Who Do You Think You Are: The Quaker

The Crankies are taking a road trip this summer and will stop to view their ancestral homeland. Major Cranky's Quaker family hailed from eastern Indiana, where Quakers still abound and will let you go to their fabulous liberal arts college for $44,000/year. Just because they're pacifists doesn't mean they're not capitalists.

DAR Matron and Cranky Oil Baron, Meta Cranky's genealogic-obsessive relatives, have mapped
The Quaker's DNA, so there's very little new ground to be covered in the who-begat-whom department. But smaller Crankies might be interested in info that isn't included in the Indiana Dead Quaker People records.

In every picture MC has seen of The Quaker, he looks like he's already been dead for three days. We recognize that he might be shown to better advantage in pictures prior to 1949. However, the photo of him with his son, grandson, and great-grandson indicates that they're all working from the same basic pattern; he might very well have been Quaker eye candy in the 19th century.

The Quaker left Indiana when his widowed father remarried; his difficult new stepmother helped him light out for the territories to score free real estate in the Oklahoma land run. Late in his life, he spent a weekdays at his son's ranch. His daughter-in-law Hazel recalled him fondly and respectfully, but her details never offered much personality. The most revealing nugget Hazel shared was his habit of reciting the Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley. Riley delighted in homey country rhymes with lots of dropped g's. She heard The Quaker's rendition of  "How Did You Rest, Last Night?" each morning before breakfast. If she harbored homicidal thoughts about the Hoosier Poet or her father-in-law, she kept them to herself:

"How did you rest, last night?"--
I've heard my gran'pap say
Them words a thousand times--that's right--
Jes them words thataway!

Riley is credited with establishing the Midwest's cultural identity; he's got a lot to answer for.

Major Cranky's stories about his grandfather had more narrative arc. For example, good guys caught some bank robbers in the Kansas flint hills while The Quaker was waiting for the land run to start. The good guys applied frontier justice, and the bank robbers were quickly dispatched, with one exception: the 13-year-old robber. The women of the group, including Mrs. Quaker, demanded that the boy be released, and eventually, he was. When Major Cranky first heard this story, he was horrified: "Grandad, I'm only 13. Would you have wanted to hang me?" His grandfather, whose Quaker theology opposed war, slavery, and capital punishment, told him: "Don't. Rob. A bank."

The Quaker adopted new folkways, and even a new religion, in his new venue. He sang in the choir with the Methodists, and even prayed in public when he was asked to say grace over meals. In the 21st century, his notable feature seems to be his even, balanced sensibility: for fun, he and Mrs. Quaker read the Congressional Record of an evening. Sometimes, maybe, No Drama can be a good thing. Sure, Grace Kelly shoots the bad guy to save Gary Cooper. But she only played a Quaker in the movies.
--MC