I believe I’ve mentioned before that when I was growing up we didn’t socialize very much with the Troutman side of the family.

I think this was mainly because we spent so much time socializing with my mother’s side, the Zellers side of the family, that there just really wasn’t much time left to spend with the Troutmans even if we wanted to. If you remember the Norman Rockwell paintings that used to appear in the Saturday Evening Post all the time, that was the Zellers family. At least in the 50s and 60s, before things went all to hell. But that’s another story.

The Zellers clan used to get together regularly. I mean like very weekend. My mother’s brothers nearly always got together on weekends, usually at my grandparents’ house, so it was just sort of one of those unstated rules that we’d be part of the get together. My father’s siblings had nothing comparable. About the only time they all got together was for weddings or for funerals.

I was very happy when I was old enough, about 13 I think, to start occasionally opting out of those weekly get togethers.

Anyway, my grandparents, John and Edna Troutman, had four children, Clarence, Irene, Arthur (my father), and Curtis.

John and Edna were married on July 5, 1913, and on September 1 of that year Clarence was born.

I remember one time, maybe when I was about ten or so, we were visiting my grandparents and I was only half listening to what they were talking about, but I recall my grandmother saying something to the effect that “we didn’t know any better about such things at that time.” It was only in later years that I figured she may have been speaking about Clarence’s birth. Of course, perhaps she was talking about something entirely different.

I think of all their children, Clarence resembled my grandfather the most.

In any event Clarence grew up and married Elsie Mountz. I wonder if Elsie was related to Richland’s Florence Mountz? A quick check proved inconclusive.

I haven’t been able to find the date of their wedding, but in February 1931 there is mention in the paper that 15 year old Elsie Mountz had perfect attendance for the second year in a row at the Trinity Tulpehocken Reformed Sunday School. Do you know who else had perfect attendance for the second year in a row that year? Why 17 year old Clarence Troutman, of course. Makes one wonder what Clarence and Elsie might have been doing after Sunday School was over.

Two years later in 1933 they were blessed with the arrival of two baby boys, Bryan and Byrd. They were not twins. Byrd was born in December and while I can’t find the date for Bryan’s birth, subsequent census and other records generally list their ages as a year’s difference, so Bryan must have been born in January of 1933. I presume the marriage occurred sometime in 1932, but I can’t find any record or any document that gives its date. By December of 1933 Elsie would have been 18 and Clarence 20, and they were now the parents of two infants.

By the way, the most likely reason that I can’t find a record of their marriage is that the genealogical sites use computer algorithms to scan the old records which were handwritten in those days, and perhaps the handwriting is illegible to the computer for some reason and it can’t be matched to their names. Or the record might be lost.

Three years later Glenn was born and in 1944 they had their fourth and final child Stuart. So they had nearly all their children before my parents were even married in 1943. Thus, by the time I arrived on the scene and started school, Bryan and Byrd and Glenn were getting married. Is it any wonder that I didn’t get to know the cousins on the Troutman side of the family? That left Stuart who was only five years older than I was, but he might as well have been in a different generation. I’ll have more to say about the cousins later.

By the time I became aware of anything, I only knew uncle Clarence and aunt Elsie as living on a farm located at Myerstown RD 1, but I see from some newspaper clippings that they lived in Schaefferstown for a spell and Clarence was not always a farmer. 

While we still lived in the Great Stone House on the farm, I remember going to Clarence and Elsie’s farm a number of times, probably with my grandfather, but I can no longer remember how to find it. I’ve tried to locate it on various map apps but to no avail. I know we turned off Rte 422 just before we got to Myerstown and I can still vaguely picture the farm in my mind, which in my memory was not that large, but it’s precise location remains a mystery.

I have no pictures of Elsie, and only a couple with Clarence where he’s only one of several figures in the photo.

Worse, I have no specific memories of either one of them. Oh, I remember each of them and can picture them well enough, but of anecdotes I have none. I think I can vaguely recall the sound of their voices.

My grandparents sold the farm in the mid-60s and retired to a house in a new development on the outskirts of Womelsdorf, and Clarence and Elsie did the the same thing. Exactly the same thing. They bought the house right next door to my grandparents.

I don’t recall that we ever went to visit Clarence and Elsie, nor did they ever visit us. We only saw them if they happened to be with my grandparents, or of course, at weddings and funerals.

I don’t think there was any ill will between my father and Clarence. If there was they kept it hidden because when they saw each other they were friendly enough. I think it was just a difference in the way the Zellers clan and the Troutman clan were brought up. Also, there was a 12 year age difference between Clarence and my father, so they hadn’t exactly grown up together. By the time my father was six years old, Clarence would have already moved out and married Elsie.

My grandparents died in 1965 and 1966. If I saw either Clarence or Elsie after my grandmother’s funeral, I have no recollection of it. And the same goes for their sons, my cousins; I never saw any of them after my grandmother’s funeral either.

Clarence died in 1989. My mother probably told me about it at the time.

My sister and I threw a 50th anniversary party for my parents in 1993 and invited Elsie, but she declined to come.

Elsie died in 2012 when she was 97. No one told me about that; I found it out doing research on my family. By the time she died, two of her sons had long since passed away.