Person:Pearl Babcock (1)

Individual Record 1880 United States Census Pearl BABCOCK Male Other Information: Birth Year <1864> Birthplace KS Age 16 Occupation Farmer Marital Status S <Single> Race W <White> Head of Household Eliza P. BABCOCK Relation Son Father's Birthplace NY Mother's Birthplace NY Source Information: Census Place Albion, Dane, Wisconsin Family History Library Film 1255421 NA Film Number T9-1421 Page Number 183A

FAMILY REMINISCENCES contributed by Louise Wescott Pauly Oshkosh, Wisconsin was a booming, fast growing lumber town at the junction of the Fox River and Lake Winnebago. There was beginning to be enough prosperity and leisure to allow an interest in "culture", and they decided the town should have a band. (If you know the musical, "The Music Man", it caricatures what was a real hunger in the new communities growing up all over America.) They recruited back East for specific instrumentalists, and Grump Pearl was recruited as the oboeist. There is a fine museum in Oshkosh which has many items in its collection concerning this project. The musicians arrived from a variety of places, and the band was a great success. Everyone loved it, and community pride was high. There was just one problem. The musicians had an insistent and stubborn desire to eat three squares a day,. In the early months they were probably given hearty welcomes in the homes of the many supporters of the band, and the promised stipends were paid, but the community gradually lost interest in providing the financial support. The band continued, and was still popular, but many became only part-time musicians of necessity. Pearl was an artist. I gave one of his oil paintings to the Oshkosh Museum, and I have one up here with me. He was a hunter, and the scenes he painted usually reflected this love of the outdoors. Music was important in his home, and his two daughters both became quite competent on the piano. My mother loved and played Chopin lovingly until what we now call Alzheimer's took her consciousness-but after almost all her cognitive skills were lost, the one communication we had left between us was playing recordings for her of her favorite music, much of which she had learned to love and play from Pearl.

However, however great his artistic talents were, he put food on the table by setting up as a sign painter, which served as his chief occupation thenceforth. In the 1940's there were still several signs around town left from his output-precise, often gold-leafed, mostly restrained and utilitarian, to suit the desires of his customers. In these times he carried most of his kit around with him as he moved from one location to another to ply his skills. He rode the "slowest bicycle in town"-a tribute to his dignity and dexterity in moving not only himself but his tools and supplies from one job to another and back to home. If you ride a bike, you'll understand the praise implicit in it. A quiet man, who did his work, loved music, and was a kind, loving and indulgent father. His wife Louise was the "Grump Wescott" of the family, a role which was, of course, much needed too. Tom and Harriet were a mischievous pair who got away with a lot with Pearl, but not too much, because of Louise.

The Louise Ellingsrud, quoted in the Franklin Rial Wescott notes, was somewhat of a mother figure for me in the Edgerton area when we visited there. Her description of "Grump Wescott" matches the picture I got of him from my mother and her siblings,-a no-nonsense, energetic personality, as was, of course, needed in those "Little House in the Big Woods" days. Evidently, from Ione Babcock's understanding of family reminiscences, she considered that Caldicott Award winning book could, in most ways, have been the story of Franklin Rial Wescott on arrival in Wisconsin, except that he stuck it out and made a go of it.

Res. 1902 Oshkosh, Wis. 1889 Milton Junction, WI

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 The Sabbath Recorder . (New York City, New York; later Plainfield, N. J.)
   May 23, 1910 p. 670.