(PEARL) MARGARET HOUSE EATON Mother of Cyrus Stephen Eaton, Jr. (m. Margaret Stephens Eaton) Grandmother of Cyrus, John, Cathy, and Elizabeth Eaton Great-Grandmother of Colin Eaton Murphy and Devon Eaton Murphy
MARGARET HOUSE BIRTH, PARENTS, SIBLINGS Pearl Margaret House was born on December 24, 1886 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Augustus Farlin House (June 7, 1847 to August 11, 1932) and Mary Grace Cleve (1848 in England to April 8, 1931). In 1900, the census lists her as living with her parents on 1051 Superior Street in Cleveland. In the early years she was known as Pearl, later as Margaret. Her older sister Lillian House was born September 1874 and first married Thomas Brinsmade and later married Thomas A McNamara. Lillian had a daughter Isabelle with her first husband. Margaret’s father, Augustus, was a Civil War veteran, attended Oberlin College and studied medicine in Europe. He was a prominent man in Cleveland. Her brother Augustus House, born in 1880, died before the 1900 census. Possibly Augustus and Mary Grace lost two other children. They attended the Superior Street Baptist Church. Her mother Mary Grace Cleve was from England and was a devout Baptist. She volunteered and most likely was a hostess for social engagements. Margaret’s parents divorced around 1910 and on June 20, 1911, Augustus married his nurse, Helen Wolpert from Windsor, Ontario. She was thirty-two and he was fifty-three. Her parents are Caleb Wollpert and Azubah Burgess, both from Germany. They moved to Los Angeles and had a summer home in Northfield, Ohio. In 1920, their Los Angeles address was listed as 1861 Whitley Avenue.
MARGARET HOUSE CHILDHOOD - SCRAPBOOK It is likely Margaret (called Pearl as a child) had a very pampered childhood. One indication is the multitude of photographs of her from a very young age. She attended Hathaway Brown School, a private girls’ school, and graduated in 1906 with twenty other girls. She kept a scrapbook of dances and parties she went to from 1904. In her dance cards in pencil are written boys’ names next to dances like Two Step, Waltz, Paul Jones, dip Schottische. She wrote notes about staying over at friend’s house and being serenaded by boys. She jotted down with initials different boys she met at gatherings. Some parties were at Hathaway Brown School, University School, and clubs like The Colonial Club, the Euclid Club, musical programs and many luncheons. She kept calling cards of some of the fellows. Under Mr. John Hood Jr, she wrote, “handsomest man I ever met.” On Feb 23, 19?? Margaret with other seniors was in the play Cranford. She kept tickets from her railway excursion. She attended a birthday party at the Superior Street Baptist Church in 1904 at the Sunday School. She kept violets picked at St. Augustine and theatre tickets, and traveled to Atlantic City and Saratoga. She attended dances at Mohegan Lake School in Mohegan, New York. One November 17 a friend who stayed at the Hotel Belmont in New York and attended the Yale/Princeton football wrote Pearl that they had the time of their lives. She kept love letters from a man named Bruce who called her Pearl sometimes and Peggy sometimes. Clearly, she enjoyed flirting. She glued in a good sketch she had drawn of a woman from the back with fancy hat and hairdo that she drew in church. On May 27, 1905, she performed at the Euclid Avenue Garden Theatre in the Tyrolean Dance with twelve young women and eleven young men. She went to Yale/Princeton game. She attended La Salle Theatre in Chicago and took a trip on a steamer to Buffalo. She kept a skit she wrote about girls at a school. In a small envelope was a lock of chestnut brown hair. She has a newspaper article describing her mother Mrs. A. F. House’s involvement with a charity event. Some pages had playbills. Ironically, she went to St. Paul’s School in Concord, NY where granddaughter Cathy Eaton taught in 1973 and Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, NY where Cathy’s husband Michael Murphy taught from 1973 to 1976. In the back of the scrapbook are team photos of athletes from different schools and men’s colleges. At the very end are printed poems and the final page is a spiritual essay. What can be surmised from this scrapbook? Pearl loved attending parties, dancing with numerous partners, and kept a record for us to find over 100 years after she made the scrapbook.
COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE Clearly, her youth was very unlike the childhood and youth of Cyrus Eaton. Did they meet at a party? At church? Did they court for long? Cyrus had graduated from McMaster University in Ontario, he had spent summers working for John D. Rockefeller from 1902 to 1905, and spent a few months working as a bronco buster in western Canada after graduation. His Uncle Charles was minister at the Euclid Avenue Baptist Church, not far from the Superior Street Baptist church Margaret and her parents attends attended. I have found no record of Margaret going to college or working. Perhaps, she took art classes because clearly she was already a talented artist as shown by surviving sketches. One photograph of her in a uniform indicates she volunteered as a nurse.
Cyrus began coming to Cleveland the summer of 1902 when Margaret was sixteen. Possibly they met through the connection of the Baptist churches they attended or through social events. Cyrus began working full-time for Rockefeller in 1905 when Margaret was nineteen. Cyrus had a brief stint as a minister at Lakewood Baptist Church in 1906. We have two sketches she made of Cyrus about this time probably from a photograph rather than a life setting. They married two years later on January 29, 1908 when she was 21 and he was 26. Rev. Charles Eaton performed the ceremony at Margaret’s parents’ house on 8926 Euclid Ave. in Cleveland. At the time, Cyrus lived in East Cleveland, Ohio, and his occupation was listed as General Manager. I have found no mention of their courtship, their engagement, or their wedding. I found a photograph of her in what might be a wedding dress. She was lively, artistic, and very social. He was reserved, focused on business, and charming. They were a handsome couple.
ARRIVAL TO AMERICA, NATURALIZATION AND CITIZEN Cyrus’s childhood working on a farm, in his father’s general store and post office in rural Pugwash clearly contrasted Margaret’s upbringing as a pampered child in Cleveland, Ohio. On June 8, 1901, Cyrus arrived in Buffalo, New York via the Canadian Pacific Rail Road. According to his petition, he lived continuously in the United States starting June 1, 1908. In 1914, when Cyrus petitioned for naturalization, he, Margaret (AKA Pearl) and their three oldest children lived at 8926 Euclid Ave in Cleveland.
CHILDREN, ACTIVITIES, TRAVEL Cyrus’s business acumen rocketed his fortunes so that before he was thirty he was a millionaire. For a while they lived on Euclid Ave in what became the Health Museum, probably near her family, but when they moved to Acadia Farms, did she feel isolated? Their daughter Margaret G, later known as Lee, was born in 1909, Mary Adelle in 1911, Betty in 1913, Anna in 1916, Cyrus Jr, in 1918, Farlee in 1922, and Mac in 1925. The children had nannies, and Margaret had live-in help for cooking, cleaning, driving, and landscaping.
In the 1920 Census, Cyrus’ occupation was listed as broker in the stock industry. Despite seven children in sixteen years, Margaret kept her slim figure. She is pictured riding and skating, but Cyrus was probably the more passionate athlete. She would have been a good social hostess, and she would have known the socially elite people of Cleveland. Some of their surviving letters indicate that he traveled a great deal. The letters showed warmth and humor, as they recounted the daily lives of their seven children going to violin class, throwing a tantrum, enjoying a hayride, building a snowman. The family traveled via ship to England and spent the summer with their parents and nannies at a lovely estate in Surrey. Another year, Margaret took the girls to France. Before World War I, she traveled to Germany. In a letter to her, Cyrus queried about the politics and escalating tensions in a continent about to erupt in war.
RELATIONSHIP, ACTIVITIES, AND TRAUMA A traumatic experience was when she and son Cy witnessed the explosion and fire at the Cleveland Clinic due to x-rays igniting. Her good friend was killed in the blast. Their daughter Lee suffered a dreadful back injury and was confined to a wheel chair. Margaret and Lee were very close until Lee died at 40 in 1949. Their daughter Anna had a childhood disease and was mentally challenged, having the mind of a very young child. Cyrus always provided for Lee and Anna, who in later years lived in Ontario with the three Serrat sisters. All Margaret’s children wrote her warm, affectionate letters. Margaret was a prolific photographer and kept many photo albums of the children playing and of their travels in the western United States and in Europe. She took home movies in the 1920s and 1930s that show snowball fights, riding, traveling in England, visits to France, and time spent in Pugwash, Nova Scotia.
DIVORCE Cyrus spent his summers in Deep Cove, Nova Scotia, and she didn’t. Margaret smoked and enjoyed her cocktails. Cyrus didn’t smoke or drink. Cyrus was deeply involved in his business career. They were separated in 1926 and officially divorced in 1934. Daughter Farlee went to live with her sister Betty and her husband Lyman. Cy Jr. was shipped off to Kent Boarding School. Margaret moved to Arrow Cottage, a farm adjacent to Acadia Farms in Northfield, Ohio. Neither Cyrus nor Margaret appeared in court. The divorce basically said Cyrus was often absent and suggested mental cruelty. It has been rumored that son Mac had a different father. His name might have been Frederick Crawford, an American industrialist and philanthropist. Mac spent most of time with his mother and missed a great deal of school due to being sickly.
On a loose scrapbook page next to a prayer “Our Resurrection” and quotation on courage by Victor Hugo is a handwritten note from Cyrus to Margaret. No date. “My dear, I love you too well, I believe in you too much and I know the Real You far too well, to agree with the girl with the tragic face and the tortured eyes. The lovely girl Margaret and I must set free – the Real You the girl Cyrus married and loved – the girl whom he chose as mother of his children. Forgive me.”
PAINTER, TRAVEL, AND GRANDCHILDREN Cyrus and Margaret both seemed to have elevated sex drives and engaged in various relationships. Her son Mac said that his mother often had boyfriends. The children were often cared for by nannies. After the divorce, Margaret traveled, pursued her talent as a painter, exhibited her work, and had homes in Ogunquit, Maine, Florida, Shaker Heights, Ohio, and probably California near her daughter Lee. She has a large stone home in Winchester, Massachusetts adjacent to a golf course and country club. For a number of years she did therapy with a psychiatrist. She inherited moneys from her father, Augustus House. We can surmise that she was a pilot due to a photo of her in a flying suit next to a small plane, but perhaps she was just a passenger. On her birthday, December 24, first for her children and then for her Cleveland grandchildren, she played Santa Claus, sometimes even arriving by sleigh. She wore a jolly mask. She spent summers in Wolfville, Nova Scotia with Mac’s family, and she always helped them by buying appliances and clothes. Many of her paintings are oil seascapes. She painted the Square in Cleveland. That painting is in the Oberlin Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio. Some of her paintings were in galleries in Ogunquit, Maine, and others in Florida. On the obituary of Dr. Alvin W. Klein, Psychiatrist, Margaret wrote “a better man never lived. He died on Sept 29, 1935. A companions/husband? of niece Isabel wrote, “We know what a real friend he was and what a refuge he and his home were to you.”
When she lived about Stouffers in Shaker Square, Cy Jr often had dinner with her once a week. He adored his mother. The older grandchildren (Bob LeFevre, Fox Butterfield, Cyrus Eaton Wind Dancer (Cy III), and Mary Eaton) have fond memories of spending time with her. Grandsons Bob and Cy III remember spending overnights with her in her apartment.
DEATH Cyrus did not remarry until after she died in 1956 of cancer. What drew these two vibrant, passionate people together despite their remarkably different upbringings? What kept them together for nineteen years? What drove them to divorce? What kind of relationship did they have after the divorce? How did their relationship and time spent together influence each other? I don’t know.
Clearly, Margaret thrived with her independence, pursuing her painting career, her traveling, visiting family, and having various amours. She was talented, passionate, and lived a bohemian, privileged life. Her art talents have been passed down to granddaughter Mary Eaton, and great grandchildren Sarah Eaton, and Devon Murphy. Her love of travel has been embraced by her children and grandchildren. Her paintings of tumultuous seascapes, farm houses, serene snowscapes, her home city squares still hang from the walls of her descendants.