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"There is no cause to worry. The high tide of prosperity will continue."
—Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury (September 1929).
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The Great Depression hit St. Clair County hard, as well. Most of the men in the town were unemployed (the county eventually received federal relief funds and put all the men to work repairing the deteriorating roads and bridges in the area).
The 1930 United States Federal Census was the largest census released to date and is the most recent census available for public access. (Census records are not released publicly until exactly 72 years from the official census date. The 1940 census records will be available in 2012.) Frank was now listed as a farmer in the census (maybe at age 63, and with no available jobs, Frank just hated to say "retired" and gave farming as a career to please himself), and were renting rooms to boarders.
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By 1930, Melissa had passed away and
Della and Frank were back in Riley Township, at the old family house in Memphis
Village, at 34730 Maple. (Frank's sister, Alice Young, moved into the house, living
there until she died in 1939.)
Frank and
Fladella's sons had ventured off to find work and make their fortunes. Basil worked
for Dodge in Indiana; Carlisle taught in Detroit (The census report on Carlisle
and family could not be found—maybe they were up at Vaughn Lake and inaccessible);
Raymond even moved to California to find work, and dabbled in law and land speculation.
All the while, Frank and Fladella kept the family's home base in Memphis, but
family address' grew farther apart, reunions grew rarer. With so many empty rooms
they were also renting to borders. Eventually the family house would be split
into two homes and sold (Basil would eventually buy both homes and use the west
lot for a tree farm).
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Although Carlisle lived in a more settled area of Michigan, near Detroit, he never lost his love for the woods. He found a small pocket of unspoiled nature on a lake near the Huron National Forest, and built a summer cabin there, at Vaughn Lake (3964 Lake Street, Glennie, Curtis Township, Alcona County, MI 48737-9328). Vaughn is a glacial till lake, filled with yellow perch, pumpkinseed sunfish, rock bass, smallmouth bass, walleye, largemouth bass, and northern pike. As a tenured teacher, Carlisle was one of the lucky few to have a guaranteed salary during the Great Depression, and used the extra money to buy the property.
It was there that Carlisle hunted for deer and bear during the winters, and in the summers had epic battles with fearsome northern pike—a prehistoric-looking fish with soulless eyes and neverending rows of large, razor-like teeth. A stuffed head from one of his largest conquests (5-6 feet) used to hang near the fireplace of the cabin, staring down at us like some terrible sea serpent. (The record for a pike in Michigan is about five feet, and this fish is obviously larger, but when my grandfather caught it in the late 1930's there was nobody around to verify the size.) And although the family was vacationing in the woods, good manners and punctuality were still important to Carlisle: Each morning he would tap on your window to go fishing, and that was your one chance to fish on the lake that morning. If you didn't get up right away, the boat would be gone when you finally made it to the dock.
Carlisle would spend a few days during the winter there on hunting trips, although it was such a remote location that he could be trapped there for weeks if the roads weren't cleared of snow. Though always attired in pressed shirts, ties and suits in photographs, Carlisle was an outdoorsman first, and Vaughn Lake was an ideal place to pursue his hunting and fishing hobbies, and was his favorite place to live.
In the early years of the cabin its only connection to civilization was one extremely unstable wooden bridge, hung across a river by leather straps. In fact, it was so unstable that when my Grandfather later brought his family to visit, he would first make them cross the bridge on foot, and then he would drive the car across the bridge with the driver's door open, so he could jump free if the bridge collapsed. There was no heat, no air conditioning, and no plumbing, which meant that you had to get all of your cooking, drinking and bathing water from a well in front of the cabin, and you had to relieve yourself in an outhouse dug into the earth (hopefully a long ways away from the well).
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Carlisle and Marjorie, however, would not be that fortunate.
One day Marjorie had an accident at their well on Vaughn Lake, when she was injured in the chest by the crank as she tried to raise a bucket of water. Marjorie was a frail person, and soon after she fell ill. The doctors finally said it was breast cancer, but Carlisle always blamed the well accident for triggering the illness and starting the decline of her physical health.
 Carleton Hause, (unknown), Carlisle Hause, Marjorie Marchant Hause and Gretchen Hause. |
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A year later, Carlisle was remarried, to another teacher named EMILY MEISTER (1904 - 1996). "Emmy" was always a lovely woman to us, but her relationship with my grandfather (her stepson) was always a little chilly, presumably because Carlisle remarried so quickly. However, it was never in Carlisle's character to wait for something—he was always a man who was quick to act. They both had a happy, comfortable life, after Carlisle sold his Christmas tree farm to a developer who wanted to build a mall, for a large amount of money. (On a side note, Emily willed my father, her grandson, the money that bought the computer that started this genealogical quest on the Internet.)
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True to his word, Carlisle returned with the needed supplies a few minutes later, ignoring the complaints of the women downstairs, and Frank's last night was spent drinking, eating well, playing cards and telling stories about the family.
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After
Frank's funeral at the lodge and burial at the Memphis
Cemetery, Fladella refused any charity, no matter how much her children and
grandchildren tried to force it upon her. Instead, she would sell them meat that
she had canned—some of it way back in the thirties—which they would
promptly throw away as soon as their car was out of her view. (There's no sense
in letting anybody else in this family die of Typhoid Fever from eating tainted
meat.)
Then Fladella's sons got the bright idea of opening
a tree nursery to support her. (The sign for the Hause 'Green Bush' Nursery, painted
by Basil Hause, hangs today in the Memphis Historical Society.) Basil was the
most responsible for the business. He bought the property for the farm from Fladella
at her residence on Maple, and adjoining acreage from Helen May Yerden, who now
occupied the house that had been separated from the first. That way, they could
just tell her to handle the company finances and manage the profits. In this way
they were finally able to support Fladella without her feeling like it was charity.
Which was a good thing, because Fladella lived on into her nineties!
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But
the Hause brothers' nursery was just a side-business. These Hause men didn't want
to become farmers, like their ancestors. They were looking for new challenges.
They had their father's thirst for adventure, but combined with their mother's
pragmatism and bravery. They all had their grandfather Laban's determination and
ambition, as well, and to top it all off, developed a sense of flair and
substance, like Melissa.
They were college-educated, nattily-dressed, with long, fast cars (Hause men all had to drive Cadillacs). They hunted large game, speculated on land, and lived with class. But they seemed to eschew Frank's relaxed nature and lifestyle, and practiced a more conservative way of life. (Their children were raised strictly, unlike them.) The days of exploring and settling the Michigan frontier were over. They had to deal with an industrialized state, driven by a fast-growing auto industry. The forests of their youth were replaced by factories. Raymond had moved to California to enter the land speculation field. Basil joined the army and eventually worked in Ohio, but the Great Depression had brought him back home with his family, where Carlisle got him started in teaching, as well. Carlisle had stayed closer to home, where he could continue to hunt and fish in his favorite spots...
 A rare shot of the three Hause brothers and their wives reuniting to surround Fladella in the mid-20th Century (Basil and Hazel Hause, left, Ray and Ethyl Hause, center, Carlisle and Emily Hause, right). And if that wasn't rare enough, they're all smiling, too!!! |
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Her son, Carlisle, would live another ten years in Michigan before his death. But the next generation was moving on once again.
Just like in New York a century before, the opportunities in Michigan were shrinking. The state became industrialized, and factories overtook the farms... but then the factories closed when the jobs left the country. Hause men weren't much for factory work, anyway. They needed to be challenged. And although Fladella had challenged them with a business side of a broomstick on occasion, it wasn't enough. The great Lakes had grown polluted and stagnant, the fish more full of Mercury than a Lincoln factory. It was time for the Hause family to move on, again. This time to...
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1959 - PRESENT: The Depression is over, and Carleton Marchant Hause, Sr., son of Carlisle (who is pictured with great-grandchildren, at right), works in the factory during World War II, then searches for new opportunities, a new career, and warmer winters on the west coast, ending up in Southern California. Then Carleton Sr. begat "Legendary coach" Carleton Jr., who followed Carleton Sr. to SoCal and begat Kathleen, Eric, Michele and "non-legendary" Jeffrey Carleton Hause, who is tired of typing "begat."
TOP PHOTO: Colorized photograph of the Raven House, from the collection of Carleton Marchant Hause, Jr.
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CHAPTER 1: JOHANN CHRISTIAN HAUSS, b. 1666 CHAPTER 2: THE HAUSS FAMILY OF THE MOHAWK, 1711 - 1725 CHAPTER 3: JOHANN, JOHANNES AND JOHN, 1725 - 1775 CHAPTER 4: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1775 - 1783 CHAPTER 5: WILLIAM HAUSE, 1750-1818 CHAPTER 6: WESTERN NEW YORK, 1783 - 1855 CHAPTER 7: MICHIGAN, 1855 - 1900 CHAPTER 8: MICHIGAN, 1901 - 1929 CHAPTER 9: THE GREAT DEPRESSION, 1929-1959 CHAPTER 10: CALIFORNIA, 1959 - 2006 CHAPTER 11: AFTERWARD, 2007
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