In 1980 a brief correspondence with Dr. Frederick Cleveland Test 2nd was initiated by the editor of these papers (CET). The two letters which follow are remarkable for their gracious style and wit, as well as for introducing me to living descendants of Erastus Test. Although I answered the letter of 14 May 1980, I never received a reply. On the next to last page Dr. Test refers to a recurring illness which had delayed his reply. Perhaps this was the beginning of the illness which eventually culminated in his death on 25 December 1981.
5 March 1980
Dear Doctor Test--or rather,
Dear Third-cousin Charles,
Your surmise is correct; I'm the son of Frederick Cleveland Test, M.D., late of Chicago, Illinois; the nephew of identical twin uncles, the late Louis Agassiz and Charles Darwin (both professors of chemistry, Louis at Purdue, Charles at Riverside, California); and first-cousin to Louis's offspring Frederick Harold and Dorothy Test Wolf, also to Charles's fraternal-twin sons Taylor Test and Lawrence Test. My siblings are Mary Ella Test Bowers (born 1902) and John Edmund (born 1910). My own life-dates are 1908 to about 1982, if I'm lucky (or unlucky, depending on the point of view).
That you should have got wind of my existence is rather amazing--however did you manage it? You should be made aware, at once, that I'm not a great repository of family information, being an intrinsically scatter-brained, ill-organized fellow who often cannot lay hands on last month's bank-statement or last year's income-tax return. My brother Jack [John Edmund] is very like me in that regard, alas.
The enclosed correspondence, however, will I hope put you on track of sister Mary and second-cousin Martha Pease, who are both meticulous record-keepers, prompt correspondents, and proper "guardians-of-the-scrolls". I had very little contact with my Test grandparents Erastus and Mary Taylor Test, since I was born and bred in the Windy City of the Sucker State, and they were living in Richmond, Indiana. Can recall, though, one visit when I was about eight; that was when I learned that the second-person pronoun had both a singular and a plural form. Grandmother Test greeted me: "Well, Frederick Cleveland, it is good to see thee. Thee is growing up. And how is thy brother? I hope you are both well!"
My two grandfathers had met right after the Civil War at Ann Arbor where both were medical students at U. of Michigan. A few years later Erastus Test M.D. moved to Illinois and entered a joint medical practice with Edmund Francis-Xavier Cleveland M.D. in the village of Dundee. (That medical office was the source of the curious old prescription I'm sending you.) When the first son of Erastus was born, Frank Cleveland presented a small silver christening cup and was given the privilege of naming the baby. He suggested "Frederick" and the baby's mother Mary Taylor promptly added the middle name "Cleveland". These Tests not long after moved away to Oregon and later back to Indiana; Erastus didn't care much for medical practice, worried about his patients, would sometimes harness up the horse and drive ten miles out of town in the middle of the night to see a sick farmer--thereby upsetting no end, both the farmer's family and the medical partner Frank Cleveland. Erastus dropped medicine and went into teaching, especially science, a field which was his proper niche. About twenty-two years later, Frederick Cleveland Test graduated from college at Bloomington, Indiana and took a position as biology assistant at the Smithsonian Institution. In Washington he chanced to meet a lively young woman on a visit from Illinois. He learned that she was Annabel Cleveland, daughter of the physician in Dundee; and that she herself was studying medicine at Women's Medical College in Chicago. Father promptly enrolled in evening medical classes at Georgetown U. near Washington, D.C., while keeping his job as herpetologist, and courting the young lady in his scanty spare time.
And so, in due course about the turn of the century, Frederick Cleveland persuaded Annabell Cleveland M.D. to give up her medical practice and her medical-college lecturing in physiology, and to take the married name of Test. Please do not ask further, Cousin Charles, why I go more by the name Cleve then by Fred.
You may be interested in the couple of nineteenth-century remedies that I'm sending you: "A cure for the Disentary" with vinegar and loaf sugar, contained acetic acid in a pewter basin; it must have generated a little lead-acetate which would have been a mild bowel astringent (as well as a bit poisonous). The other prescription written in June 1874 antedated "aspirin" by twenty years or more; treating a headache then was rather a major undertaking, with bromide of soda, tincture of aconite and peppermint-water "every 3 hours while the headache continues".
Would you, I wonder, be interested in seeing three family letters of A.D. 1825, 1838 and 1850? The earliest was written by your great-granduncle Samuel Test Junior to his father, your own great-great-grandfather, Samuel (Senior). The other two are on my grand-maternal side of the family, written to my great-grandmother Phebe Garretson Taylor (mother of Mary Taylor Test) by her Garretson sisters, Ruth Anna and Rhoda. The letters are very trivial, full of small items of village gossip, but they do have references to quaint, early-nineteenth-century activities, in Quaker idiom, and they do show some of the hardships that those writers never recognized as hardships because they'd never known an easier life.
Please let me know if you'd like to see photo facsimiles of the originals plus typewritten transcripts that I prepared for better legibility.
I'd also like to question you about a couple of persons. I have inherited an old book "Epidemics of the Middle Ages" that bears the name "Zaccheus Test 1853" on the fly leaf. Do you know where Zaccheus fits in? Was he another brother of Alpheus, your ancestor?
Next, one John Test is mentioned in two of the old letters I have. The 1825 letter speaks of renting a "carding machine" and a "fulling mill" by Samuel, Junior (for woolen mill or factory, no doubt) and then adds ". . . but I wish by all means for John to be with us and I am well persuaded he cannot do better". The 1838 letter from Ruth Anna to Phebe Garretson says: ". . . John Blackburn works at Moses Hackets, Isaac Blackburn at John Tests carding machine . . ." To me it seems highly likely these references are to one and the same John.
Oh, yes--one other thing I could mention is that brother Jack Test and wife Kathryn toured southern England by rented motor-car last autumn 1979, and returned with some color slides of the River Test in Hampshire, slides that make up into nice color-enlargement prints. If you say the word, a 5" x 7" color print can readily be made for you and your family. You must be well aware that one earlier John Test was the first sheriff of Philadelphia sometime about 1693. We have always thought he must have come from the neighborhood of River Test. If you have ever read the book Names of the Land, you will recall how many English family-names are originally place-names. Sister Mary Test Bowers has compiled quite a complete record of Sheriff John, his second wife, and numerous offspring.
In our branch of the family, the name "Test" dies out with my generation. Sister Mary's children are Bowerses, brother Jack has three daughters, cousin Frederick H. Test (retired professor of zoology at U. of Michigan, now living in Asheville, North Carolina) has a barren marriage, and I shall die childless. Hope your branch can contrive to keep up the family name better than we. And yet, since world population will exceed four thousand millions of persons before the end of the twentieth century (if it hasn't already done so) our doings won't matter much, one way or the other, will they?
Most cordial good wishes to your and yours,
F. Cleveland Test, 2nd
P.S., With your recent letter in mind, have just this past weekend telephoned to five "Tests" who are listed in local telephone directories of southeastern Michigan. They all said they are second- or third-generation arrivals from Italy, and have recently dropped a final "-a" from the name "Testa". In Paris, France I've been told the 'phone book lists numerous subscribers named "Teste". According to Ripley's Believe-It-or-Not column a few years ago, one Jean-Baptiste Teste (1780-1852) was elected to the Grand Assembly, highest legislative body of the French Revolution, at the age of thirteen years!
14 May 1980
Dear Cousin Ned,
The material you kindly sent is vastly interesting. The deed to the Samuel and Sarah Test property along the Whitewater River is handsomely and legibly written, in what I suppose was the script sometimes described as the "engrossing hand". The deed's land survey with distances in "poles" and "links" (of the surveyor's chain, no doubt) shows that surveying had been brought to a state of exactitude even if the landmarks were "a stone" or a "sugar tree" or a "White elm eighteen inches in diameter."
There's an unsolved puzzle, though, why a deed made and notarized in 1830 was not recorded by the county clerk until 1848, not long before the death of Samuel, Junior. And another puzzle--who was that Mark Test who signed the deed as a witness, along with the grantors Sarah and Samuel, Senior?
The other family records you sent (were they listed perhaps in an old family bible?) throw a welcome light on some cryptic allusions in the old letters which I send you herewith. For instance, Samuel Test, Junior's letter of 1825 (when he was learning textile manufacturing near Philadelphia) cites his plan to rent a carding machine, and goes on: ". . . I wish by all means for John to be with us . . ." The letter of 1838 mentions ". . . Isaack Blackburn (works) at John Test's carding machine." Your records show what I did not previously know--that John must have been a son of Samuel, Senior, and brother of both Alpheus (your forebear) and Samuel, Junior (mine).
On another point, the 1825 letter says ". . . thee mentions that Sister E has got home which is pleasant to me . . ." Further on (on the page I have numbered as 3) are references to "Aunt Rebecka" and "Aunt Armelle". Your records make it clear that "Sister E" must have been Elizabeth Test, born 31 st of 3 mo. 1797, one year before Samuel, Junior. The aunts must have been Rebeccah Maxwell (b. 1782) and Armella Maxwell (b. 1786) as shown in your tabulation, sisters of Sarah Maxwell Test who was the mother of at least eleven, including Elizabeth, Rachels 1st and 2nd, Mary, Sarah, Lydia, Ruth, Alpheus, Zaccheus (whose name is in a book I have) John and Samuel (Junior). If Sarah the mother was indeed born in 1777, her youngest son must have arrived when she was forty-four years of age.
Just think: those ova that became children were preformed in her own ovaries before she herself was born--a bit marvelous, the chemical and molecular stability of an organic compound of such surpassing complexity as desoxyribose-nucleic acid with all the uncounted heritable genes it contains. Especially is it astonishing when we think that rubber bands, plastic tubing, cellulose tape, silken fibers, are all past their prime and deteriorating after a few years-large molecules all of them, organic all of them, but nothing like as large and complex as DNA.
In reading the old letters, you will I hope enjoy as much as I did the little flash of wry, barbed wit, as Samuel writes: ". . . thee may give my b(e)st respects to her (sister E) and inform her and all the rest of my Sisters and brother that I shall keep them in remembrance but not for their many letters they have wrote me since I left you . . ."
In the letters of 1838 and 1850 it is interesting to note how the postage cost dropped from twenty-five cents (in 1825) which was one-fourth of a day's wage, down to five cents in 1850. No doubt the drop reflected the coming of railroad to the Midwest (and the telegraph, casually mentioned in the 1850 letter), the building and improving of highways, and so on. I'm old enough to remember that in the early twentieth century postage went as low as two cents for a first-class letter, one cent for a "penny postal card".
Nowadays we scarcely realize the fact that the flux and ceaseless change in America at that era must have been nearly as great as what we ourselves have been living through now. And considering that the letter of 1825, traveling by river-barge and horseback-rider on narrow trails, must have been several weeks in transit, perhaps we gripe too much now about fifteen-cent stamps and delays of a few days in the mails.
In footnotes and annotations to these letters, I have presumed that Ruth Anna Griest (letter of 1838) and Rhoda Stanton (1850) were sisters (nee Garretson) writing to their younger sister Phebe (the great-grandmaternal ancestor of Mary, Frederick Cleveland and John Edmund). Haven't checked this out with sister Mary Test Bowers who is our preeminent repository of family lore. But if so, notice the great and puzzling disparity in the letters of the two women.
Rhoda writes in elevated style (perhaps a bit sanctimonious) with excellent grammar, spelling and sentence construction -- language that reflects the careful education of a cultivated and proper person. Ruth Anna's missive by contrast is almost the artless prattle of a child, unpunctuated, rattling on and on, jumping from one topic to another with solecisms and misspellings aplenty. (We should, of course, make some allowance for the fact that she had three young children to care for, which might be enough to distract anybody). Yet, the one letter from Rhoda could have come from the mistress of an affluent, dignified household, the other from the upstairs maid or scullery girl. Curious contrast if the two were in fact sisters, as I have thought!
By the way, many weeks ago a telephone call came from your niece who lives in Birmingham, Michigan, not many miles from my town. She said she had just returned from a visit to you in Indianapolis, and had been shown the letter from me. She conveyed most cordial greetings from you. To my not inconsiderable chagrin, have misplaced her telephone number. Not having had the foresight to ask either for her husband's name or for her street address, am unable to locate her in the suburban telephone directory. May I impose upon you to fill out the enclosed reply-card and send it on, so that I may have the opportunity of making a better acquaintance with a relative who sounds like a charming, animated and thoroughly enjoyable young person?
Lastly, am offering my apologies for this long-delayed reply. Have had a good old-fashioned belly ache of the sort that has come every couple of springtimes since I was twenty--this time with a little more pallor and anemia than usual. Am well aware, at my age, of the hazards of rigid, old, pipe stem gastric arteries that fail to shrink and to close up promptly when ulcerated. But on the other hand, after seeing some egregious failures of vagotomy and gastroenterostomy, and having known some frail emaciated, skin-and-bones dyspeptic survivors of Billroth II resections (half of whom became tuberculous by some unfathomed quirk of malnutrition) am willing to take my chances with good old belladonna, and aluminum hydroxide gel, whose unknown discoverer has my wholehearted blessings. Certainly a lot better in 1980 than the bad old days of 1929 when one stayed up an hour late every night weighing out ten-grain dabs of powdered chalk and dry magnesia into a couple of dozen glass vials and stowed them in a ridiculous little handbag to carry about the following day; and when one also postponed bedtime until he had chipped some ice from the 50-pound block in the old icebox by the back door, and chilled a rubber hose two feet long and as thick as your thumb, before ramming it down the gullet to empty a misbehaving stomach for the night--not to mention the final indignity of bending over the gooey stinky mess while dripping on some Toepfer's reagent to gauge the free acidity. And then went about, half the time in waking hours, with ears ringing and head swimming from the inevitable iatrogenic alkalosis, from all that chalk that I bought by the pound!
Of course, a cast-iron digestion is not everything there is or may be, for achieving the good life. Far from it. But, to quote that late, great, fat, bawdy, bellowing entertainer of the 1920's and 30's, Sophie Tucker: "You know, folks, money isn't everything. Far from it. I've been rich and I've been poor. And, believe me, rich is better!"
Best regards,
P.S. In the letter headed Crawfordsville 1838, Ruth Anna was concerned to hear that her father's face was "getting worse". She then referred to "a man . . . that had a very bad eating sore". Does that sound to you like rodent ulcer, or basal-cell carcinoma?
What the "Thomsonian medicine" and "Thomsonian practice" might have been, I haven't the faintest idea. At a time when American physicians had little knowledge and less technology, I doubt that the "Thomsonian medicine" could have been anything more than charlatanry. Do you have any hints, or do you care to make a guess? It sure beats me.
>>The Descendants of Judge John Test