thomas leverett weblog

Lorenzo P. Reynolds

Family legend has it that my great-great grandfather, Lorenzo P. Reynolds (1830-1920), wrote a pamphlet opposed to women's suffrage, and his daughter Julia, who would be my great grandmother, wrote "Silly man!" on the front of it. This pamphlet did not come to me, as part of a general file of his and Julia's momenta that I received upon my father's death. An 80-page, single spaced document called "The Story of My Life" was part of it, though, so I typed it out into a word document.

Lorenzo P. Reynolds, who was Treasurer of Hillsdale College, and who wrote the document in about 1917, had very interesting English. I am not sure if the typed version is the original (did they have typewriters in 1917, or, would he have had one?) but the language is clear and he has strong opinions about most things. His main thesis is that one Theological Professor, one Professor Dunn, ruined his life for no good reason. It makes you curious to hear the other side. But I don't have the other side; I just have this document.

So my first thought was that this poor grandfather of mine needs to have his story told. But it turns out that the University of Michigan digitized a number of his pamphlets, and put them on Amazon, so that's not necessary. In other words, he doesn't need me to get his story out there, as large parts of it are out there already. But my document is interesting anyway for its personal account - the story of his children, and his personal life, and of pioneering in early 19th century Michigan.

The Univ. of Michigan paperbacks are plain, with no special covers, and the digitizers make it clear that they are being published for history's sake, in order to digitize and put out there important historical perspective, and things that contribute to the public understanding. One press, Palala Press, picked up one of the pamphlets (they are about 40 pages each), The True Review, and published both a paperback and a hardback version. This I considered interesting, though I should probably not put Palala Press and University of Michigan in the same paragraph. I think Palala Press was a shill company, scooping all old documents whose copyright had been lost, in hopes that some would be interesting enough for people to buy. But they also put very plain covers on them; these books look like a thousand others that they have published. And, did they actually sell any? I'm not sure.

I have put together a little book using The Story of My Life; this one will have a picture on the cover. I will write a foreword and I have just finished indexing it. In a way I feel guilty making any money on it, even though I typed out the entire document, and probably should get paid for that alone, or at least should be able to justify it. But I didn't write it; he did, and he's long gone. I think he would be happy to see the book with a pretty little cover, and American Typewriter font, but opinionated as he was, I'm sure he would also have some problem with the process. I learned a lot in the process of typing it, proofreading it, and making the index (index-making is my new passion). I became steeped in 1917 language, though there were only eighty pages. I went and read his book about Hillsdale itself, The City of Hillsdale, which is online, and full of pretty black-and-white photos of various buildings in the town.

That book, the 1915 version of The City of Hillsdale, was probably his best work. It had started out as a directory, written by someone else (which had him in it, as an insurance broker), in 1898. That directory survived, and the 1915 version survived. But somehow it went from what was more like a phone book, with advertising, to more of a public relations pamphlet for the town. You would think, from reading it, that the little town was paradise.

The Story of My Life tells the story of betrayal: having his relatives' lives ruined by this Divinity professor; being run out of the Treasurer's office; being excommunicated by the church. In addition, various illnesses and calamities befell him, to the point that one would wonder if he was Job, and still had faith in his God. But he did, apparently, and lived to tell his tale.

I will provide more about this unusual tale as I come to it.

Labels: lp reynolds

posted by tom @ 9:59 AM