McFerren Heritage
Celebrating John
McFerren’s 90th Birthday,
November, 2009
From what I can gather:
Love of God and country are a theme running through this family. Of
Carl and Harriet McFerren, it was said, “They were a beautiful couple who
taught their children how to live in joy, faith and love through God.”
 |
| by Robert Clancy |
John McFerren’s father is Carl McFerren [born 1893].
Carl’s father, Clarence McFerren, a farmer [born 1872], had
a high fever which cause his feet to club and he was “never too well.”
Clarence’s father, Archibald [born 1838], was a teacher and
farmer and helped build the St. John’
Church in Albion where most of the family eventually land. The story has it that, when
Clarence was very young, Archibald took the team to town to get the rocker for
his little boy. There had been some
concern about the sustainability of the child.
This father’s prayer was that his little boy’s excitement about having a
rocker of his own would keep him alive until his daddy returned. And that’s exactly what happened.
I’m still researching Little
Red’s early history. I don’t know when the little red rocker came into my
possession…perhaps in the 1970’s.
The hope was that I might repair it so that my children
could enjoy
him. His color has faded a little, and the patina has cracked. More than a century of wear resulted in the horsehair stuffing protruding from the worn seat. My mother, Emily McFerren, needle pointed a new seat cover in the 70’s but we never had enough money to get the broken arm repaired, so Little Red waited.
him. His color has faded a little, and the patina has cracked. More than a century of wear resulted in the horsehair stuffing protruding from the worn seat. My mother, Emily McFerren, needle pointed a new seat cover in the 70’s but we never had enough money to get the broken arm repaired, so Little Red waited.
I may not know all of where he’s been, but I do know is
where he’s been on my watch:
He came into our Berquist home in suburban St. Louis and
lived quietly in our basement for many years, waiting for promised repair, waiting
for my girls to get big enough to
sit in him, waiting for them to be careful enough to appreciate him…always
waiting. Then the adventure began.
In 1993 Little Red
was loaded carefully into a double cardboard box and began a vagabond life, not
knowing that it would be 15 years before he emerged into the sunlight of a
sweet little girl’s smile.
The first leg of his journey took him to the attic of a
lovely Connecticut
house on the shore
of Long Island Sound.
From there, he went to live for a while in a storage loft
over a barn-turned-garage on three bucolic acres outside of Cleveland…rather close to where he was probably
“born.”
A brief stint in a public storage locker preceded his move
into the basement of a townhouse in Cleveland
Heights for a couple of years.
Then in 2000, it was on to Boston where he lived in the cramped basement
of a beautiful old brick apartment house on Commonwealth Avenue across the street
from Boston College.
On the next leg of his journey, he was transported by truck
right past the smoldering ruins of New
York’s twin towers on his way to Ft. Lauderdale
where he spent six months in the boat warehouse of a family
friend.
Still in his protective box house, back north he came - full
circle to St. Louis,
where he spent summer time in a spare dormitory room, then back into a
basement. This time an apartment house
was his home.
Further north he went.
Elgin, IL beckoned, and this time he landed in an
attic where he sat patiently for four years until finally it was time to meet his
new owner. Inspired by Uncle John’s 90th
birthday and the need for a picture to prove his beloved little rocker was
still intact, Little Red was
carefully brought down from his perch, unpacked, loaded into a little RAV4, and
delivered to a house in Bolingbrook, just south of Chicago.
The delight on the face of little 3 year old Abigail was
unfeigned. Sister Madison, realizing she
was too big to have a turn, yielded to her smaller sibling, then suddenly
turned to me with the pointed [and eerily accurate] question: “Is this little
rocking chair 150 years old?’
Seven generations later…how did she know? Has the little rocker a voice of his own that
only small children can hear? Or are all
those grandpas upon grandpas upon grandpas smiling now and whispering in her
ear?
Soon Abigail will outgrow him, but next year a baby boy will
join our family and soon a little
boy bottom will find its rightful place – where so many have sat before him.
