Wild about Harry

Grandson of Henry Osborne, Harry Osborn. Note the drop of the e, which causes so much confusion while tracing Osbornes.

Where the saga so far crops up in the middle is my grandfather, Harry, born 1895 in Rochester NY. I'm just wild about Harry. Who wouldn't be. My grandmother was. Just look at him.

He never got any less adorable.

Harry had a hard life, but I always remember him laughing, smiling, beaming at me. Injecting himself with the insulin he needed to live. He was relatively successful by Livingston County NY standards. Had a farm.  Raised mink. Managed the local ice company. Volunteered as a fireman. Kept the brotherhood as a Mason. Not sure if he went to church, although it was right across the road.  But no matter. Lots of good people never set foot in church. Harry raised a good man in my father. He was a top-notch Grampy. 

He liked roast beef. He pronounced it rrrrROAST BIFF. Like a big Dutch giant, he roared and rolled that initial r for as long and loud as he could, just because he could. And because it utterly delighted me and my sister.

We often ran into Harry, holding court on the porch of The Commercial Hotel with other local farmers, small businessmen, volunteer firemen. Brother Masons. Gramp could consistently be counted on to give me a nickel and tell me to go buy an ice cream cone. I don't know what my mother did with all those nickels. I never got any ice cream cones.

Harry was born in 1895, his mother died in 1900. His father had to support two small children, which he did by becoming an insurance salesman. He couldn't earn a living and still be at home to care for two little kids, so it was given to their mother's mother, Cornelia Kusse, to watch them. By every account we have, one, Harry was a handful. From orphan, he graduated to borderline juvenile delinquent and was finally evicted from his own grandma's house after roasting a live rabbit. Or let's pray, trying to. Let's trust that Grandma Kusse was alert enough to smell something furry in the oven and the rabbit came out just slightly singed, but still alive. Never liked Harry much after, though.

In census records of 1910, Harry and his sister Floss (Florence) live with their father. At age 15, Harry is listed as a machinist. Perhaps this is how he learned how to carve up dead horses, the best food for raising robust mink.

At some point after 1910, the kids went to live with their father's brother, Uncle Bill, back in Livonia Center.  Uncle Bill, for those of you who have been following, was once known as Willie Whaley. I blame no one for not following. This family is damn confusing.

One summer's day around 1915, Harry attended a chicken barbecue in Lakeville, NY and met the woman who became my grandmother, Ruth Vandia Punch. By 1917, he was living in Hemlock with his wife and new baby, working for the city of Rochester public works department. Here is where they lived.

Here, the whole gang. Notes ("Everybody Happy") by Ruth Punch Osborn, the lucky gal who married Harry. The gang's all gathered around my father Charles, born in June, 1917. As important to him as his parents were his Aunt Floss, Harry's sister, and her husband, Harold Harvey. They never had kids, so my father and his sister Rae were their children. This is one of just two photos I have of my great-grandmother, Ruth's mother, Anna Sans Punch. She's the one wearing the tie.

Harry named his son after his father, Charles. The bastard he may have been, and technically was, Charles E. Osborne senior found some place in his son's heart and his name was honored in the next generation.