Digging In The Past

 

 

. . . a queer craving to visit the past and give the modern world the slip.

Siegfried Sassoon

 

            I have been reading a memoir by William Manchester titled Goodbye Darkness.  He had struggling for some time with strange nightmares related to his World War II experiences. It had gotten so bad that it felt as if darkness had a stranglehold on his life. He wanted to dispel it. In 1978 he decided to revisit the islands in the Pacific Ocean (New Guinea, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Saipan, Iwo Jima) on which he fought against the Japanese as a young marine in the 1940’s He called his trip “digging in the past.” It was intended to be therapeutic and cathartic. It became an exercise in facing personal demons. All of us bear wounds from the past. Perhaps we must retreat there to find healing, to lift the darkness from our lives.

            There are any number of other reasons to want to revisit one’s past. Memories are compelling! Nostalgia is a powerful emotion! Sometimes we search for meaning (completeness) in what Manchester calls, “the unconsummated past.” From my personal perspective, we return to our pasts seeking redemption and reconciliation. Whatever the reason, I am fascinated by the process of digging in the past. You never know what or who you might find. The ultimate goal is self!

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            On June 21, 2013, my wife Liz and I drove down to Hot Springs, Arkansas to get away and celebrate our 39^th wedding anniversary. We met up with two distant cousins of mine, Chuck and Clay Fitzhugh and their wives Becky and Debbie. The trip brought to mind my first visit to Hot Springs twenty years ago and my introduction to relatives I didn’t know existed.

In 1993, my uncle Thomas Tudor who was the family genealogist contacted me and said that now that I was living in St. Louis, I should acquaint myself with a branch of our family living in Arkansas. The existence of this “branch of our family” was news to me. Uncle Tom said that these people constituted the Bruce side of our family. That rang a bell! I knew that the Bruce name was important to us. My father’s full name was Robert Bruce Tudor. My brother Tom also has Bruce as his middle name. I was aware that somewhere in our past, we Tudors did claim a connection with Robert the Bruce and his descendents. When my father was in England during WWII, he visited Dunfermline Abbey in Scotland where Robert the Bruce is buried. My uncle Tom went on to say that these Arkansas relatives were in the habit of having family reunions every few years. Tom had contacted their family genealogist and had asked that I be invited to the next gathering. It didn’t take long for that to happen. In late May, I received a lengthy letter from Edward Bruce Fitzhugh which laid out the relationship between our families. I was extremely interested to discover in his letter that his family belonged to the Episcopal Church and that their lineage included a number of Episcopal priests. As a matter of fact, his brother William Fitzhugh was a retired priest in the Diocese of Arkansas. William had referenced me in the Episcopal Church Clerical Directory and had given his brother my particulars. Edward closed his letter by inviting me to their next family reunion to be held at the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas on July 23-24 that summer. I was intrigued. Instant family!

            I made reservations at the Arlington and, on July 23, my sons Robert and Thomas and I drove down to Hot Springs. For some reason, Liz and the girls didn’t go. Driving through Little Rock was interesting for me because I had been born there in the St. Vincent Infirmary on August 29, 1942 while my father was stationed at Camp Robinson during World War II. In 1943, the army transferred my father to an installation near Indio, California where my brother Tom was born on November 20. Little Rock was my birth place but that fact certainly carried no sense of home town. I had no memories of Little Rock or Arkansas because I had never been back. Still, I have always had a Little Rock connection in my mind. Now, I had come back.

            Walking into the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs was quite an experience. The lobby was large and looked like a ball room. Very elegant! The lobby bar was on your right as you entered and it had then (and still has today) a very art deco appearing backdrop. The hotel was built in 1924 and the building replaced an earlier structure from the 1890’s which had burned down. Needless to say, the Arlington is a grand tradition in Hot Springs. There is a suite on the fourth floor which is named for Al Capone who used to vacation there. The hotel is located across the street from Hot Springs National Park. A short distance from the hotel down the street are ten bath houses which are relics from the old days when “taking the waters” in Hot Springs was a very popular thing to do. The bath houses have all been restored by the park service. Going to Hot Springs is definitely a step back into the past. That is obviously intentional!

            Once the boys and I entered the hotel and checked in, we very quickly discovered that the Bruce-Carvill-Fitzhugh family reunion was headquartering in the Apollo Room on the seventh floor.  I went down there and discovered about twenty people sitting around renewing acquaintances and looking at pictures. Very soon, I found myself visiting with Herman Charles “Bo” Carvill who was the driving force behind these reunions. He was the organizer. I met William “Billy” Fitzhugh the retired Episcopal priest and we talked a bit about the Rev. Caleb Alexander Bruce who had started several parishes in Arkansas and had for a time been rector of St. Paul’s, Alton, Illinois. Later, I sat down with Edward Fitzhugh and we discussed the Bruce-Tudor family connections. Edward had put together a very informative if somewhat complicated two page family tree and gave me a copy.

 

A Brief Genealogy

 

            It seems that our common ancestor is an individual named Dr. Barwick Bruce who in the early 1800’s was living in Bridgetown, Barbados. He and his wife Amabel Walrond Bruce had seven children. In 1806, Dr. Bruce, his wife, and their two youngest children, Nathaniel French Bruce and Mary Dalrymple Bruce, immigrated to Hartford, Connecticut. These two children, Nathaniel and Mary, are the key to the connection between the Bruce-Carcill- Fitzhugh people living in Arkansas and my family, the Tudors. Nathaniel received a medical degree from Dartmouth in 1813 but apparently never practiced. After his graduation from Dartmouth, he married Sarah Benton in 1814. He then studied for the Episcopal ministry and was ordained to the Priesthood in 1817. He and Sarah had ten children; the two oldest being Sarah and Caleb. Caleb Alexander Bruce followed in the footsteps of his father and became an Episcopal Clergyman. He married Mary Sortore in 1838. They had three children among which were Sarah Elizabeth Bruce and Mary Amabel Bruce. These two women married brothers. Sarah married Edward Julian Carvill and Mary, Herman Carvill in 1883. The latter couple, Herman and Mary, had six daughters and one son, Herman Charles Carvill. It was these six sisters and their descendents who were the focus of the first family reunion in the 1970’s.  They married men with the surnames of Fitzhugh, Douglas, Howell, Trice, Wilson, and Cherry.

            By the time I came on the scene, all six sisters were deceased and the reunions were being carried forward by their children and grandchildren. “Bo” Carvill who organized many of the gatherings including the one in 1993 was the son of Herman Charles Carvill, the brother of the six sisters.

            The connection between the Tudor family and this Arkansas branch of the Bruce family took place when Mary Dalrymple Bruce, sister of Nathaniel French Bruce, married William Watson Tudor on September 1, 1824 in Christ Church, Hartford, Connecticut. William Watson Tudor was my great-great-grandfather. William represented the sixth generation of Tudors in America, the first being Owen Tudor who came to the colonies in c.1636. I am the 10^th generation., my children and grandchildren the 11^th and 12^th.

            I was not the first member of my family to spend time in Hot Springs. After I had been there for a day or so, I called my father and asked him what he knew about the very large and old hospital which sits up on a bluff across from the hotel and above the bath houses. He knew it very well. It had been called the Army-Navy Hospital in the 1940’s and my father had even spent some time working there during his time at Camp Robinson in Little Rock, thirty miles away.. That interested me. I decided to walk up there and see if I could take a look around. I discovered from a sign near the front door that the hospital was now owned by the State of Arkansas and was being used as a drug rehabilitation center. I walked in and went up to the front desk and made my request. I told them that my father had been a army doctor who had worked there briefly in the early years of WWII and that I would like to see the hospital. The young woman looked at me as if she had never heard of WWII and said that there was no one there to give me a tour. So much for that idea!

            The 1993 reunion concluded with a banquet which began with bagpipe music. Remember that these are people who are deeply conscious of their Scottish heritage. At one point in the evening the boys and I were introduced by Bo Carvill and he gave an explanation of our relationship to their side of the family. On Sunday morning, The Rev. William Fitzhugh celebrated the Eucharist in the Apollo Room. This was also part of the tradition.

            Since 1993, we have attended several of these family gatherings. Sadly but understandably, the numbers of attendees have been dwindling. Edward and William Fitzhugh are both deceased as is “Bo” Carvill who died in 2008. The last official reunion was held in Little Rock because “Bo” wouldn’t travel anymore but unfortunately, he had died earlier in the year. We met at the home of Eldridge and Sarra Douglas. We listened to a very informative presentation by Charles Witsell, an architect in Little Rock, who is a descendent of Alexandria Carvill Wilson. The 2008 gathering was put together by Francis Bruce Carvill Cox who lives in Texas.

One can quickly see the many difficulties involved in continuing the wonderful and meaningful practice of family reunions. People get older and they are no longer able to travel. People die. Families become spread out all over the country. The younger members of the family lose touch with the family history and no longer have an interest in perpetuating family tradition. People are busy! It goes on and on! In an effort to preserve some semblance of the tradition, on June 21-23, three couples met at the Arlington in Little Rock to remember the past and celebrate it. There were still plenty of family ghosts (“Bo”, Edward, William) in the Apollo Room along with the faint echo of bagpipes. And I could still glance at the old hospital up on the hill and see, in my mind’s eye, a young Army doctor named Robert Bruce Tudor confidently walking in the door in 1942. It’s all part of digging in the past.