the third grade. He ran away from home, joined the Navy, was honorably discharged, then rejoined the Navy to fight in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Honorably discharged a second time, he settled as a workingman back in Germantown and married Bessie Williamson. Bessie’s grandfather, William Joyce, had emigrated from England to Germantown in 1846. Bessie’s father, Wallace Williamson, died in his mid-thirties, leaving Bessie’s mother to care for four children and her own aging father, who lived