Black Sheep Sunday: George Dallas Crabill and His Two Families

George Dallas Crabill was not that much of a black sheep, really. He wasn't a criminal or a con man. But I imagine if you asked my grandfather, his firstborn son, Charles Lemuel Crabill, he would emphatically say that he was a black sheep.

George Dallas Crabill was born to Charles Edward Crabill and Melia (or Permelia) Stickley Crabill, on February 20, 1884, in Strasburg, Virginia. He was the firstborn of 6 children. Not much is known of his early life. He was usually called by his middle name, "Dallas."

When George was about 23, he married Della "Jean" Munger, whose family came from Rockingham County, Virginia. They lived in the Washington DC area. Dallas and Jean had 3 children who were either stillborn or did not live very long, in 1908, 1909, and 1910. These children are all buried in The Olde Cemetery, in Strasburg, Virginia.

In 1912, Charles Lemuel Crabill was born. I like to imagine how happy they must have been with their first child who lived. 

Two more children followed in 1915 and 1917 (Mildred Helen and George Dallas).

George worked in Washington DC. In 1917 he filled out a Draft Registration Card, on which he indicated that he worked at Old Dutch Market (seen in the photo below), and lived at 38th and Newton in Mt. Rainier, Maryland. Old Dutch Market was a small chain of markets in the Washington DC area. Mt. Rainier was a nice place to live if you had a job in Washington, DC, because there was a streetcar that went through Mt. Rainier into Washington.

All was not well, however. My Aunt Jean (one of Charles Lemuel Crabill's daughters) tells me that Dallas Crabill was a binge drinker who would stay out for days when he was drinking. Unfortunately I would imagine that his binges often coincided with paydays, and that made it difficult for the family to make ends  meet. Della Jean Crabill took in laundry and did some sewing. Aunt Jean remembers her father telling her that Della Jean had holes in the soles of her shoes, and she would put newspaper in the bottom of her shoes so she could go out and hang up laundry, and go pick up dirty laundry and deliver the clean laundry, in all kinds of weather.

This may be how she picked up diphtheria in December of 1918. With her lowered resistance from a lack of warm clothing, this illness proved to be fatal. When Della Jean got sick, little Charlie was 6, Mildred was 3, and George Jr. was 1. And daddy George Dallas Crabill was off on one of his drinking binges. Imagine a six-year-old trying to care for his sick mother, and taking care of his two young siblings, all by himself. And then imagine that your mother passed away, and you didn't know what to do. Aunt Jean says that Charlie was in the house with his mother's body, and his siblings, for over a day, until someone found them. George Dallas returned to the house just as his wife's body was being carried out, and was too drunk to know what was going on.

After that, George Dallas sent the three children to live with relatives. Charlie was sent to live with his grandparents in Strasburg, Virginia. Mildred and George Jr. were raised by spinster aunts. It's probably not surprising that Charlie did not have a lot of love for his father. He also didn't have a lot of respect or love for alcoholics and told his children they should never drink.

A Second Family

George Dallas Crabill remarried sometime before 1920. His new wife was Frances Nora Lee Crabill. I've combined information from a couple of sources to come up with that name. The Frances Nora part came from my grandfather (Charlie), and the Frances Lee appeared on her gravestone. So I'm not sure if Lee was her surname before her marriage, or a middle name.

It is apparent that Frances had a child before she married George Dallas. Samuel G. was born in 1915, in Florida (where Frances was also born). I wonder if she had been married and her husband was killed in WWI, and she moved up to the DC area to live with relatives.

George Dallas and Frances had 5 children, starting in 1920 with Bessie. Helen came along in 1922, followed by Evelyn in 1924, Alvin in 1925, and Norma in 1928.

Very little is known of what happened to most of these children. I would love to hear from any descendants of:

Bessie Crabill McDonough

Helen Crabill Good

Evelyn W. Crabill Milling

Alvin W. Crabill

Norma Crabill Grey

I do know that Evelyn passed away in 1970 at age 46. Charlie apparently kept up with her, because there were a couple of pictures of her, and her obituary, in his collection.

George Dallas Crabill passed away in 1954 and he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery (apparently he served in the U.S. Navy at some point, but I can't find any record of that). Frances passed away 10 years later and is also buried there.

Sunday's Obituary -- Carl Jay Yow, Sr.

My grandmother, Merle Mae Briggs Yow, just passed away on Saturday. Her obituary is not available yet, but here is the one from my Grandfather Yow, who passed away two years ago.

Carl Jay Yow from the Virginian-Pilot

This is a picture from a visit to my grandparents in 2000.

Talented Tuesday: Charles L. Crabill, Playwright

Charles L. Crabill spent part of his life as a policeman, and then worked for the state at a truck weighing station.

But early in his adult life, he wrote and produced a play called "Everybody's Hotel."

That's my Grandpa on the far left.

When we visited the Strasburg Museum during my latest visit to Virginia, we found that they had a copy of the playbill.

Unfortunately we don't seem to have a copy of the script. I wish I could read it!

Military Monday: Emanuel Crabill

Today's topic was, once again, one of the ones suggested by Geneablogger. There are a whole raft of choices for daily blogging prompts, so I can choose some of the others later. But Military Monday was the one that caught my eye for today.

Emanuel Crabill (1823-1880) was a Civil War veteran. My grandfather, Charles Crabill, was very proud of him. Emanuel's picture was proudly displayed in Grandpa's den and he talked about him often.

Once again it turns out that I didn't have the whole story.

From http://www.vagenweb.org/shenandoah/civilc.html we can see that Emanuel Crabill had been a member of the 136th Virginia Militia, Co. A, prior to the war. He became part of the 33rd Virginia Infantry, Co. B, the "Independent Greys," or "Toms Brook Guard." There were several other Crabills in his company. Emanuel was the first captain in this company. It was mustered into service on July 8, 1861, according to http://www.stonewallbrigade.com/33E/eg1861/eg1861.html.

My aunts told me that Emanuel was frequently sick, so he never got to see much in the way of action. He resigned on August 6, 1861. From that time on, he fought the war in his own way at home. He would frequently hide in trees and shoot any stray Yankees who wandered past his hiding spot.

Black Sheep Sunday: Jack Dwight Hisey

I'm just getting started on this blog, having discovered Geneablogger. It's great because they present several blogging prompts to help get you started on what to blog on.

The Hisey side of my family has some dark secrets. First off, there was James Dwight Hisey, who committed suicide in one of the outbuildings of his small property, in 1924. This caused his family immeasurable heartache, embarrassment and financial hardship.

Shortly after James's suicide, Jack Dwight Hisey was born. He had two siblings, both considerably older than him, and was probably spoiled as much as they could in their circumstances.

When Jack grew up he was married 3 times and was known as quite the womanizer. He died in 1967 of a gunshot wound. There is some argument as to exactly how the shooting occurred, but it is generally agreed that he was shot while he was at work at the grocery store where he was employed.

The story I generally heard (and only on occasion when I was growing up) was that he was shot by the husband of a woman he'd been secretly seeing.

My aunts recently related another version of that story, to wit: Jack was at work, and this irate husband came to find the person who'd been fooling around with his wife. When he asked the actual perpetrator who "so-and-so" was, the rascal pointed out Jack, and so Jack was shot instead of the person who actually did the fooling around.

I intend to do a little research in the local papers of the time to see if I can learn any further details. Murders are so rare in the upper Shenandoah Valley that I'm sure it would have gotten plenty of attention.