(Excerpt from memoirs written by Barbara LaGarde)

“After leaving Cuba he (Albert Truby) was stationed at Ft. Myer, VA.  From there he went to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay for duty on the Army post there.  While there he came to know and court Elizabeth Downing, who lived on hilly Green St. in San Francisco.  He told the story of spending one evening with Elizabeth, or “Bonnie” as she was often called, but thankfully missed the last cable car to the ferry which took him back to Alcatraz.  This cable car’s cable broke and went into “the drink of San Francisco Bay [on the steep descent from the hills to the Bay, injuring many people].

Elizabeth Downing lived with her parents Nellie Irene and Orien P. Downing on Green Street.  Downing was a graduate of Columbia University School of Music.  Nellie Irene was one of seven sisters, children of Socrates and Amelia Huff.  The other sisters were Nellie, Mamie, Callie, Dudie, Jennie, Ida and a seventh whose name I cannot recall.  Socrates and Amelia went West in 1849 in a covered wagon.  Along the way, Indians offered to buy Amelia (who had red hair, a novelty to them) for forty ponies!  Nellie took her three children - the girls, about sixteen or seventeen and Elliot in his early teens to Europe about 1898 or 1900 to give them the “grand tour” of Europe to further their education.  They even had an audience with the Pope who blessed them unto the seventh generation.  Elliot put his visit with the Pope to good use in WWI when he was with General Pershing’s engineers in the famous Rainbow Division.  He would be one of the first to enter a French Village, and because of his fluent French, he [persuaded] the village priest to find him a place to stay.  Because of his fluent French and having been blessed by the Pope, he always got the best.  The rest of the troops had to make do as best they could.

Pope Leo XIII

My Father’s parents, John and Minnie Acherman Truby, lived in Otto, NY in a fine, large home with many acres of land, including a creek in which we used to play.  We visited there for the summer when we were stationed at Governor’s Island.  Years later the story was that Minnie Truby, who has a short, thin, active elderly woman, fell from the back steps head-first into the hogshead barrel, kept there to catch rain water. She died as a result.  I remember the casket in the parlor and my dread of seeing ”Grossmutter” in it.”

I, Chris, have decided to do some posts about family history. Now that I have a child of my own, I find myself wanting to pass on our family history to Logan. Anyway, once a week or so, i am going to post a bit about our family history, both LaGarde and Boyes.

I am going to start with the LaGarde side, and with some excerpts from my Grandma’s memoirs. I get my artistic “talents” from her and I admired her highly while she lived. She passed on several years ago.

So here goes, I hope you enjoy it. . .

Memoirs,
by Barbara Truby LaGarde

“I was born at Letterman Hospital in the Presidio at San Francisco on September 13, 1908. I was christened Barbara Truby at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. My sister Elizabeth, born February 26, 1907, was christened there also. My brother, Albert Elliot, was also born in San Francisco in 1910.

My father was Albert Ernest Truby. When he was a Lieutenant, he was stationed at The Presidio, San Francisco, CA. It was there that he became engaged to Elizabeth Downing, whose family lived not too far from The Presidio. They were married during the earthquake of 1906 and were fortunate enough to be able to cross the Bay to the estate of Socrates Huff, Elizabeth’s Grandfather, where the ceremony was performed. Only Socrates and Amelia, his wife, Nellie Irene Downing and her husband, Orien P. Downing, attended the ceremony. Nuns from a nearby convent made her gown.

The couple returned to The Presidio to my Father’s quarters where they proceeded to bury their valuables and silver in his back yard. While doing this, a sheet of music blew into the yard entitled, amazingly enough, “There’ll Be A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight”. This sheet music is preserved and displayed a museum within The Presidio. My Father was put in command of setting up a camp in Golden Gate Park for the many refugees fleeing the fire and destruction in the city. He later was sent to Letterman Hospital for duty where we three children were born.

Daddy had gone to Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School before joining the Army in 1898. Prior to his duty in The Presidio, my father had been to Cuba in 1898 to help Walter Reed in his experiments with mosquitoes in relation to Yellow Fever. They successfully concluded a series of tests in Daddy’s camp on soldier volunteers. They were elated to find that those bitten in camp came down with Yellow Fever, proving that the mosquitoes were carriers of the sickness and thus providing the means to control it. After retiring to San Francisco in 1935, he wrote a book of his experiences with Walter Reed and their successes with Yellow Fever. Daddy was the only one of those who had been in Cuba who was still alive to write a book with detailed account of these exploits.”

Hospital Corps Detachment at Camp Columbia, Havana, September 1900. Most of the volunteers for the yellow fever experiments came from this unit. Lt. Albert E. Truby, unit commander, is seated in the front row, second from left.
To be continued. . .