Campbell Allen Harlan - about 1932

This family - there is only one beginning to this immediate family -- that is with C. Allen and Ivabell. They met over breakfast at the home of John and Peggy (Earla) Harlan. John Marvin was the oldest brother of C. Allen; and Peggy was cousin to Ivabell. To move immediately several years ahead, David Harlan, son of John Elsworth Harlan and Mary Wood, and grandson of John Marvin Harlan and Earla Johnston Harlan, asked about relationships, especially the condition called 'once-removed'. His question was answered as well as possible - 'once-removed' referred to the relationships created by the change in generations; my cousin is my first cousin; my cousin's child is my first cousin once-removed; that child and my children are second cousins; that child's child and I are first cousins twice-removed. Am I right or is there a gap which I have not counted? I really didn't know that I knew anything about such relationships until I had carefully counted them out on my fingers - slowly - afterwards. Then this family's situation grows even more confusing when my nephew (son of a son of a Harlan family - his uncle was my husband) is also my cousin once-removed by way of a grandchild of Joseph and Annette Laurencelle. At any rate the same basic genes are there, and genetic relationships are important. We share some of the same ancestors, some of their traits, some of their history and some of their future. These are probably the confusions that created problems for many a rural American when the nation was young.

Ivabell Lillian Harlan - about 1932

Campbell Allen Harlan and Ivabell Campbell met over breakfast at the home of John Marvin Harlan and Peggy Johnston Harlan, daughter of Laura Laurencelle. An immediate argument developed about a literary question, an argument which was never completely resolved. That was only the beginning of many other arguments for we fought the Civil War repeatedly -- no arms, no blood, no wounds, only different points of view. C. Allen and Ivabell represented two different places of origin: two different orientations, two different educations; two different sets of ideas. Both had the same ideals. That was enough on which to start life together. C. Allen had a job and ambition; Ivabell was in her last year of high school with the intention of going on to the University of Michigan. She did. His ambition took him well up into the financial structure of Detroit and he made a great effort to repay the city which had accepted one more hillbilly, given him room to grow and was concerned only about his capability. There is another part of that story for not everyone in Detroit was willing to accept him; as C. Allen began to crowd their space, they reacted in different ways.

C. Allen, born near Columbia, Tennessee on the 31st of May, 1907, was attending the University of Tennessee, studying civil engineering, when he met Ivabell. He was putting himself through school working summers in Detroit where jobs were easy to find and the pay was better than in many other places. His family did not have the money to finance his dream of some day being a qualified engineer; there were no government grants; and scholarships were hard to find. Of course there was brother, John, in Detroit, and eventually brothers, Bob, Porter and Paul came, at different times, to the city, all seeking their space; C. Allen would not be alone.

C. Allen was the fourth child of eight living children: the fourth son of seven sons, and brother to one sister. Rural, when I first knew them; Mother Harlan owned the farm on which they lived, a small farm close to the family plantation which was still the family pride and joy although it belonged then to some one other than the Harlans whom we know now as family.

Bringing up of this family was quite a problem - or a series of problems. Father Harlan, Campbell Alexander Harlan, operated a harvesting machine, which took him about the country side. Somewhere in the country area, he encountered polluted water (even in those days!) for people took their water from any source with no knowledge of the problems which watershed from an outhouse, barn yard, or whatever could do to them. He developed typhoid fever which, although he recuperated, damaged his heart. He died when C. Allen was seven. That left Grandmother with eight children to raise and a small farm to sustain them. Needless to say there were problems with seven sons, each one of whom was clever and could therefore think up all kinds of devilment. Like the old Woman who lived in the shoe - what to do? what to do? Part of Grandmother's solution was - if teacher whipped, give the problem boy another whipping when he got home. I never heard of Sarah being in trouble. Some sins of commission were sheer deviltry, like the time that young C. Allen engineered the cutting of a hole in the front wall of the church, from two sides so that the holes met. The boys wanted to see and hear the preacher without going in for the service. The sinners were discovered. Damaging others' property was a serious offense, especially when that property belonged to the church. (What ever happened to that concept? Kids damaged property at 3535 and no one ever seemed to mind - even adults took advantage of a break in a fence.) Some problems were truly frightening like the time that playing, the game that all young boys played, cowboys and Indians, brother Bob raised his gun and said 'watch me shoot that old hound-dog dead'; he did. The gun was loaded. Guns were a common tool for wild game often fleshed out a meal; the boys were accustomed to handling guns but they had not considered all possibilities until the old dog died. That story ties into the one that happened at the house on Forrer years later. Sad how people keep on doing the same things; they may survive their own childhood follies only to do something foolish again.