My Great, Great, Grandfather Billups moved West to seek his fortune. He set out from Cainsville, Missouri on some unknown day in the1880’s with little more to sustain him than hope and ambition, he worked his way across the country until he reached the San Juaquin Valley in central California. He got there just in time to hire-on with the company building a railway across the length of the valley– from Bakersville to Sacramento.
He started work as a common laborer. By the time he was twenty-one he was promoted to management as a section boss in charge of his own crew.
As he worked laying the rails, he thought about the land along the tracks. It wasn’t worth much then, but it would be when the railroad was complete. He saved most of his wages and used every dollar he saved to buy land alongside and ahead of the tracts.
Great, Great, Grandfather Billups became a very wealthy man.
He invested his wealth in other enterprises. They all flourished. Eventually he had enough money to open his own bank.
At some point in his thirties he returned to Cainsville. He married, and returned with his bride to his bank and other holdings in California. He fathered eleven children – four daughters and seven sons. He continued to prosper for many, many years.
Then, disaster.
He hired an attractive youngish lady to do his considerable bookkeeping. He foolishly had an affair with her. Eventually, she rewarded his foolish trust by embezzling most of his fortune. Broken, but not entirely poor, he returned to Cainsville with his children. I’m not sure about his wife. She probably divorced him. Nonetheless, he had enough left over to buy a farm for each of his children.
That’s all I remember of his story.
I thought it would be an interesting story to write about, but I was missing so many details. I did have a faded old photo I thought was of him, I wasn’t really certain of that either.
I decided to call my cousin, Donna Zaiger.
Donna, along with my Aunt Maudine, had done a lot of research on family history. They had voluminous documentation ranging from census reports, land grants, birth & death certificates, so on and on. They had traced the direct line of our Shipley generations all the way back to 1640 Maryland and our oldest known relative – Adam Shipleigh. (Since Adam’s time we spell our name, Shipley.
I think the spelling Adam used reflects our origin further back as being Norman, and probably further back, yet, as Danish Viking). She had less on the Billups side, but even there she had compiled a couple hundred years of data.
In any case, I was pretty sure Donna would know.
I told her what I remembered.
She was puzzled. She said, to the best of her knowledge, not a word of what I had just told her ever happened.
What!
How can that be?
I have a pretty good memory. I remember almost everything past the age or two. Folks who were adults at the time have verified my memories. I don’t make things up. What can account for this false memory? Did I hear some other family’s story, and confuse it my with own family? Did someone tell me a lie? Whatever for? Why would anyone do that. Who would do that?
I considered the possibilities.
My Mom never lied. It couldn’t be her.
Grandad Bill was a possibility. He told a lot of stories, but this kind of story wasn’t his style. His stories tended to be action oriented. This story took too long and had too much history to make a good yarn. I also ruled out Uncle Archie, who although a Billups, rarely said anything at all. Maybe my cousin, Bub. No, It’s not the sort of topic that would interest him. Maybe my Aunt Arlene, except I don’t recall her telling any stories other than short reminisces.
Did I dream it? I don’t think I could have. I didn’t know anything about California, much less the San Juaquin Valley until I was a teenager.
I have no idea how this story got into my head.
It worries me a little.
I’ve told this story for some number of years to some number of people. They all thought it was interesting. None questioned it. Perhaps because it’s so typical of so many other rags-to-riches-to-rags stories in the American experience.
Perhaps I’ll never know the what or how of it.
Even though it isn’t true, it would still make a good movie.
There is no writing on the back of this photo to identify
these two gentlemen.
Nonetheless, it is part of my collection of family photos.
I have long assumed that the dapper man on the right is my
Great, Great, Grandfather Billups, and the man on the left
is probably one of his sons.
Now, I haven’t the slightest idea who either of them is.
E p i l o g u e
I sent this story to my cousin, Donna. She liked it, though she didn’t have evidence that any such history ever happened. She had second thoughts. Maybe something had slipped though her careful collection of family records.
I didn’t know Great, Great, Grandfather Billups first and middle names. Donna did. She went to ancestry.com to see what records they might have on: Joseph Willard Billups.
To her surprise, and mine, they had his J. W.’s obituary from 1934 - Santa Cruz, California. Donna knew that Great, Great, Grandfather Billups had returned to California at some time. She didn’t know there was an obituary extant. It wasn’t part of any family records
she had been able to discover.
It verified most of my remembered story.
At age eighteen, in 1864, he accompanied a covered-wagon train across the plains, all the way to California. He hired on to the company building the San Joaquin railway. At age twenty he was promoted to foreman. He did prosper and achieve much. Nothing was said about the Bank, the affair, or the embezzlement. Possibly because obituaries tend to skip-over parts that may be embarrassing to the bereaved. It would require tedious parsing to speak of the Bank without speaking of the affair and embezzlement, too.
He did father eleven children. Nothing was said about buying farms for his children. Now that I think of it, he probably only bought farms for his sons, of which, there were five, not the seven I falsely remembered.
I now think Grandad Bill was the one who told me this story. He lived with us when I was young. He told me many things. I asked a lot of questions. Donna might not have known about it because Grandad Bill - rascal though he was - probably said some things to grandsons that he didn’t say to granddaughters.
My memory has been redeemed.
I’m relieved.
Joseph Willard Billups & family.
Grandad Bill is second row, third from left.