His Father’s Child

There I am once again jumping out of the red 1976 Plymouth Volare station wagon in the horseshoe driveway of the big old house on South Maple Street in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. Up the three short brick steps, into the front vestibule, and through the dark brown front door marked with the plaque G.G. Merrill and accompanied by the jingle of the five Christmas bells held by a maroon cord hanging there to announce visitors. Entering this house was not only a physical exercise in our summer exodus from suburban New York City, but also a commitment to the ghosts that resided there.

In each of the twenty-one rooms lived a story of someone who came before me, before my sister, and before my parents. George G. Merrill built the house in 1870 for his bride Emma Field. Their children—Arthur, George, Philip, Roy, Eddie, and Alice—all grew up there. Uncle Roy (Croy as he was adoringly called by his niece—my mother—and his five nephews), Uncle Philip, and my grandmother Alice, lived most of their adult lives in this homestead, in this sleepy little village, in the foothills of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, and thus left pieces of their history for me to indulge in.

Philip Merrill

When I was very small, I played with neighbors, mostly ignoring the ghosts around me, but as I got older and those friends didn’t seem as interesting, I gravitated more towards my great uncles, spending time in their rooms, which had been left untouched for decades. Uncle Philip had the smallest room; it held a four-post acorn bed, a tall mahogany dresser, and a small closet that held one thing—a rock collection. When I asked my mom where Philip had gotten these rocks from, I discovered more than I could have imagined.

Philip had followed in his father’s footsteps becoming a structural engineer. Philip had helped to build the west wing of the White House and the Panama Canal. Those rocks came from the many projects he worked on around the country and world. However, it was Philip’s work on the Panama Canal that changed the course of his life, and I suspect, unleashed a possible depression. As happened to many other canal workers, Philip contracted malaria. His health never recovered. On his return to the U.S. he went back home. However, he didn’t stay there long. The common belief in the early nineteenth century was that the damp and cold weather in the north was not conducive to recovery. So Philip headed to Arizona. First Phoenix, then Camp Verde, finally ending up in the Flagstaff area. To make money, he camped and trapped for fur.

In that twenty-one room house made prominent by the granite stone walls in the front and back yards lay over 2000 letters written by those six siblings to each other and back home to G.G. and Emma, but very few of them by Philip. He seems to have gone to Arizona not only to recover, but also to disappear. Emma wrote often, begging her middle son to just send a quick word home that he was safe. Arthur, the oldest and a high school German teacher in Chicago, even went so far to place a notice in the local papers in Camp Verde and Flagstaff asking that anyone who knew of Philip Merrill’s whereabouts ask him to contact his family and assure them of his safety. Philip’s eventual response was brief, but reassuring to his family I am sure: “Was out trapping near Flagstaff. Please direct all mail to Post Office there.”

Philip’s issue may have been one of escape, one of depression, or facing the fact that he would never be the same in mind or body after his experience in the canal zone. We will never know for sure. But a few years ago I was visiting my mom’s elderly cousin, Edward—son of youngest son Eddie. Edward relayed a story about his father, a noted chemist in the early 20th century. When asked why Eddie hadn’t followed in his father’s footsteps, and those of brothers Philip and Roy, in becoming an engineer, he responded, “I wanted to study something my father knew nothing about!” And so it seems that Philip’s return to 19 South Dover St may have come with a lot of pressure and judgment. Before the canal work, Philip had always gone far away to work on jobs. In addition to the canal and the White House, he also worked at Niagara Falls, in Indiana, and in Colorado on temporary contracts. He was rarely home in his early adult life. He did, however, return home for good when his father George died in 1912.

Philip’s rock collection showed his trail, a roadmap of sorts, that highlighted his trek from job to job. It doesn’t betray his innermost thoughts and feelings, however. Those we may not know, but his odyssey tells us that he was likely most comfortable away from his father. His later life was spent farming and living in his tiny 6-foot by 10-foot bedroom in his childhood home in the Berkshires with only a box of colorful rocks left to hint at his life’s story.