REFERENCE: The Abridged Compendium of American Genealogy Vol. 1, 1968.BIOGRAPHY: A.B., Harvard, 1907, Harvard Law School 2 years,Trustee, realtor, and numerous corporate interests; president PortWentworth Terminal Corp.; exec. com State St. Trust Co., Treas.Noble and Greenough Sch., Good Govt. Assn., Boston, etc.
I remember my grandmother, Jessie True Babcock, telling the story ofhow her grandfather, William McFarland, was fording the WapsipiniconRiver in January, 1847, with the river full of ice, when his wagontipped over. As I recall the story it was when he was moving hisfamily to a new home in Iowa, but I may be wrong about this. Williamlabored long and hard in the icy water to salvage his family andgoods, and as a result contracted pneumonia from which he died a shorttime later. My great-grandmother, Mary Catharine (Kate), would havebeen just two years old. How I wish now that I'd had her write downthe whole story in detail. My father has a brief handwrittenreference to the event among his notes, but no additional details. --Bryce Babcock
I found the following handwritten note among the papers of my father,Oscar True Babcock: "John McLoughlin, brother of Rosanna, workedfor Robert Morris a wealthy merchant (liquor dealer). He never drank.Later he went into business for himself, then after not working withliquor he began to drink -- quit, went to farming. His son John ranthe farm and hated liquor so he formed a society of people whowouldn't touch liquor. They couldn't get farm help because theywouldn't furnish liquor. Was it the first temperance society inAmerica? When ill with typhoid fever he drank a whole pan of milkand died -- couldn't have water." Another of those frustratinglyenigmatic notes my father left behind. Somewhere in that welter ofmixed metaphors there is probably a great truth or moral strugglingdesperately to escape -- but what it may be, I doubt I'll ever learn.Perhaps, "If the whiskey don't kill you, you'll live 'till you die."-- Bryce Babcock