Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Charles Henry Byron author of The Saga Of The Hocking

Before we explore the book, The Saga Of The Hocking, I'll explain the background of the author. Charles H Byron is the great great grandson of our 4th great uncle Daniel Stewart Jr.  His line encompasses his great grandparents Daniel Bertine Stewart and Sarah Carter.  Their daughter Ruth Stewart married Charles Bryon and their son Edward Stewart Byron and Bertha Zimmerman are his parents.

Charles was born in 1899 in Stewart, Ohio.  He is the eldest of three and describes himself as a poor student.  In 1927, Charles left Ohio and moved to Chicago,where he took up residence at the Jane Addams Hull House. His cousin William Fisher Byron and his wife Evelyn Soderlund were also living at Hull House.  William Fisher Byron was an assistant professor of Sociology at Northwestern University in Evanston.  His wife Evelyn was a social worker.

Hull House was initially intended for recently arrived European immigrants but expanded to thirteen buildings where leaders of business, education, social work, authors and the arts could live and interact with the surrounding community. Hull House is situated on Chicago's West side at 800 S. Halsted.  Only two of the original buildings remain today. Charles lived at Hull House from 1927 until he married in 1931 and moved to Denver.   During his time living at Hull House, he taught painting classes. In the 1930  Federal Census he was working as a commercial artist at a lamp shade company.

Charles used his artistic talents to illustrate the book. The color photo is done in oil.  This is the only picture in the book that is in color. Each chapter of the book will have it's own post and some chapters will have many posts due to the information they contain.  Unfortunately, a diary kept by Daniel's first son William Stewart was lost.  Daniel's seventh son, John Stewart, a Methodist Episcopal minister, wrote Highway and Hedges and gives a brief description early life in Ohio. John Stewart's book also references Daniel Jr's third wife Lovisa Williard Stewart.  Charles mentions that nine chapters were deleted from this book and he hoped to carry over this material in a second addition. Sadly, no further book was ever published.

 The book contains some interesting family stories and also provides some information about missing members of our family. This books also had me exploring some 16th Century Scottish history that helped explain how our Stewart family left Scotland for Northern Ireland and ultimately America.

The back of the book reads:



Unable to conform to the organized school system that taught nothing that interested him, and with the slogan, “It is better to create than educate,” Bryon was a poor student. He did not even do the drawings in the high school annual and was flunked in second English. His ability in this field was not discovered until a later date.

In 1927 he left his home village of Stewart, Ohio, for Chicago where he studied at the Art Institute. Through a cousin, who was president of Hull House Association, he lived at this famed social center under Jane Addams for several years teaching art. In 1931 he married and moved to Denver. With a background of designing novelties, wall paper and draperies, he entered the Lamp Shade business and was the only manufacturer in the Rocky Mountain Region who survived the depression.

In 1937 he entered the mural decorating business and under the slogan “We go anywhere,” became one of the leading house decorators in the United States, doing many thousands of decorations in homes and business places. He painted quickly and easily. The hand-painted water colors in this book are produced in a few minutes each; therefore, they are not designed as works of art.

Having drilled two wells,shipping oil before he could vote, he again entered this treacherous oil business and is responsible for opening several oil pools in Kansas and Oklahoma.  Obtaining leases on acreage where Daniel Stewart drilled oil and salt water wells with spring poles 150 years prior, he interested Denver capital and a resultant wild cat at 4700 feet, which was the deepest test ever made in Athens County, Ohio, discovered oil and gas in a formation where none had been found within 25 miles. This opened a potential major oil field. He is also the owner of several apartment houses in Denver.

He made an extended six months tour of the world in 1961-62 to study modern mural decorating and the religious and political situations. He did over a score of murals and decorations in twelve countries including the A-Bomb Hospitals in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

His present plan is to raise a few thousand dollars, return to Hiroshima, oversee and personally assist a badly needed re-painting project of a hundred rooms in this hospital at his own time and expense. He will be glad to hear from those interested in this international good-will gesture to one of our strongest allies.






5 comments:

  1. He never ended up with a grandson. He had 2 granddaughters.

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  2. I just got a copy of this at Acorn Books in Columbus Ohio with a similar painting in front. I'm sitting down to begin reading right now!

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  3. We have one of his murals in our home

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  4. We have a signed book and a painting that he did. Old Kincaid Mill.

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  5. So fascinated by the book. Did you discuss each chapter in a different blog. Would sure like to find those missing chapters, it really was obvious that much of the book is missing. My husband and I jugs the finished the book from an inner library loan. We will go back to the Stewart ohio area to further explore.

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