I was born April 20, 1895, in Lincoln, R. I., seventh child of Albert and Mary L. (Gilfillan) Flanders. What was this family I was born into?
My father, a New Hampshire-ite, born in the Province of Quebec, Canada, by accident his mother did not get back home to Grantham, N. H., in time. My mother, born of Vermont parents, who went to New Hampshire to be with her mother for the birth of the first child. They had nine children. I only knew six of the nine. The others died at early age. My brother Ralph was fifteen years older than I. One sister, Alice, next in line, died of tuberculosis in 1902. I remember her.
Ernest, circa 1895-96
My sister Emily twelve years older than I, lived and was a wonderful help to me in growing up. My brother Donald, born in 1900, was close, as a brother during his whole life. He died in 1958.
My birthplace was on a hill on the edge of the city of Pawtucket, R.I. It was known locally as "Stump Hill."
Our neighbors were mostly farmers, or older people of moderate income, spending their last years. Their names, as I remember it, were Mrs. Himes, a widow, and a married couple of advanced years, the Connellys. He was a farmer and kept cows. There were woods, pastures, and open fields. We looked down on the city of Pawtucket and the textile town of Saylesville.
My father worked in a toy shop, R. Bliss Mfg. Co., in Pawtucket. My brother Ralph went to Providence to work, around the turn of the century., as an apprentice machinist.
As for "Stump Hill," although we left there to live in Pawtucket around 1898, I always loved to go up there in later years to picnic, hike around, and visit old friends of my parents. I would take a boy friend of my age group for company, or occasionally would go up with my cousin Molly. She was a double cousin. My father Albert and her father Henry were brothers. My mother it Minnie and her mother Helen were sisters. We were very close to each other as friends and relatives for all our lives. I still cherish a tape of a conversation I had with Molly in the mId- seventies. [#33] The Henry Flanders family generally spent time each summer with us.
The first move into the city found us living in a rented home on Garden Street near where my father worked, My brother Ralph also lived with us, but not for long. He moved to another rented home on Barton Street in Pawtucket, still near my father's work. I found two playmates there. One lived next door, a French family. Canadian French families were common in Pawtucket. But this family was different. The father and mother were France French. The father was an apothecary and owned a drug store in the city. His name was Saint Germain. My playmates name was Martin Louis Edward Ponton de St. Germain.
On the other side of the street there lived a family by the name of Capron. The father owned an important coal company, known as the City Coal Co. He had a son named Ned. He was a mischief maker and we two became buddies.