From the Sunshine Store to a New Name

Grandpa

Edward Williams was born with the name Emanuel (Manny) Lehman near Astoria, Illinois in 1882. His parents were Pennsylvania Dutch (German-Americans) by nationality and belonged to the Church of the Brethren, known as Dunkers because their baptismal rite included three dunkings under river water. It was a German, Christian religious sect that originated in Germany in 1708 with a mere eight members. They were persecuted for their strict religious beliefs and driven from Germany to Holland. They came to America seeking religious freedom in William Penn’s Free Lands Offer to settle in Germantown, Pennsylvania. From there, they moved west, where some split off to become the Church of Christ and Seventh Day Baptists. The Church of the Brethren Dunkers remains today. Dunkers are pacifists, eschew frivolities, live simply, do not enter into lawsuits and were the first religious group in America to publicly denounce slavery. Manny’s parents, Michael and Lizzie Lehman, owned a large farm in the Dunkers’ community in Astoria, Illinois. They had migrated west from Hershey, Pennsylvania, according to one living Lehman relative. Emanuel had a sister Mary and two brothers, Henry and Harvey. Emanuel was said to be handsome and strong as a young man, with a full head of straight jet-black hair and fair skin. He kept all his black hair except a touch of white at the sideburns until the day he died. As a teen, he was smitten by an attractive girl who liked to go dancing, a frivolity which was strictly forbidden by his religion. He went to a dance with her in defiance of his father, anyway. The next day, his father banished him to a distant farm for a spell of intensely hard labor to put an end to this “dancin’ phase.” Ironically, the girl never married, it is said. Later, Manny, as he was called in his youth, and his brother, Harvey Lehman, owned The Sunshine Store, a very successful general (combination hardware and grocery) store in Astoria, Illinois. At age 17, Manny married a woman in Astoria we know little of. It was reported, long after he died, by his daughter, Ethel, that he had found his young bride in bed with another man about six months after they were betrothed. Upon this discovery, he pulled the man outside, beat him brutally, and left him for dead. He then, allegedly, ordered his horrified wife to the yard and set the house on fire. He fled to the Sunshine Store and secretly withdrew half the cash from the cash register and replaced it with a note to his brother, Harvey, saying he was leaving town for good. He went to the bank and withdrew half their savings and fled by train to Newburg, North Dakota where he settled in as a farmhand on a wheat farm. Later, he took a job managing a lumberyard, which had a restaurant and dance hall attached to it. Subsequently, he became its accountant and prospered. Sometime between 1905 and 1910, he changed his name to Edward Williams. It is speculated that he changed his name to evade being captured and brought to trial for killing his first wife’s lover, but we know that he secretly corresponded with his brother, Harvey, and learned he had not killed the man at all, and that the first wife had disappeared. So the name change might simply have been to elude a bigamy charge when he married Agnes Tomitum.