Life Stories
Nov. 13th, 2015 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogMaybe I'm feeling extra sensitive lately, or perhaps it's because I feel lonely out here, but sometimes the lives of the inventors I'm researching make me sad.
George W. R. Harriman was born the youngest of four in Somerville, Massachusetts on May 25th, 1871. His father, John, was a printer, while his mother, unusually for the time I think, seems to have worked in some capacity for the railroad. In 1900, he married Mable Locke in a November ceremony in Malden. The couple had several children; Roger, Charlotte, Elizabeth, and by the time he was 20, he had moved with his family to Boston. There he worked as a civil engineer after having patented an invention in 1916. The patent is quite interesting; a form of display for geographic information that included half a dozen pages of intricately drawn out charts and page layouts. His brothers, with whom he shared a house, had interesting lines of work as a solar printer (I'm not quite sure what that was) and as a theatrical agent.
Soon after, George and Mable moved to Washington DC. George continued his engineering work, and may have become president of a publishing company that produced city planning maps, as well as accepting government printing contracts. The family remained there through at least 1930, living at one point in the beautiful Beaux-Arts Toronto building, and at another point in a nice townhouse on Q Street, very near Dupont Circle. Sometime before 1930 though, Mable died, leaving George a widower living with just one of his sons and his daughter, the youngest of three. Later, by 1935, George had made his way to a rooming house in Manhattan at 295 East 53rd Street. In 1940, 69-year-old George was living alone, though in the company of other roomers who were a mix of western and northern European immigrants, with a few from places like Austria or Hungary, and a few others from elsewhere in the US. The census taker noted that he was a civil engineer working in "buildings," and that he'd been seeking work for some time prior to enumeration. After that, he disappears from the records. So many people don't seem to leave an obituary, a death record, or a gravemarker anywhere I can find them online. Miriam said that maybe he decided to have a grand adventure, once his kids had become independent adults, and move somewhere new. Certainly I'd love to be in New York City for a while. I'd like to think that's the case, but I have a feeling it's not. But I'd love to know how he ended up in New York City.
Being exposed to so many of these life stories in quick succession, even as abstracted and incomplete as they are, makes me think about my own life story and what it is that I want to prioritize and accomplish. It also makes me miss the people in my life that I'm away from, and miss having time to make new connections. I'm going to make a bunch of progress over Thanksgiving break. I'm going to make time to be social and have people in my life outside of the internet....
George W. R. Harriman was born the youngest of four in Somerville, Massachusetts on May 25th, 1871. His father, John, was a printer, while his mother, unusually for the time I think, seems to have worked in some capacity for the railroad. In 1900, he married Mable Locke in a November ceremony in Malden. The couple had several children; Roger, Charlotte, Elizabeth, and by the time he was 20, he had moved with his family to Boston. There he worked as a civil engineer after having patented an invention in 1916. The patent is quite interesting; a form of display for geographic information that included half a dozen pages of intricately drawn out charts and page layouts. His brothers, with whom he shared a house, had interesting lines of work as a solar printer (I'm not quite sure what that was) and as a theatrical agent.
Soon after, George and Mable moved to Washington DC. George continued his engineering work, and may have become president of a publishing company that produced city planning maps, as well as accepting government printing contracts. The family remained there through at least 1930, living at one point in the beautiful Beaux-Arts Toronto building, and at another point in a nice townhouse on Q Street, very near Dupont Circle. Sometime before 1930 though, Mable died, leaving George a widower living with just one of his sons and his daughter, the youngest of three. Later, by 1935, George had made his way to a rooming house in Manhattan at 295 East 53rd Street. In 1940, 69-year-old George was living alone, though in the company of other roomers who were a mix of western and northern European immigrants, with a few from places like Austria or Hungary, and a few others from elsewhere in the US. The census taker noted that he was a civil engineer working in "buildings," and that he'd been seeking work for some time prior to enumeration. After that, he disappears from the records. So many people don't seem to leave an obituary, a death record, or a gravemarker anywhere I can find them online. Miriam said that maybe he decided to have a grand adventure, once his kids had become independent adults, and move somewhere new. Certainly I'd love to be in New York City for a while. I'd like to think that's the case, but I have a feeling it's not. But I'd love to know how he ended up in New York City.
Being exposed to so many of these life stories in quick succession, even as abstracted and incomplete as they are, makes me think about my own life story and what it is that I want to prioritize and accomplish. It also makes me miss the people in my life that I'm away from, and miss having time to make new connections. I'm going to make a bunch of progress over Thanksgiving break. I'm going to make time to be social and have people in my life outside of the internet....
