My maternal grandfather, John Howard Carroll was born on this date in 1915, 110 years ago December 13th. He was born in Peoria, to 18 year old Ruth Taylor. Ruth had married his father, Patrick Carroll, a soldier home on leave, but found out too late he was already married to someone else. Ruth put a false name on her son’s birth certificate, listing his father as John Rosinski. It’s unknown if such a man ever existed. I recounted this tale in a previous post and a full history of the Taylor line in another post. Ruth worked as a wet nurse to a wealthy couple in Peoria while John was a baby. She was an orphan, her mother dying when she was just 6 and her father dying when she was 16 so she was on her own to raise baby John.
When John was 4, in November of 1919 Ruth married Henry Ervin Conard, a farmer in Deer Creek 18 years older than her.
The 1920 census lists the couple living on the farm of Ervin’s father, William Elver Conard. John isn’t listed as a step child, simply a grandson. Ervin was the only father John ever knew or wanted to know. When Patrick later tried to contact him as an adult, John refused.
John was raised working the farm near Deer Creek, attending Deer Creek schools until he graduated high school in 1934.
In June of 1937, 21 year old John married Wannita Eileen Radcliff in Princeville, Illinois.
They lived on the farm with Ruth and Ervin at first, later renting their own farm. A year after their marriage their first child, who they named Ruth after his mother, was born in 1938.
When the WW2 draft came around John was excluded. It’s a good thing too, as he had a growing family to support. John Ervin (nicknamed Jr.) arrived in 1941, followed by my Mom, Mary Louise in 1943. Nita was the oldest daughter of Elmer and Bessie Radcliff and after Bessie died in 1935 her children, ranging in age from one to 18 years of age, were scattered amongst families. John and Nita often had one or two living with them along with their own children. The family farmed in rural Tazewell County, near Allentown and then later back near Deer Creek. By 1950 John had secured a job at Caterpillar Tractor Company, and they moved from Deer Creek to a home in rural Danvers. In 1960 they moved to the house my father still lives in now.
A 1966 article in the Woodford County Journal tells the story of a gathering at John and Nita’s home.
Their home was often the sight of such gatherings.
In March of 1974 at 58 John retired from Caterpillar after 33.5 years. I was only 6 when he retired, so all of my memories of him were while he was retired. Mental illness wasn’t openly discussed or treated back then, but he dealth with anxiety issues which were labeled “nerve issues” his whole life.
In his retirement he helped out at the gas station/ garage of his son, Jr in Congerville, running parts mostly.
In 1982 they moved to a condo in Congerville. About 8 years later he was diagnosed with colon cancer and had surgery to remove his colon. He fought many health challenges, including dialysis in the following years, but lived to see his 9 grandchildren wed and give him a dozen great grandchildren.
He was the classic pull my finger kind of grandpa, finding joy in teasing the little ones, playing dice and card games when not snoozing in his chair. Nita was a teetotaler, due to her father being an abusive drunk, so John wasn’t allowed alcohol in the house. He was known to keep a bottle of wine in this shop though and cigars, he wasn’t allowed to smoke in the house. He was a famously slow driver, receiving warnings not for speeding, but for going too slow on the interstate. He was also known to fall asleep at stop lights, suffering from a minor form of narcolepsy.
On 22 March, 1997 at his home in Congerville he stood up to walk across the room and crumpled to the floor, an aneurism of the brain killing him instantly. The funeral home overflowed with visitors who knew him from the decades of visiting at Jr’s gas station and his 81 years in the community. He was buried at Stout’s grove next to his parents Ruth and Ervin Conard. His grandsons Ken and Henry planted a tree at the site. He missed his 60th anniversary with Nita by three months.
