Larry Edge Letter

EDGE, RIDENOUR

Posted By: Jacie Thomsen (email)
Date: 1/13/2009 at 13:58:03

This is a letter written by Larry Edge to his cousins. Due to some of Larry's personal beliefs, I have edited some of this letter.-Jacie

I have less history of my mother's family than of my father's. Dad [Harry Edge] was descended from the Englis kings from William the Conquerer to Henry IIV, and we go back to Charlemagne via three different blood lines. Part of what I know of the Ridenour's comes from my mother, Florence Ann (Ridenour) Edge, the rest from Glenn.
My mother told of an old family story about one ancestor, apparently a man of some substance in Baltimore...One evening when his house [negro] Cato met him at the door, the old gentleman asked "Cato, what have you in that cup?" (Cato) "Cap'n I got me some 'lasses". "But what are you stirring into the molasses?" (Cato) "Dat's de sugar, I put in de sugar to sweeten hit."
I understand that my great grandfather Ridenour came to Iowa about 1840. He bought land for 10 cents an acre but the title was later declared invalid and he had to repurchase the land. Apparently they prospered, and treated the Indians well, for we have no record of their being disturbed during the Sac and Fox War.
My mother told me of a time some Indians came by and wanted to trade some bead work for a chicken. Grandfather, John Daniel Ridenour, said he didn't want the beads but they could have a chicken, and directed John (eldest son) to get one... John did not want to give up a chicken so he wrapped a rock in an old newspaper and presented it to the Indians, who unwrapped it and disclosed the fraud. Grandfather then told them they could have two chickens.
The Ridenour's were slave owners and they refused to take sides during the Civil War. But for moral or economic reasons they had freed nearly all of their slaves before 1861. The only one they kept was an infant boy named Mose, who was an orphan with nobody to care for him. They wouldn't abandon this child. So, sometime in the early '70's when Mose was grown, grandfather John D. took Mose to Muscatine, gave him $20., a ticket to St. Louis, and a letter to a man there who would give Mose a job. Glenn told me the sequel: One day Leo and Jenny had gone in to shop and Glenn was there with baby sister Eva. A buggy that Glenn didn't recognize came in down the lane from the main road. An old white-headed [negro] got out and asked if Mr. John was about. Glenn said, no he's dead. Oh, lord I'm too late, but is Miss Sarah about? to which Glenn replied she was also gone. Oh Lord they was so good to me and I been fixin for sometime to come back and thank them, and now it's too late. And with that, Mose left.
In early times there was no governmental aid to education. The Ridenour's gave an acre of land, and they and their neighbors provided lumber and labor and Sandy Hook school house was built. Then they chipped in and hired a teacher. All three Ridenour girls taught in that school. First Aunt Ida, the eldest, then Aunt Bess, then my mother Florence. Grandfather gave mother Doll, a gentle mare, and a sidesaddle to ride over to the school.
The Ridenours followed the custom of all large families of those times: An older child was assigned the care of an infant. My mother was assigned the care of the youngest boy, Leo. she was 10 years older than he. The Ridenours were notably stubborn, and Leo was the most stubborn of the lot. He was mother's most onery student. There was no bell at Sandy Hook, but the teacher had an iron triangle on which she could bang with a steel rod. And there was a special signal she could bang out which would be heard at the Ridenour home and then grandfather would come over to discipline the offender. So Leo cought it at home and at school.
I remember that Glenn had the contract to renovate the old Hoover house. This was not the first time we had contact with the Hoover's. The bridge at Rochester was built very early, and there my dad and Uncle Hayes would sometimes meet a Quaker boy from the other sied and the three boys would fish together. Now all three of them are buried in that area. The Quaker boy was Herbert Hoover. As for me, I grew up mostly on that little ranch in western Oklahoma. In early 1917 I had just started college in Central State College, and had an appointment to the Baval [?] Acadamy coming up next year when we were put in WWI. I was filled with boyish patriotism, so I enlisted in the U.S. Army. Served with 31st Infantry in the Philippines and then a year and a half in Siberia fighting the Bolsheviks. Was sent across Siberia on a mission and got as far as Ekaterinburg where the Tsar and his family were murdered. I saw the house and the cellar where they were shot. Came east after the war, with my parents who had sold out in Oklahoma. Helped then get started on a farm near Marathon, then bought myself a farm in the Mohawk Valley. Good farm, but the bottom dropped out of farm product prices in 1922 and I went broke. Worked a night engineer in a mill in Amsterdam. Then decided to go back into the service, but was to old for the Naval or the Military Academy. Barely young enough for the older coast Guard Academy, so that was it. Graduated at the top of my class; duty on destroyers, then into aviation. Helped found C.G. aviation and commanded Air Stations... In 1943, hung up my wings and took an assault transport in the ETO. Was in the Normandy and South France Invasiions. At war end became Chief of Staff of the Greenland Patrol with HQ at Narsarssuak.

If any of you is ever called stubborn you come by it honestly. The Ridenour's were all stubborn, even my usually placid mother and Leo was probably the most stubborn of the lot. To all of you kids, you can be of your Ridenour ancestry. The family was not as prominent as it had apparently been in medieval Germany, but it was a sturdy pionee family that believed in honesty and hard work. Would that we had more like them in America today.

C.F. Edge
Comdr., US Coast Guard (Retired)
C.G. Aviator No. 14
(Oldest living CG aviator)

*NOTE* Larry Edge was born 15 Nov 1901 and passed away 4 Sept 1991 in St. Petersburg, FL