I have only the tales which C. Allen told me of the early years of his family. They were residents in Yorkshire, England where they had gathered a sizable estate and established their name. During a time of religious change, they became Quakers and followers of William Penn. Change was in the air all across Europe at that time; still that took courage. They, when Penn left for America, sold their estate for some forty thousand pounds (a tidy amount in those days) and followed him. Life for a non-conformist in England then was difficult. Did they have any inkling of how difficult life in America would be?

There are traces of their pilgrimage into the hinterlands. C. Allen was intent upon visiting Harrodsburg, Kentucky; there was a family connection. They must have stopped to found a town, known today as 'Harlan', Kentucky. The reputation of that town has fallen on hard times since the founders left. One seldom named a town, in those days, after a drunk or a horse thief. Have you ever looked for a garage in Caponville, dwaddled through Dillingerton, hurried through a village called 'Erp"? Towns are named because of pride. Where ever the Harlans went their contributions were positive.

Part of the family settled in Tennessee after the Revolution - they were the 'Big Reds'. The plantation was established by these farmers. Skipwith Hall was built early enough after the Revolution that Lafayette, returning to America, visited there. In order to work the land which they owned, the Harlans were slave-holders. The entire house was slave built and ghost inhabited according to the tales told by Ella Picard Harlan's sons who enjoyed frightening their nephews and nieces. What the special crops were I do not know. The mineral rights for the phosphate on the property were sold; agreements, properly drawn for their times, caused, years later when C. Allen and his brothers bought back the land, a great deal of confusion, resulting in much legal work to make them understandable. The story says that one of the Harlans brought back from Spain a large jack; cross-bred it with the family's horses and began an active market in mules. That jack and those mules establish the fact that the Harlans bred horses, raised and sold the resulting mules. The market, once established, continues and is the nucleus of the financial activities of Columbia today.

Another part of the family stayed near the coast. C. Allen drew a distinction between the 'Big Reds', farmers, and the 'Little Blacks', business men and lawyers. The John Marshall Harlans belonged to the 'Little Blacks'. The first John Marshall Harlan was so named because his father admired the U.S. Justice, John Marshall, the first chief justice of this nation. Louis Dembitz Brandeis followed the first John Marshall Harlan on the Bench of the Supreme Court of the U.S., admired his record and believed in his philosophy. Both of these men left an important impression upon our legal system. The second John Marshall Harlan was given his grandfather's name. It was our good fortune to meet the second, to invite him to the dedication of the Harlan school and to have him accept. C. Allen and the second John Marshall Harlan compared records and decided that they were cousins - probably three times removed. C. Allen also explained to the Justice that we had given his name to our first son. The Justice sadly gave us permission to use his name; he had no sons. Indeed when Joyce, John, C. Allen and I attended the installation of the elder John Marshall Harlan on the Supreme Bench, in Washington D.C., there were only women present to represent his family; his mother and his wife. (His mother was a Flagg.) I think that the Justice and C. Allen shared a common great-great-grand father. Some one can set me right.

Other than the Tennessee relatives, the only other family which I have met are Scott and Rebecca Polk Harlan, and their children and some of theirs. Scott Harlan had moved his family to Ambler, Pennsylvania. He bought a large farm and began training race horses. It was a lucrative career and an exciting life according to the stories which Cousin Rebecca told me. Following the horses from track to track kept them moving about the country. They had the money to be well-housed, well-fed, and well-dressed. Their home farm, named Idyledell, was a well cared for and productive farm. C. Allen worked there during the summers; it was money for school and a tightening bond between the family members developed.

It was their oldest son, Benjamin, who lent C. Allen some of the money which was needed for college expenses. Ben, who had a college education, worked as engineer for Behtlehem Steel, rising to a vice-presidency. During the early war years while C. Allen was in New Orleans working on the Hughes plant, we visited Ben and his wife at their home in Dangerfield, Texas. He had taken on the responsibility of building a steel mill for Bethlehem Steel and the government in Texas; the expectations were that its product would help the nation during WWII. The frustrating politics of that job caused a heart attack which killed Ben.

Daughter Catherine married an Englishman, named Walker. She remained in England after Walker died during a bombing attack on Coventry. There were three children of that marriage; the daughters, Catherine and Rebecca, lived on dairy farms in Shropshire (The farms with the strawberries and the thick rich cream!); the son (Walker) and his family lived in Birmingham. After our last trip to England the cattle in Shropshire were victims of anthrax, a dangerous disease; the farmers had to kill all of their livestock. I have often wondered how they surmounted such a calamity. The son had one son, a boy, who young had leukemia; these were the times when doctors were beginning to fight leukemia with transplants of bone marrow; at that time there was no cure. It was to daughter, Catherine Walker, that I took her mother's jewels when we were first in Europe during 1958. During the war years and in the excitement of such times, Catherine Walker participated in an election; it was possible in England to vote without being a registered citizen. That action cost her her American citizenship. Wanting to return to the US, she appealed to C. Allen for help; she wanted her American citizenship back. C. Allen went to Senator Kefauver, asking him to use his power to renew her status as a citizen. For some reason it was impossible to renew her citizenship; she could not return to America except as an English visitor.

Scott and Rebecca had two other children - Sarah Darnell and Lucius. Sarah and her daughter, Becky, had lived with, husband and father, Walter Darnell in Knoxville, Tennessee. He, insurance salesman during the depression years, finally amassed enough money to buy a membership in a golf club and decided that such a membership would help his business. Sarah decided that she wanted a maid. They could not agree so she left him and took Becky to live with Scott and Rebecca - back to the grandparents on the Pennsylvania farm. Trying to support herself and her daughter, she raised chickens. Actually she was a specialized maid in that household - daughter, dependent and servant. Both parents, aging, reached times, separately, when they needed constant care; Sarah was there. Those were the long years; Sarah and Walter never divorced. Darnell, always helpful and still feeling the responsibilities of a father, was present when Becky married Paul Morris, paid for the wedding, and gave his daughter away. So often we make our own tragedies.

Becky, the child raised in Pennsylvania, with parents and grandparents of southern extraction, was sent to England for a portion of her school years. What resulted was an accent that dismayed her cousin-twice-removed - C. Allen. She spoke with a hybrid ac-cent which was not an affected one. Her idiom was part British, part Pennsylvanian and somewhat Tennessee. Some may have thought it clever or cute; not C. Allen. He always bridled whenever he had to talk with her.

Lucius, accustomed to life around the horses, followed that life style but never with the success that had been his father's. He had married well; his wife was skillful with her pens and kept herself employed. They had no children. She had sketched on canvas a picture of the old home - Idyledell - which Cousin Rebecca hooked; a second picture portraying the back and the kitchen garden was planned. I never had a chance to see that one finished.

When the Cousin Becky's jewels went to England, C. Allen had accepted the commission from Cousin Rebecca and Sarah. When we returned Lucius objected for, he maintained, 'Mother has given everything in the house to everybody at one time or another.' He was probably right. The fact was that the jewels were in England. The problem was how to get them back into America without paying duty on what was already family's. I really do not know what happened to the jewels; whether Lucius point of view changed or whether the jewels stayed in England. The farm was sold after the death of Scott Harlan. Cousin Rebecca and her daughter moved into Ambler; and Sarah found income by renting rooms to students. After Cousin Rebecca died, C. Allen became executor of her will; it was a demanding chore.

It was quite obvious that Cousin Rebecca had her moments; it was quite likely that she had made repeated gifts of the same things to many persons. (Today I know how easy that is to do!) In a moment of flaming anger at an eighteen year old, she had disowned her grand-daughter, Becky; that moment lasted long enough for it to be registered in her will. C. Allen often regretted those terms when Becky and Paul Morris could have used some of Grandmother's money; the will forbid. It even prevented Becky inheriting some of that money when finally Sarah died. It is sad when rancor causes hardship beyond the grave. It is sad when the terms of a will can distort the possibility of a perfectly fine and necessary gift.

Change is the one thing certain in this life.