The babies came in quick succession, ten in all. Little Theodore Joseph -
“Josie" - her fourth, died at three. All the others Theodore and Mary saw grow into
maturity, marriage and, most of them, parentood.
428 Fayette Street (later renumbered 529) was a small, three-bedroom house,
which by 1915 sheltered a family of eleven. Imagine the logistics. But you only
have to look at the family portrait taken that year to know that in spite of cramped
quarters and a laboring man’s wages, a beautiful, healthy, well-dressed family
flourished there. In the early Thirties a fourth bedroom and a second-floor back porch
with a large storage closet were added, a gratifying event, although by then the
number of occupants had dwindled to eight.
Theodore
Theodore Andrew Wallace was born in Cumberland on September 8, 1873.
He was the first of five children of James and Anna Gramlich Wallace. He was
baptized in Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church, having as godparents Andrew Mills and
Barbara Gramlich, his maternal aunt. There is little information on Theodore’s
boyhood and education. We do
know that he - possibly with one
or both of his brothers - was
sent to Saint Mary’s Industrial
School in Baltimore, an
institution for underprivileged
boys, for an undetermined
period. The parents’ breakup
undoubtedly necessitated this
action. (Babe Ruth went there,
too, much later, of course. It
recently dawned on me why my
grandfather was a supporter of
Boys Town.12
)
In 1895, soon after his
marriage, Theodore began
working for the Western Maryland Railroad as a brakeman. He was promoted to flagman
in 1900 and later to freight train conductor. In 1935 he became a passenger train
conductor working out of the Elkins, West Virginia, terminal, a position he held until
retirement on October 1, 1938. His total service amounted to 42 years and three months
and he had traveled an estimated 1,200,000 miles.
50
Mary & Theodore Wallace, CWR’s grandparents
12 Community in Nebraska founded in 1917 for homeless and abandoned boys by Father Edward J. Flanagan.
