessman, commodore of the Great Lakes Yachting Association and mayor of Vermilion, now at 48 years old he had come a long way from working 12 hour days in order to get to America, land of his father’s dreams.
(“End of an era,” continued next week.)
© 2021
