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| An October 2014 view |
I did a two-part post on the house's history way back in 2011, and featured a 1959 Journal article about the house here.
Well, here’s another article that includes some history about the Root home, which ran in the Journal on September 3, 1968. This time, however, Harriet Root and her many accomplishments are the focus.
After reading about her life, you’ll probably agree: they don’t make’em like her anymore.
The article ran a full-page in the Journal and is a little long (and I’m a lousy typist), so I’ll bust it into two parts.
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She Did Her DutyHarriet Root:
A Lorain Asset
By RICH BLOOM
Staff Writer
HARRIET ROOT IS a woman who, in her own words, “likes to know where things are headed and what other people are thinking.”
The cornerstone for that characteristic curiosity was laid more than a half century ago at an eastern college.
“I guess I became interested in community work while I was a senior at Wellesley College,” Miss Root reflected. “I was taking a course on immigration and we would go down to the port of Boston to talk with the many immigrants coming into the United States.”
Miss Root has lived most of her life, appropriately enough, in a city peopled with immigrants and their descendants. It could very well be possible that the curious young schoolgirl spoke with some who eventually settled in Lorain.
From their conversations she found within her the desire to help whenever and wherever it was needed, whether the call came from a community crippled by a tornado or a family bed-ridden with disease.
Although her seemingly perpetual reservoir of energy has been curtailed over the years, she can still look happily back on more than 20 years of unselfish and generous devotion to her city, state and country. And it all began back in the 1630’s.
“In the early days, I guess about the 1630’s, my ancestors got into trouble in England and it was a case of either getting their heads chopped off or leaving the country,” she said matter-of-factly. They chose the latter.
THE ROOTS, along with other families, left their home in Sheffield, England and began the tedious journey which ended with the founding of Sheffield Village near the French Creek Road area in Lorain County.
But the Roots had one more step to go before the journey was finally completed.
“They moved closer to the lake where this house was built in 1850.”
The home at 3535 E. Erie Ave., Lorain, is reminiscent of a bygone era and sits on a small portion of four acres of land which to the average passerby might look like a small estate. The white board fence surrounding the grounds, the wide expanse of lawn which carpets the front, an aged footbridge and the freshly-painted boathouse accent the home’s two-story, green-shuttered colonial appearance.
From here, she looks out upon a world in which she began her first civic work soon after her graduation in 1907 from Wellesley.
“Women weren’t really accepted in welfare work at that time,” she stated, “but a group of clubwomen asked me to help start a sewing class for girls in South Lorain. I didn’t know a thing about sewing,” she added smiling, “but we soon had a class of 100 girls.”
In 1910 she became active in the associated charities movement, and when the first rumblings of war in Europe were heard in 1914 she lost no time starting a Lorain class in surgical dressings.
Early in 1917, she was informed that a unit from her alma mater was planning to go to France, and unhesitatingly she accepted the call to join this group of dedicated women.
“In France we worked with the refugees in trying to keep the families together and finding a place for them to live. Later we were transferred to an American Army evacuation point just outside Bordeaux to aid injured soldiers in adjusting to their return to the United States.”
Next: Red Cross work and the 1924 Lorain Tornado
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