Sojourn in Carlton Center by
Stewart Cain, February 1986
The Little Thornapple River slides under the road bridge in Carlton
Center and snakes to the Thornapple which flows to the Grand which empties
into Lake Michigan that laps the shore of Illinois a few miles from where
this typewriter is clicking.
Some two hundred feet north of the bridge, on the river's east side
I was born in a still-there small frame house on June 6 in 1906 (6-6-6),
to Theron Allo Cain (1879-1972) and Mary Usborne Cain (1881-1948). Their
first child, we moved to Hastings that fall, to a rented house at the north-east
or entrance corner of the Barry County fair grounds, close to the Grand
Rapids Bookcase Company factory where Dad was foreman of the finishing
room.
Dad had come to Carlton Center in Michigan's Barry County in 1884 from
the equally small village of Carlton in Upstate New York, close to Lake
Ontario, with his parents, Lymon Dillazon Cain and Sarah Shorten Cain,
to live in a typical two-story frame house west of the river. They had
been attracted to the area by Washington "Wash" Cain, Lymon's brother,
who had taken up a tract of land east of Carlton Center. Lymon, always
known as "Dill", was a house painter all his active life.
Dad spent all his early life in Carlton Center, with his brothers Clarence
and Dorr, and sisters Gazella and Stella. While he was still a small kid,
a church was built close to their house. As the steeple was finished, a
haul rope was tied to Dad and he was pulled to the high-up cross, a thrill
he never forgot. Once, as a small kid, he was in Hastings with his father
and saw the foundation being installed for the Barry County courthouse,
the stones being broken and shaped by man-powered sledge hammers. The Civil
War monument, already installed nearby, was never fully paid for, the story
went.
With oxen and horses for transportation, Carlton Center was in fact
a commercial center, with education and religion added on. The general
store came first. Owned-operated by Bill McCally, it sold a variety of
goods and foods, and was an impromptu gathering spot, with a pot-bellied
stove in cold months. Dad "grew up" there and told stories of the place.
It was a blustery cold day. Mrs. Bagley, a stooped old woman came in,
a burlap sack over her shoulder. She purchased a load of groceries and
had them "put on my bill." When she left, trudging to her cottage through
the snow, a man said to Bill McCally, "There goes your money. Why'd you
do it?" Said McCally, "I wish I could depend as much on you. I'll get every
cent." And the day a big man drove Dad, a kid, away from the heating stove.
His dad, my grandfather Dill, yanked off his coat, ready to thrash the
big guy who backed away to the front door.
School--A one-room, one teacher building across the road from the store,
looking north down a dirt road into hardwood forest country; today Usborne
Road. The school's "kids" were from six up into the twenties, attending
only when farm work permitted, not in planting/harvest seasons. The teacher,
always a robust male, taught the three Rs with determination and discipline
- and a wide leather pants belt. Here Dad met Mother. "The best thing I
ever did in my life, when I asked her if I could walk home with her," he
related to me some fifty years later. That was about 1901; they married
in 1904.
There were two Protestant churches. The nearest Catholic was in Hastings.
One I have mentioned, where Dad was pulled to the cross. The second was
across from the store, east. In fact, the road was a T at this point, not
a I or a +. Today, the second church has been taken to Barry County's Charlton
Park, an ever reminder of early days in now no-store, no-school Carlton
Center.
Mother? She was born and raised in Michigan's town of Shelby, on her
parents' fruit farm north of Grand Rapids. In 1895 her parents, John Usborne
I and Emily Burden Usborne, purchased and moved to a farm about a mile
north-west from Carlton Center Retired from the farm about 1914, they lived
in a house on the north side of Hastings (still there) where John died
in 1919; Emily in 1920 at the home of her son William/Laura in Grand Rapids.
They are buried in Hastings' Riverside Cemetery; on the same lot as Maty
(1948) and Theron (1972), my mother and father. As indicated before, Dad
and Mother met at the Carlton Center school.
Largely, Dad worked as a painter with his father, and as a day farm
hand about the village. It was probably in the fall of 1900 or 1901 that
things changed. Mother was Dad's girlfriend. He was calling on her at the
farm home. He and her brother William were hand cutting corn in a field
by the village, likely as dollar-a-day hands. As Dad related it to me,
"We were fed up." They decided to quit. They did.
William went to Grand Rapids, eventually to become a career United States
Post Office employee to retirement, living with wife Laura Harrison Usborne
at 848 Geneva Avenue; three children blessed their marriage. Dad went to
Hastings and the Grand Rapids Bookcase Company, where he became finishing
room foreman, quitting about 1908 to become a farmer, to retirement in
Hastings in 1950; Mother had died in 1948. They had three children.
The Usborne farm was largely a happy farm. The Usbornes were quiet,
friendly, warm, generous people. John and Emily farmed their acres and
reaped their crops. Their children--Bertha, who died at birth in New York
state; Theron, the next oldest, who married and remained in Shelby when
they moved to Barry County; Alexander, Lafayette, William, Mercy and Mary,
and John.
Life goes on. Years gave way to years. Came 1904. On October 5, there
was a double wedding at the farm--Mary Usborne and Theron Cain; John Usborne
and Elma Verdie Knowles. The Theron/Mary first home was the cottage beside
the Little Thornapple River in Carlton Center, where I was born; John-Verdie's
a farm a mile north of Carlton Center, where they lived their entire lives.
Lafayette "Lafee" Usborne married Achsa Eisenhood. In his youth, Lafe
was known at home as "Deacon," for, like his dad, he had a warm, kind heart,
but a seldom smiling face. When his parents left the farm, he and Achsa
remained for the balance of their lives. The greatest tragedy of their
lives was the death about 1917 of their son Tom, a fine young man and student
at Hastings High School - poliomyelitis, "polio". I contracted the disease
a year later, but largely recovered.
Today the John/Elma Verdie Usborne farm north of Carlton Center is occupied
by their son John III and his wife Betty, and their son John IV, unmarried.
Carlton Center is there, a square at Usborne and Carlton Center Roads on
Michigan's Barry County maps. Gone are the Cains and Usbornes of the 1890s,
gone with the westward breezes that brush the waters of the Little Thornapple
River.
Copyrighted 1986 The Stewart Cain Family
written by Stewart Cain February 1986
Submitted for use by the USGenWeb Barry County, MI webpage
by Bruce & Debbie Eddy September 2002
Stewart D. Cain, a resident of Glen Ellyn since 1949, died Aug. 15,
2002, at his home at the age of 96. He was born June 6, 1906, in Carlton
Center, MI. He attended school in Hastings, Mich., and received his Bachelor’s
degree from Michigan State University. Mr. Cain did his graduate work at
the Social Work School at the University of Chicago and retired from the
Skokie Valley United Way as executive director in 1972. His wife Grace
(Watkins) Cain has generously shared her husband's family story with us.
Thank You, Grace! |
