Journal Report
Generation One
1. ISAAC
MARION1 PIDGEON SR. (5292) married Phoebe
Kester (5293).
Children of Isaac Marion1 Pidgeon Sr. (5292) and Phoebe
Kester (5293) were:
- 2. i. ISAAC MARION2
(3162), born 2 Sep 1836 at Salem, Henry Co., Iowa; married Mary
Elizabeth Ables (3161); married Alazannah Alexander (3206);
married Nancy M. Montgomery (5286).
Generation Two
2. ISAAC
MARION2 PIDGEON JR. (3162) (Isaac1)1
was born on 2 Sep 1836 at Salem, Henry Co., Iowa. He married Mary
Elizabeth Ables (3161), daughter of Alexander Ables (3023) and Lucy Parks Underwood (3114), on 27 Mar 1867 at Salem, Henry Co.,
Iowa. He married Alazannah Alexander (3206), daughter of Gideon Bowles Alexander (3208) and Mary Ables
(3028), after 1872; second marriage of I.M. Pidgeon. He married Nancy
M. Montgomery (5286) in 1875. He died on 7 May 1917 at Highland Park, Los
Angeles Co., California, at age 80.
He and Mary Elizabeth Ables (3161) Mary was Isaac's first wife
according to a letter dated 2-19-1942 from Mrs. J.O.Goodloe to her cousin Mrs.
H.O. Morrison in Cambridge, Ohio. He and Alazannah Alexander
(3206) Married after the Civil War. He Salem News 4-18-1912
Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Pidgeon and daughters Angie and Carrie departed last week
for Los Angeles California. They having rented their farm to Elbert Brown, will
spend the summer with their children residing in California.
Obituary reads as follows Salem News 5-31-1917
ISAAC M. PIDGEON
Isaac Marion Pidgeon, son of Isaac and Phoebe Kester Pidgeon, was born on the
Pidgeon homestead near Salem ,Iowa, September 2, 1836, and died at his home in
Los Angeles, California, May 7, 1917. He was of Quaker ancestry, tracing his
descent from Isaac Pidgeon, who was a settler of North Carolina before the
Revolutionary war. The deceased was the ninth of eleven children, and he was
the first white child born in Salem township. His father having been the first
Quaker to settle in Iowa. making his home on what is still known as the Pidgeon
homestead, and which remained in the possession of the deceased at the time of
his demise. Here he lived continuously until 1912 when he came to California.
He was married in 1867 to Mary E. Ables. To this union four children were born-
Walter G., Harry C., Hermeo, and Mary. after her death he married Alazannah
Alexander, who later died leaving one
daughter, Alazannah. In 1875 he was united in marriage with Nancy Montgomery,
who became the mother of five daughters, Angie, Julia, Evalyn, Myrtle, and
Caroline. All the children survive him except Mary, who died in infancy, and
Hermeo, whose death occurred in 1913 in California.
· Note:
He possessed a personality industrious, intelligent, sturdy, and honest, and he
was successful and prosperous. He held a birthright membership in the Friends
church, and he was noted for his integrity and his desire to see justice for
all. He was interested in all reforms, had been a staunch Abolitionist, and was
a strong Prohibitionist. Although he was of late afflicted and infirm
physically, yet he went to the polls last fall and voted for California dry.
He came to California five years ago so that he might be with his children, and
also because of the mild climate. He always seemed well satisfied and often
remarked that he knew he could not have survived another winter in Iowa. So
that his loved ones feel that his life was prolonged by his removal to this
state. At his bedside when he passed away were his wife, one son and two
daughters. But all the members of the family who survive him were able to
attend the funeral. They were besides the widow, Walter G., Harry, Angie, and
Julia Pidgeon, Miss Birdie Smith of Burbank, Calif.; Mrs. Evalyn Howard of
Oakland ,Calif.; Mrs. Myrtle Jenkins and Mrs. Caroline Bailey both of Los
Angeles.
· Note:
The pall bearers were all men who knew him in his old home in Iowa. They were
the Messrs Theo. Hockett, Samuel Cook, Charles Siveter and Chase Ayers. He was
laid away in beautiful Forest Lawn cemetery.
The memory of the just is blessed.
Children of Isaac Marion2 Pidgeon Jr. (3162) and Nancy M.
Montgomery (5286) were as follows:
- i. ANNIE MYRTLE3 (5291) married (--?--) Jenkins (5651).
- 3. ii. LEANA CAROLINE (5290), born 9 Oct 1844
at Salem, Henry Co., Iowa; married Robert J. Bailey (5294).
- iii. ANGLINE (5287) was born circa 1874 at
Salem, Henry Co., Iowa.
- iv. JULIA (5288) was born in 1877 at Iowa.
- v. EVELIN (5289) was born in
1879 at Salem, Henry Co., Iowa. She married (--?--) Howard
(5650).
Children of Isaac Marion2 Pidgeon Jr.
(3162) and Mary Elizabeth Ables (3161) were as follows:
- i. WALTER GUY3 (3197)2
was born on 14 Feb 1868 at Iowa. He died on 30 Oct 1948 at Los Angeles
Co., California, at age 80.
Reference: 3218. He lived on 2 Feb 1942 at Eagle Rock, California.3
- ii. HARRY CLIFFORD (3198)4
was born on 31 Aug 1869 at Iowa.5 He
married Margaret Gardner (3308) in May 1944. He died on 11
Apr 1954 at Los Angeles, California, at age 84.
Biography Information for Harry Pidgeon was born in Henry County, Iowa,
and until he was twenty-seven he was a farmer. Then he got tired of the life,
boarded a spring wagon, and went out to Alaska collecting specimens for
American museums. "Up in Alaska," he said, "among the
frozen snows, I used to dream of the South Sea Islands and the sunshine.
And I made up my mind I would go there someday." One summer in Alaska
he and a friend built a boat. Pidgeon had never had an oar in his hand,
but he had seen pictures of men rowing, and he rock to the water like a
duck and shot the rapids of a dangerous river the next day. Later he
returned to the States and went to Minneapolis, where he constructed a
small flat-boat and floated down the Mississippi to Port Eads. Returning
to the West, he settled down as a photographer in Los Angeles. It was in
Los Angeles harbour that he built with his own hands the "Islander,"
the yawl in which he circumnavigated the globe, as told in his book
"Around the World Single-Handed."
There never was a sailor quite like him; probaby never will be another. It
wasn't just that he was the second man to circumnavigate the globe single-handed,
and for a long time the only man ever to do so twice; or that he did so
after beginning his seagoing when he was past 50. It was the way he did
things, and the kind of man he was.
The beginning of the great adventure
Harry Pidgeon started building his boat in I9I7 on the shore of Los
Angeles Harbor. The design he choosed was a 34-foot yawl, designed by C.
D. Mower for the sailing magazine "Rudder", which would be easy
for an amateur to build because she was V-bottomed, and whose seaworthiness
had been demonstrated. She had a rather lightly sparred gaff yawl rig,
easily handled and thoroughly practical for seagoing. Though she was
Harry's home for three decades he never seemed to mind that her cabin
didn't have full headroom, even for him. She never did have an engine in
her. The "can't-do-without" school of modern yachtsmen might
contemplate those two facts. Harry figured Islander cost him "a
thousand dollars and a year and a half of work."
Harry didn't rush into things. When Islander was ready, he set about
making himself ready. "Navigation is easy to learn"; he wrote,
"seamanship : the ability to care for and handle a vessel under all
conditions is acquired only by practice."
A round-the-world cruise
When Harry was ready to sail on a longer voyage, in mid-November of 1921,
he went alone. He was no misanthropic, but a quietly friendly man who
attracted friends in every port. Occasionally in his voyagings he took a
passenger or two from one port to another, but sailing alone was what he
wanted to do. "There is a great satisfaction in accomplishing
something by one's own effort," he once wrote.
When he sailed, it wasn't with any declared intention of going around the
world. He was going to the South Seas to cruise among islands he had read
and dreamed about. It wasn't until he had reached Samoa, halfway across
the South Pacific, that he decided to keep Islander's bowsprit pointed
West. There were so many interesting islands farther along in that
direction.
This is no place to review the Islander's four-years voyage through the
South Pacific, Torres Strait, across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape, up
the South Atlantic and through the Panama Canal back to Los Angeles. Those
who have read Pidgeon's book "Around the World Single-Handed,"
have had a delightful and enlightening account of a remarkable voyage.
Harry took it easy at sea, and when he got into a port where he liked the
scenery and the people, and they liked him, he stayed around until the
wanderlust struck again. And he found friends everywhere.
Islander dropped her hook in Los Angeles Harbor on October 31, 1925, 85
days out from Panama and two weeks short of four years after she had
sailed. Harry was amazed to be greeted with great acclaim. Everyone wanted
to see his photographs and hear him tell of bis adventures; not just once
but, off and on, for the next 30 years. Harry's yarns delighted those who
heard them, whether at a formal gathering or in the lamp-lit cabin of
Islander or some other craft where Harry might be gamming, and his
pictures were equally good. A lecture bureau figured it had struck pay
dirt, and offered the wanderer a 50-lecture tour with a minimum guarantee
of $10,000 and expenses. He was quite flattered, but when it developed
that much of this tour would be in the mid-West, this man who had rarely
seen a tenth of that many dollars at one time declined for the adequate
(to him) reason that such a trip would keep him too long away from bis
boat.
Harry never had much use for money-he once said that if he were sure of a
dollar a day income he would be set for life. (That was pre-New Deal
dollars, of course.) His life on Islander was frugal and simple in the
extreme. A wood-burning stove supplied heat and cooking, and he stoked it
with driftwood he cut up along the beaches. He drank nothing but water,
and never smoked.
On the seatrack again
Once Harry went ocean racing, it was in the 1928 for the New
London-Bermuda Race. But Los Angeles was Islander's home port and what
relatives her skipper had lived there. She sailed in June of 1932 from
Block Island, bound for the West coast. "More than a year since I
sailed into the home port," he wrote to one of his friend in january
1934," I am overhauling the Islander to be ready for a long cruise
when I feel like going again. The exchange is not so good in foreign
ports, but I never make them rich with what I buy, and by selling a few
books I can get by. I will drop you a line from some sunny island."
He did, from Hawaii in December. His niece and another girl had sailed as
far as Hawaï with him. This second cruise seems to have been in the nature
of a sentimental journey on which Pidgeon called at ports he had made a
dozen years previous. In the fall of 1936 he was in Cape Town, South
Africa, and a year later Islander sailed into Price's Bend, Long Island,
becoming the only man to have circled the world twice. He was 69.
The war "interned" the Islander in Los Angeles Harbor, where
Harry chafed mildly at not being able to sail outside, and worried the war
not be won until he was too old for another cruise. But the 75-year-old
bachelor still had a surprise for his friends, for in May 1944, he married
Margaret Gardner, whom he had known in Connecticut !
On July1947, Islander sailed from Los Angeles with Mrs. Harry aboard, and
another woman who hoped later to make a single-handed world voyage
herself. Unfortunately, the boat was wrecked in New Hebrides, smashed on
the reefs by a hurricane.
Last days… still afloat !
Harry's host of friends went into action. They raised a fond to supplement
Harry's meager savings, acquired for him the partially-completed hull of a
boat similar to but smaller than Islander, a 27-foot yawl which was
launched on August I95I and christened Lakemba.
With her, Harry and Margaret did a good bit of sailing, mainly cruises out
to their beloved Catalina Island. Taken seriously ill in February 1954,
and was unwillingly removed from the boat to the hospital some weeks
later, where he died of various infirmities of his 86 years, hastened by
pneumonia. He Harry C. Pidgeon
Donation of the Keystone-Mast collection stimulated other donations to the
archives of the UCR CMP. One of these donations was a series of over 1,500
negatives (mostly glass, with a few acetate negatives) produced by Harry
Pidgeon, an amateur photographer who traveled around the world twice (a
feat which few had successfully completed at the time) in a boat he built
himself after the age of 50. Commander Robert Mohle of Manhattan Beach,
California had known Pidgeon as a child and was the beneficiary of his
photographic industry. Around 1924 or 25, sometime after completion of his
first trip around the world, Pidgeon left his negatives with Mohle's
father. The negatives remained with the Mohle family even when Pidgeon set
out to sea for his second trip, maintaining that it was easier to leave
his negatives in one place so he would always know where they were. Robert
Mohle more or less inherited the negatives from both trips, as Pidgeon
died in1954 (at the age of 86) without leaving instructions for their
disposition and Pidgeon's widow, Margaret, declined to claim them.
Pidgeon was apparently a rather modest, unassuming, soft-spoken and almost
frail man. Nonetheless, he seems also to have been a man driven by the
spirit of adventure, and from all indications he was welcomed everywhere
he went. A telling story recounts how, at the age of 81, he and a nephew
climbed Mt. Whitney, each carrying a watermelon to the top, presumably as
sustinance.
In his younger days he traveled by pony cart from Mexico to the Canadian
border for no other reason than to see what it would be like to make such
a journey. It is recorded in museum documents that he also practiced a
variety of occupations, but the role of photographer seems to have been
his constant interest. Among the Pidgeon artifacts are photographs he made
in the lumber camps of California and the Pacific Northwest, as well as
photographs of miners, camps and towns in Alaska during the gold rush of
1898. And, upon his return to the lower forty-eight, he traveled down the
Mississippi River, documenting life in the towns and rural areas along the
river corridor.
Finally, about 1920, Pidgeon embarked on the first of two voyages around
the world in the Islander, the boat he had painstakingly built himself. He
had never sailed before, and set about reading all he could on the art of
sailing while at the same time building the Islander. His first trip was
initially to be a voyage to Hawaii and back. From there, however, he
traveled to various islands in the South Pacific, and then on to
Australia. Instead of returning the same way he had come, he decided the
most expedient course would be simply to continue around the world. This
self-taught sailor had few charts and no motor on his boat, and for
ballast used nuts and bolts from the San Pedro shipyard, which were later
traded for food, coconuts, and other items on his voyage, with sand used
to replace the ballast.
Sadly, it was after his second voyage that he lost the Islander in a
typhoon in Espiritu Santo. It is worth noting that Pidgeon developed his
own photographs during the voyages, using a makeshift darkroom the forward
cabin of his boat. Of particular interest to researchers working in the
Pacific are the nearly 300 photographs of Pacific island subjects made in
the course of Pidgeon's two circumnavigations of the globe -- again, the
first was undertaken sometime in the 1920s, the second made roughly during
the 1940s (Pidgeon was planning a third voyage in the 1950s, but died
before getting underway). Among Pidgeon's ports-of-call in the Pacific are
the following: Hawaii Marquesas Samoa Society Islands New Guinea New
Hebrides Fiji Tuamotus The images from this group portray a wide array of
subjects such as architecture, people, antiquities, 'modern' cities and
traditional villages, crafts, traditional occupations and activities, and
monuments. Some of the photographs of villages provide excellent
information about the elements of construction, such as the pattern of
house posts, the remnants of which have been encountered frequently in
archaeological excavations. To be able to draw comparisons between what at
first seem like randomly arranged clusters of post molds and images of
structures raised on poles only enriches the archaeological record,
suggesting a possible structure type that could have rested on the poles
that became the post molds. This relates to a recent problem faced by the
author in resolving post-mold patterns encountered in a recovery project
on Guam; several photographs from the Keystone-Mast Collection as well as
the Harry Pidgeon Collection have shed some light on an apparent common
type of raised platform structure that might account for the patterns in
question. Among Pidgeon's images are depictions of the process of tapa
manufacture and painting (tapa is cloth beaten from the bark of a tree,
usually paper mulberry), as well as pictures of weaving and even
tattooing. The details of his images provide information on patterns of
plaiting and weaving in mats and in wall construction (evidence of crafts
that have mostly faded from the material record owing to the extremes of
climate, the ravages of global wars, and, not least of all, the effects of
westernization); there is even good evidence of construction methods
employed in the now abandoned stone walls and platforms of historical
sites in several important regions of the Pacific.
***************************************************************
***********
Harry wrote a book about his first world trip. ' Around the world
single-handed The cruise of the 'Islander'. First published in 1933 by D.
Appleton and Company, New York and London. Published in 1989 by Dover
publications as an unabridged republication of the originally published
work ISBN 0-486-25946-3 paper back
***************************************************************
***********
This Clipping Sent To Mrs. Helen Ables Wind, By Mrs. Guy Edgar Lamm On
January 1944.
VENEZUELA
DARING VOYAGE NEARLY OVER. A man sailing alone around the world in a 34
foot boat has almost completed the voyage. Harry Pidgeon started from Los
Angeles in 1921. He recently arrived at the island of Trinidad, off the
coast of Venezuela, from which place he planned to go through the Panama
canal and then up the coast to his home. His boat was nearly sunk off the
mouth of the Amazon river when an oil tanker took it for a derelict and
struck it while trying to come along side.
NOTE: "I clip this item from "PATHFINDER," of March 7th.
1925. This Harry Pidgeon's mother was Mary Ables, a daughter of Alex
Ables, my mother's brother. She married Isaac Pidgeon, near Salem, Iowa.
This their oldest son, hence my second cousin.
He lived at Los Angeles Co., California; On his Boat the Islander at the
yacht club. He lived on 19 Feb 1942 at Terminal Island, California.
- iii. LUCY HERMEO (3199)6
was born on 27 Jan 1871 at Henry Co., Iowa. She died in 1913 at
California.
Reference: 3220.
- iv. MARY (5285) was born on 21 May 1872 at
Salem, Henry Co., Iowa. She died; Died in Infancy according to her fathers
Obit.
- v. ANGLINE (4772) was born on 25 Feb 1876 at
Salem, Henry Co., Iowa. She died on 3 Aug 1958 at Los Angeles, los Angeles
Co., California, at age 82.
Children of Isaac Marion2 Pidgeon Jr.
(3162) and Alazannah Alexander (3206) were:
- i. BIRDIE ALAZANNAH3 (3207)7
was born at Henry Co., Iowa. She married James L. Smith
(3209). She died.
She was also known as SMITH (3207). Reference: 3228. She
lived on 19 Feb 1942 at Burbank, California.8
Generation Three
3. LEANA CAROLINE3
PIDGEON (5290) (Isaac2, Isaac1) was born on
9 Oct 1844 at Salem, Henry Co., Iowa. She married Robert J.
Bailey (5294) on 24 Nov 1915 at San Diego, San Diego Co., California. She died
on 17 Dec 1928 at Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., California, at age 84. She was
buried on 20 Dec 1928 at Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., California.
Children of Leana Caroline3 Pidgeon (5290) and Robert J.
Bailey (5294) were:
- 4. i. ROBERT J.4 (5295),
born 31 Aug 1916 at Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., California; married Alice J Edson (--?--) (5296).
Generation Four
4. ROBERT J.4
BAILEY (5295) (Leana3 Pidgeon, Isaac2,
Isaac1) was born on 31 Aug 1916
at Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., California. He married Alice J
Edson (--?--) (5296) on 2 May 1948 at San Deigo, San Deigo Co., California. He
died on 8 Aug 1974 at Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., California, at age 57.
Children of Robert J.4 Bailey (5295) and Alice J Edson
(--?--) (5296) were as follows:
- iii. WALTER J. (5298) was born on 14 Sep 1952
at Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., California. He died on 4 Jul 1976 at
Fontana, California, at age 23.
- iv. KENNETH L. (5299) was born on 5 Apr 1955
at Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., California. He died in Aug 1958 at Los
Angeles, Los Angeles Co., California, at age 3.
- v. MICHAEL D. (5301) was born on 6 Feb 1959
at Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., California. He died on 31 Aug 1996 at
Pasadena, California, at age 37.
Generation Five
5. ROBERT C.5
BAILEY (5297) (Robert4, Leana3 Pidgeon,
Isaac2, Isaac1)
married Karen E. Ginger (5302), daughter of Fredrick
Thomas Ginger (5305) and Marlyn Klutz (5306).
Children of Robert C.5 Bailey (5297) and Karen E. Ginger
(5302) are as follows:
Return to Table of
Contents
Please send e-mail to: jdhitt@wildblue.net
Created with The Master Genealogist for
Windows on 18 May 2007 at 07:02 pm.