3. More About Papa

When my father entered college, after three years as teacher of a country school near his home in northern Ohio, he discarded the redundant s which, until then, had adorned the family name.

On the flyleaf of the only book preserved from my grandfather’s small library, a leather-bound, pocket-size volume entitled Comstock’s Philosophy (an elementary treatise on Physics) published in London, in 1782, appears the faded signature of William Douglass, the final s resembling a dissipated ƒ in a perilous heel-skid on an icy street.

Papa, when asked—a half-century later—what had moved him to omit this second s, lamely explained that as a student he had been forced to practice the most rigid economies, that he had hoped some day to be wealthy enough to resume it, but what with small salaries and heavy expenses he had never felt able to afford anything but bare necessities.

And then Papa was likely to repeat the old story about Abraham Lincoln when he was courting Mary Todd. The Todds, who were aristocrats (without portfolio), bitterly resented the intrusion of this uncouth, unpedigreed rail-splitter into their family circle. On the defensive, Lincoln attempted to teach the uppish Todds their proper relation to other natural objects by addressing his letters to Mary “Tod.” Brought sternly to task for this sacrilege he replied that there was no good reason for the Todds to spell their name with two d’s when God needed only one.

Of my grandfather, William Douglas, I know practically nothing beyond the sad fact that at thirty-six he was suddenly crippled by rheumatism of such severity that he never walked again, though he lived until he was nearly sixty. I cannot remember ever hearing him quoted: if he had any opinions they must have been benign rather than malignant or militant. Nor have I anything to report of Grandmother Douglas who quietly spent her declining years in my father’s home.

Papa was only twelve when Grandfather Douglas was stricken with rheumatism. A tenant farmer was engaged but was so neglectful of his duties that Papa and his younger brothers were soon doing most of the work; so the lazy tenant was dismissed and the Douglas kids took over. They toiled mightily through spring, summer and fall, attending their country school in winter. Bent on acquiring a good education, Papa read everything available; and at eighteen turned the farm over to his brothers while he set forth, first as a country schoolteacher, then as a student at Ashland Academy, and on to college. The fields were then rented to neighboring farmers, Uncle Thomas went to war, and Uncle Michael found a job as accountant in an Insurance Company with headquarters in Mansfield, their nearest big town. Their two sisters, Elizabeth and Nancy, remained with their parents in the farm home until their marriages.

A legend has it that Papa and a boon companion at the Academy had decided to attend the same college. As Papa was descended from a long line of Presbyterians, he would naturally have gone to the young college at Wooster; the other fellow was a Lutheran and had expected to attend Wittenberg College, then fighting for its life at Springfield. They flipped a coin and went to Wittenberg. Because he was practically penniless, Papa found a job as hostler, coachman, gardener, dishwasher and errand boy in the home of the college president, the Reverend Doctor Samuel Sprecker, a warmhearted scholar and seer, who was to become his man Friday’s idol and hero.