I’ve decided to follow Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks program. I’m running a little behind so I’m going to have to play catch-up.
The first week is to Start. So that’s what I’m doing today.
I first got introduced to genealogy in 5th or 6th grade. It started as a Social Studies project where everyone in the class had to try and fill a pedigree chart with themselves, their parents, and their grandparents. If we could go further, we were welcome to. If we had a grandparent still living we were tasked to interview them about their life and write a report. I chose my grandfather George Desmond Crocker as he lived next door and I wouldn’t have to ask my parents to drive all the way to South Hero, Vermont to interview my other living grandparent Lilian Rock. It turned out that he had lived a very interesting life.
George Desmond Crocker was born 21 April 1909 in Somerville, Massachusetts to George Albun and Christianna (Selner) Crocker. They later moved to nearby Quincy, where George spent most of his younger years. His father George Albun Crocker had been born in Doaktown, New Brunswick, Canada and immigrated to the United States as a young man, working for the railroad in Boston. His mother, Christianna Selner, had been born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to a large family. My grandfather recalled visiting his grandparents in Doylestown.
He later went to Northeastern University getting a degree in Civil Engineering, but I’m not sure he ever became a civil engineer. I do know that he was a salesman for the Texaco Oil Company, selling gas and oil products to service stations in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. He liked Vermont so much that he decided to open his own service station in Burlington, Vermont. Over the years he had to move his service station to different locations. His first location was at the corner of Pearl Street and Elmwood Avenue, which later became the Federal Building, which still exists. His last location was in the North Avenue Shopping Center which is still there, but has changed hands many times since he retired.
He also spent some time teaching shop classes at Burlington High School. He was a big and tall man, standing 6′ 3″ and well over 200 pounds, and very strong. He had very large hands, which some of his former students remember to this day. He was known as a teacher who didn’t allow any nonsense in his classes. I always remember him as being in great shape until way late in life, and my father used to tell us that during the summer he would swim from our beach across Malletts Bay to Coats Island and back every morning which was about a mile or so. He also played tennis until late in life, playing and beating much younger opponents.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s he began building cabins along some property he originally leased and later bought along Malletts Bay. He built them from old CCC camps that he was able to get from the Green Mountain National Forest. He would tear down a camp, keeping all of the materials, even the nails, transport it to Malletts Bay and then rebuild it. He and my grandmother Ethel Leone (Coombs) Crocker ran the cabins for fisherman and outdoor enthusiasts during the summer, while he also ran the service station. My father remembered taking the campers out for rides in the boat. When I was born in 1964 we were living in Cabin No. 5 at Crocker’s Woodside Cabins. After his wife Ethel’s death in 1970 there was no one to run the cabins, so most of the property, including the cabins, had to be sold.
George Desmond Crocker was married four times, although he never talked about his first wife. She was named Ruth Sheive and they had a daughter named Ruth. Shortly after the daughter was born, they got divorced and she moved back to her home state of Maine, where she remarried and her new husband adopted young Ruth. My grandmother was his second wife. She had been born in St. George, Vermont, but was living in Burlington, which is where they probably met. After her death he married Elinor Kimball who was also a teacher at Burlington High School. He married Marion (Manchester) Crosby, yet another Burlington High School teacher, after Elinor’s death.
George Desmond Crocker died 7 April 2001 at the Birchwood Terrace Nursing Home in Burlington, Vermont after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease. He was almost 92 years old.
