Harold Carpenter Harrington

Harold Carpenter Harrington, son of John Cornelius Harrington and Ethel Elizabeth Wright, became somewhat of a shadow figure within the Branson/Ousley clan. Though he was not entirely missing from the genealogical notes about the greater family first compiled in the 1940s, little about him other than his name was preserved. The rest had to be pieced together with a considerable degree of difficulty. Some aspects about him and/or his life remain unclear. Thankfully research has cleared up one nagging question -- whether Harold ever produced biological offspring. The answer to that is no.

Harold was born 8 February 1906 in Alameda County, CA (probably in Berkeley or Oakland), not quite nine months after the marriage of his parents. His mother was not yet sixteen years old at the time -- in fact, Harold had been conceived a few weeks before she had reached fifteen years of age. His parents seem to have plunged into their union precipitously and did not manage to stay together. They formally divorced in November, 1908. Harold would go on to be raised mainly by his mother. She became a housekeeper in a boarding house in Oakland while single. Some time in the 1910s, probably in the early part of the decade, she wed Charles E. Sturtevant. Harold appears as a Sturtevant in the 1920 census. However, this would seem to be the enumerator’s error. As far as can be determined, Harold kept the name Harrington throughout his life, and certainly used it all the way through his adulthood. That said, it is still possible he was adopted by his stepfather -- Ethel and Charles had no other children, perhaps due to the same set of circumstances that caused one of her legs to be amputated.

By the time of that 1920 census date, Harold and his mother and stepfather were residing in Eugene, Lane County, OR, where Charles was a hardware salesman -- his usual occupation. Harold probably came of age in Oregon. Once he was fully grown, he came back on his own to California. His mother and stepfather would come south as well, ending up in Pasadena by the end of the 1920s. It is possible Harold was still with them at the time of the move, but logic suggests he journeyed on his own as part of the process of spreading his wings. He resumed living in the East Bay. He may have become reacquainted with his biological father during this period, though not profoundly so. It is known that he kept in touch to a degree with his father’s sister Mary Josephine Harrington McDonald, who residence was in the city of Alameda. Evidence of this contact is the photograph at the upper left of this biography, which surfaced in 2008 within the collection of photographs Josephine once owned. (It shows Harold either in the late 1910s or in the 1920s.)

Harold appears in the 1934 voter register on Carleton Street in Berkeley. His occupation is lineman. Judging by the other people also registered at the same address, he was a single man lodging in a small boarding house. His solitary ways were soon over. Back in approximately 1930, his mother and stepfather had parted ways. Ethel had resumed her nursing career. Within a few years she had grown weary of being on her own. After temporarily taking shelter with her sister Jessie and brother-in-law Ebenezer “Jerry” Jones in Chico, Butte County, CA, she joined forces with her son and continued thereafter to be his cook, housekeeper, and companion. The two began this phase of their lives by sharing a dwelling in San Jose, CA. At first he worked there as a lineman, then switched to being a musician. (Quite a change!) By 1940 they were residing in the city of Los Angeles, where he worked as a polisher/buffer for an automobile accessory manufacturer. (Ethel brought in additional income as a seamstress, having apparently retired from nursing.) Early in the 1940s they returned to the East Bay. By 1944, they were in Richmond, Contra Costa County, CA. By then, perhaps due to war-time influences, Harold had launched into what was to be his longest career. For the remainder of his professional life, he was a welder.

After the war, Harold and his mother moved back to Alameda County, where she died in 1948. He was still single when she passed away. It is obvious he had little interest in creating his own family. Yet it is also obvious he preferred to have a woman around the house. Once he reached an age when fatherhood and the support of small children would not be expected of him, he became willing to marry. He finally did so at a few months short of fifty years old. The wedding was held 16 September 1955 in Alameda County. His bride was Corinne Clegg, widow of William Frederick Musick. They had probably met through her stepson Frederick William Musick, an East Bay welder who is quite likely to have been one of Harold’s coworkers. Unfortunately, Harold might have done better for himself if he had wed back when older female relatives such as his mother were still around to steer him toward the right kind of woman to be his wife. Corinne had already been through three husbands and two divorces. Judging by public records, her first two spouses grew tired of putting up with her. The third marriage, to William Musick, might well have come to the same sort of unsatisfactory conclusion had William not died within a year or so of marrying her. Corinne’s luck was no better on the fourth try. She and Harold divorced in the spring of 1959.

Corinne’s story can be summed up like so: Born 10 December 1899 in Arkansas to Edwin Booth Clegg and the former Lucy Gee, Corinne was the eldest of a family of three children raised in Texas, Oklahoma, and eventually the San Francisco Bay Area. Corinne married Dwight Moody Pryor Gibson in late 1920, just before she turned twenty-one years old. She gave birth to four children in rapid order. Three were girls, all of whom would live to adulthood (and at least one of whom is alive as of 2013). The other was Dwight, Jr., who perished in early 1925 at not quite seven months old. In 1927, the couple divorced. The rift was severe. Moreover, Corinne was either unwilling to keep the children or was judged unfit to have them. Though the three girls appeared to have subsequently maintained a shred of contact with their father and their correct biological heritage and current status is reflected in a 1951 genealogy of Dwight’s maternal grandmother’s clan, all three were adopted out (separately) to non-relatives, and all came of age with last names other than Gibson. Dwight Gibson moved to Oregon in the immediate post-divorce period, eventually returning to California and then ending up in Reno, NV. Corinne remained based in the East Bay. She married Oakland butcher Clarence G. Buckles in the late 1920s or early in the calendar year 1930. This second marriage lasted about as long as her first, dissolving in divorce in approximately 1937. Single again, Corinne supported herself as a housekeeper and then as a convalescent caregiver. Early in the World War II era, William Musick and his wife Rose and their son Frederick and daughter-in-law Lelia and their kids moved west from Kansas City so that the men could take war-time jobs in the Oakland shipyards. The Musicks remained in Oakland after the war. When Rose Musick died in early 1950, the way was paved for Corinne to become the new Mrs. Musick. Then as mentioned, William did not last much longer, passing away in the spring of 1952. The marriage to Harold was Corinne’s last. She passed away as Corinne Harrington 18 June 1974 in Alameda County.

Given Corinne’s estrangement from her daughters, Harold did not act as a stepfather or stepgrandfather within her clan. In fact, it is probable he never met Corinne’s descendants at all. It was only with his second and final marriage that he would achieve a glimmer of parenthood. On the second of May, 1964 in San Francisco, Harold married Virginia Pauline Gardner. Born 14 April 1921 in Michigan, Virginia had lived in Buffalo, NY and then in her late teens had come to San Diego, CA, where in the early 1940s she had wed lumber company president Chester D. Whalen, twenty years her senior. Chester had recently divorced his first wife after a childless union. Virginia had given Chester the heirs he wanted: two sons, one born in the early 1940s and another in the early 1950s. Despite this success, the pair had ultimately divorced. Virginia’s older son was grown and was serving in Vietnam at the time of her wedding to Harold. (This was the case even though the U.S. was not yet engaged in full-scale military action there.) Her younger son was still a minor, though, and assuming Virginia had custody of him -- which she probably did -- Harold at last acquired some experience as a day-to-day father figure.

Harold and Pauline moved to Vallejo, Solano County, CA in the mid-1960s. They lived at 814 York Street. Alas, Harold only got to enjoy life with his new spouse for a few years. A brain tumor sent him to Highland Hospital in Oakland, where he eventually developed a fatal case of pneumonia. He passed away at the hospital in the wee hours of the morning of 27 January 1968. Three days later his remains were cremated at Mountain View Crematorium of Oakland.

Virginia survived him, but not by much. She perished 6 January 1972 at a Vallejo hospital after a short illness. Her sons survived her. Her eldest son has since died. He was Chester Joseph Whalen (12 Oct 1942 - 29 May 2001), found dead in the van he had been living in as a homeless veteran.

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