Uncle Joe

My father was born in 1887 on a farm on Buckwheat Row to Adam and Rebecca Henderson. He had six brothers and sisters: Joe, Newton, Wilfred, Eliza, Abigail and George.

Newton, or Newt as he was called, was born in 1896. In 1916, at the age of 19 he joined the army. Within the year he was killed in action in Europe. His attestation papers say that he was a farmer and had blue eyes and red hair.

Newt was not the only loss the family suffered. At the age of 26, Wilfrid died of TB. I do not have information about the others, except for Joe.

Of all my father’s siblings, I remember Uncle Joe best. Joseph Byron Henderson was born in Groveton in 1881. At 17, he moved to Syracuse and lived there the rest of his life.

What I recall most about Uncle Joe was his arrival in a big black sedan with his wife Daisy with a big bag of oranges from Florida on the back seat. At a time when there was very little money around, and certainly no oranges except at Christmas, he always seemed to have cash in his pockets for treats. Since he didn’t have any children, he was very generous to me and I am sure to my sisters and brothers. We loved to see him roar into the yard and we ran to see what he had brought this time. The picture on the right shows Aunt Daisy with Dorothy.

I remember driving back from the candy store in Spencerville with him and he showed me how to cut corners on the highway to "straighten out the road." He came quite often, always in the summer time, because he wintered in Miami.

I always imagined that he had a great job that allowed him to own a big car and sport a well-dressed wife. Later I found out that he worked as a bar tender in Syracuse in the summer and at the same job in Miami in the winter.

I think we all loved Uncle Joe best, because of his generosity and his spirit, and because there was a touch of romanticism attached to his life style. He picked up the American accent so that he pronounced "roof" to rhyme with "hoof". We laughed at that. He used to talk about the great American heroes such as Joe Louis and Babe Ruth. "He was a great guy!" he would say.

I wonder why he was called Byron. I don’t suppose he read poetry, but possibly just carrying around the name gave him style and pizzazz.

He was a great guy.