Carrie’s Roots and a Treasured Lock of Red Hair

A later descendant, seven generations after the famous Jonathan Fairbanks who built the house in Dedham, William Fairbanks married a woman named Marilla Edith Jones, who gave birth to a daughter named Carolina E. “Carrie” Fairbanks on May 16, 1842 in Ira, Cayuga County, New York. Her father, William, had been born in Grand Traverse County, Michigan on June 3, 1815, and migrated back east, probably to New York, as a young man. Some say Carrie’s middle name was Elizabeth, but there is no official record of it. Carrie was Floyd’s paternal grandmother. A mile from the Fairbanks’ home in Dedham there is a cemetery adjacent to old St. Paul Church with a large section of Fairbanks graves. Right next to it is the Guild section containing about 9 early Guild family graves. This points out the fact that the Guilds and the Fairbanks were long-standing families and close neighbors in the early Boston area. Floyd’s father, Daniel William, and Floyd’s uncle, Bernal Almond, and his aunt, Adah Sophrona, were all born in St. Mathias Township in Crow Wing County, Minnesota to Newton Joseph Guild, of Coventry, Vermont, and Carolina E. “Carrie” Fairbanks of Ira, Cayuga, New York. Newton’s linage goes back to 1509 in Scotland, and Carrie’s ancestral line traces back to 1445 in Yorks, England. Newton Joseph Guild, Floyd’s grandfather, owned or held the franchise to operate a pulp mill, owned a sawmill, and a mechanical repair shop. Newton held 39 patents for paper manufacturing (Arnie Guild has the patent papers stating the formula), pulp mill apparatus, scales and stoves and was considered very successful. This is where we see firsthand evidence of the Guild tinkering trait beginning. The Fairbanks side also had its share of inventors, one of whom, Thaddeus Fairbanks, invented, in 1830, the platform scale concept and the first drive-on scale for weighing horse- drawn wagon loads, and later, in 1893, along with a Mr. Morse, earned patents for and manufactured wind-driven engines (windmills) and in 1893 invented the first commercially successful, large, gasoline-driven engine named the Fairbanks Morse fuel-driven, spark-ignited piston engine; a later model of which, coincidentally, powered Dan Guild’s sawmill. Floyd’s grandmother, Carrie was a pretty, petite redhead. Barbara Guild Miller has a nice lock of Carrie’s red hair that she got from Bernal Guild’s wife, Belle, who kept close contact with the Fairbanks family until she died at age 90. Newton and Carrie were married on June 24, 1874, in White Water, Michigan. Carrie died on May 3, 1892 at age 50 of La Grippe, now known as influenza. Newton Guild died of consumption—which by definition in those times included any serious disease of the lungs—9 years later, on May 29, 1901 at the age of 58. Floyd, being born in 1904, never knew his grandmother, Carrie, or his grandfather, Newton. Newton owned land on Lake Wabedo, owned and received royalties on patents of his own as well as royalties on some of his father’s (also named Dan Guild) patents, and was prosperous, at least for a time. We do not know the size or details of the estate that passed to Newton’s two sons, Daniel William and Bernal Almond, and his daughter, Adah Sophrona when he died. Neither do we know what happened to Newton’s patents, but his estate went to Dan, Bernal and Adah. Dan used his inheritance to support his growing family and must have been grateful to get anything as he was just starting his own family with Olive and supporting his 5 Vosburg stepchildren. Bernal used his portion to set out on his own to become a traveling salesman, and Frank Beckman, Adah’s husband, squandered most of Adah’s inheritance on a failed Brainerd furniture store business venture he entered into with two crooked partners. Newton, in a story perpetuated by many old family members, was said to have passed his facial characteristics of an underdeveloped ear and cheek to his daughter, Adah Sophrona, who was said to be very proud to have inherited the family trait. Likewise, the characteristic was once believed to have been passed by Floyd to two children, and similarly by Bernal to a son. We now know this birth occurrence to be Hemifacial Microsomia, a congenital birth condition which is not genetically acquired. It occurs in about 1 out of every 5,600 births, but since its occurrence in our family seemed far greater than chance, it was only natural for the old timers to assume the trait had passed from generation to generation. They were wrong. In reality, its occurrence in successive generations is purely by chance.