Things I Have Inherited from my Mother: A Holiday Study in Three Parts

Part 1:  This photograph  of C. Clifton Lufkin (1879 - 1970). 

Uncle Clif built the house my mother lived in and was, at age 17 or so, the subject of this charcoal sketch by his brother, my grandmother's grandfather Will Crie Lufkin.

Part II:  This oak Morris chair which, to put it gently, needs some work.  The manufacturer's label on the back lists patent dates of 1899 and 1900, but mission-style models like this one were made more toward 1910 or so.

I have been hanging on to it because I can't bear to part with family stuff, and this was Uncle Clif's Morris chair which he loved and which my mother kept because she loved it too and always meant to fix it up some day.

Part III:  A small collection of Uncle Clif's clippings which run the gamut from snippets of genealogical information to fragments of correspondence to hand-copied hymn text.  In amongst random bits was this poem:

We have decided to omit the Christmas tree this year;
But we can just as much enjoy the presents and good cheer,
If in our hearts there is content, and on our lips a smile,
As on my Mother's table the Christmas gifts we pile.

There's presents there for Father, and Maude and Eva Jane,
And there's a token of esteem for Frank of Glencove, Maine.
And Clifton comes to get his share, and there's some things for me,
Oh! We should be so happy, as happy as can be.

Poor Mother broke her left arm, eleven weeks ago;
We gave her then a morris chair, and so our cash is low;
But for all that I chance to see upon the table there
Some packages marked with her name, besides the morris chair.

Maude has a smile upon her face as she comes from her work.
She has a present from her boss.  She is a faithful clerk.
Now let us all be thankful for the gifts both large and small,
And wish a Merry Christmas, and happy day to all.

 - W. C. Lufkin

Wow.  The provenance of the Morris chair and so much more.

If my 1910 estimate is correct, Maude, my 37-year-old great-great-grandmother, was apparently putting her commercial college degree to use and working outside the home.  Eva, her daughter, was exactly my son's age.

Clif and Will's mother Sarah, wife of the last of the Zebulons, would have been 51.  Zebulon himself was ten years older and his brother Frank (the one who at the turn of the century was in competition with Will for Maude's affections) about 55.

This chair - this offering to a flinty Matinicus native who probably never before in her life had sat still outside of Sunday services, this gift with its deep cushions and footrest and high arms for elevating tired, wounded extremities, this luxury - it probably cost $10.  That's about $250 or $300 in today's dollars, no small sum for hardscrabble farmers who sold gladiola blooms and kittens to scrape by.

But being cash-strapped didn't stop this family from exchanging at least a few gifts, and it doesn't explain why this family with eighty-some acres of land didn't simply head out to the back 40 and chop down a balsam fir for Christmas that year.

And more questions:  How did Mrs. Z. break her arm that September?  Did she miss her footing on the farmhouse's narrow, steep staircase? Did she trip coming in from the henhouse or stumble under the weight of a load of wet laundry bound for the clothesline?

With Maude out clerking, Sarah's arm broken, and no other women in the house save the teenaged Eva (who must have been in school; she went on to Colby College and a teaching career), who managed the cooking and cleaning and household chores?

Ah, well, some things I'll never know, but what fun to piece together the fragments that I do have.  And what a nice Christmas story goes along now with that old chair.