Category: Genealogy

The adventures of the Tryon clan
by Richard R. Tryon


Having provided space in this section for some special evidences of family members who have gained prominence via their life's work, it is appropriate that we include, not only special works, and a section on obituaries, but that we also provide space for biographic representations.

It is not necessary that each contribution represent any special level of recognition by the public, only that the person so recognized be well recognized by a member of the family! Therefore, a biography of your Grandmother Tryon may well be deserving of a place here. We hope that few, if any, will describe the life of any members of the clan that did not live in a way that others can respect. My own grandmother, used to tell me that I should not want to find out if any of the clan were "horse thieves or worse- mentally retarded"!

We do not expect to post such evidences. However, if a story comes forth to show that a Tryon stole horses to win a battle of the Revolutionary War, we will display it! If another tells of a member, born with an accidental birth defect that caused a struggle to live with retardation, that too, will not be censored. Other stories may require editorial notation to explain their presence.

Perhaps it is appropriate that the first picture in this section be one that relates to perhaps one of the most famous members of the Tryon clan...err that is if our English cousins will allow that we poor blokes in the U.S. are made of the same stuff as one of their finest examples as personified in the life of Admiral Sir George Tryon. Poor man went down with his ship because of an error in an order that he issued! Worse, he was known for his clever ability to give more instructions with fewer words than anyone else!

The picture shows the demise of this fine Englishman in 1893. Of course, he was closer to his and our French Hugenot roots than we in the 21st century whose lineage has been modified by the intermarriage of many other families whose daughters have introduced all sorts of gene changes to the original Trioens of France.






The picture above is of the Richard R. and Anne C. Tryon family and shows all sixteen at Thanksgiving 2003. They are identified as follows:
from left to right in the standing row:
Richard R. Tryon III, his wife Sharon Bohlen Tryon; Clayton Tryon-Petith, Ted Petith,his wife Elizabeth Tryon; Richard R. Tryon, Jr.; Lowell Forrest Tryon; John Thornbury and wife Amy Tryon Thornbury; Richard R.Tryon IV and Charmaine Tryon-Petith and her brother Miles Tryon-Petith;
Sitting left to right: Meg MacGregor Thornbury, Anne Colwell Tryon and Catherine Anne Thornbury
Biographic material involving the history of the branch starting with Newton Eugene 8.131b in Wes Tryon book The Tryon Family in America, was born on June 20,1874 as the second son of David Washington Tryon and Cornelia Elvira (Cooke) Tryon in Tryonville, PA. He married Isabel Rundel of Waterville, Ohio in 1898 and moved to Maumee a few miles downstream on the Maumee River that flows from Northern Indiana to Lake Erie at Toledo.

He founded the Maumee Electric Light and Power Co. with his older brother Allan and the business provided d.c. electric power to light the streets of Maumee and its several hundred homes. The business was sold in the twenties to the a.c. power company Toledo Edison and Gene moved on to a series of local positions including insurance sales and other activities until he died in mid 1948 while I was living in Princeton, NJ. His wife managed the home for another 15 years and died at age 89 on 8-23-63 in her sleep at the 224 E. Broadway home they built in 1902, the year their only child, my father was born.

I will try to add more material about his life and that of my parents starting with what follows:

This material is re-keyed as shown by the original in my father’ scrap book that details highlights of his career in a way that most would call a resume. He included in the margin of the display the notation that this story made page 1 in the Chicago Tribune and more than 100 other dailies. In Believe it or Not it is noted as ‘A book review on page one!” More comments follow each story.

Note that in the age of these stories, the AP wire service saved time using a slow means of sending signals on the wires that once filled the poles alongside railroads that were the main communication links between cities. Slow transmission speeds and primitive equipment originally printed out the text in a continuous strip of paper that was cut and pasted to a carrier sheet to make a telegram or any other type of message carrier. Newspapers paid to receive the ‘wire’ in their shops and eventually added equipment that could let operators edit to un-shift the all CAP format and use a new tape to drive typesetting machinery.

Also note that the reporter’s input was presented so that almost every sentence gave opportunity for editors to cut the story down to fit available space in their paper. Because their typesetting machines could set the type in many different styles or fonts as well as different sizes, with all being set with proportional spacing, the possibilities were broad and even the white space between lines called ‘leading’ could be varied by using both machine controls and man inserted thin spaces of different thickness of lead into the composition before printing with letterpress equipment either flat bed or rotary.

By contrast today’s printing equipment is vastly different and computers are programmed to execute many of the tasks just described both automatically and/or with editor intervention to be able to see the final product before it is mass produced.

Aside from these interesting technical notes, one should dwell on the content of the two stories! The first one must have been cause of enormous interest among readers and certainly helped book sales for Dr. Crile! The idea and solutions available to Dr. Crile were far more limited than what his modern day equivalent can consider. We now have thousands of drugs designed to replace the kind of surgical solutions that could come to his mind, and we know so much more now about creation of species and genetic changes from mutations that cause evolutionary changes and now can see a future with genetic repairs and modifications. It frightens this writer to think of having many more decades before this form of life is ended, even if they can be productive!

On the other hand, the man who wrote the words below displayed his ready willingness to deal with any and all subjects and had a far more fascinating trip through life as a result. Few of his contemporaries came close with their own experiences with exceptions being the two men he interviewed below named Dr. George W. Crile and Howard Hughes. One might have guessed that the other man, Howard Hughes lived a more important life, full of glamour and excitement. Yet, Google found 24 pages of display of web sites about the founder of the Cleveland Clinic and prodigious writer of many important works and discoveries, endless efforts in the medical world all of which began from a birth in Coshocton, Ohio. It is a small town a few miles East of Gambier, OH and home of Kenyon College. He went to Wooster after Ohio Northern and endless collegiate recognitions afterwards until his death at age 79 in 1943.

Howard Hughes is generally far better known and father kept that piece to show his connection to big stories of the day. Little did either of them know that ultimately Hughes would accidentally, in a battle vs the IRS cause the following to eventually be written from Wikipedia:

“Initially, the institute was formed with the stated goal of basic research including trying to understand, in Hughes' words, "genesis of life itself." Despite its lofty principles, in the early days it was generally viewed as largely a tax haven for Hughes' huge personal fortune. Hughes was the sole trustee of HHMI and transferred all his stock of Hughes Aircraft to the institute, in effect turning the large defense contractor into a tax-exempt charity. For many years the Institute grappled with maintaining its non-profit status; the Internal Revenue Service challenged its "charitable" status which made it tax exempt. Partly in response to such claims, starting in the late 1950s it began funding 47 investigators researching at eight different institutions; however, it remained a modest enterprise for several decades. In fact it was not until after Hughes' death in 1976 that the Institute's profile increased from an annual budget of $4 million in 1975 to $15 million by 1978. In this period it refocused its mission on genetics, immunology and the rapidly growing field of molecular biology. Since Hughes died without a will as the sole trustee of the HHMI, the Institute was involved in lengthy court proceedings to determine whether it would benefit from Hughes fortune. In April 1984, a court appointed new trustees for the institute's holdings. (The original trustees are: Helen K. Copley, Donald S. Frederickson, M.D., Frank William Gay, James H. Gilliam, Jr., Esq., Hanna H. Gray, Ph.D., William R. Lummis, Esq., Irving S. Shapiro, Esq., George W. Thorn, M.D.) In January 1985 the trustees announced they would sell Hughes Aircraft either by private sale or public stock offering. On June 5, 1985 General Motors was announced as the winner of a secretive five month, sealed-bid auction. The purchase was completed on December 20, 1985 for an estimated $5.2 billion, $2.7 billion in cash and the rest in 50 million shares of GM Class H stock. The proceeds caused the institute to grow dramatically.

As I helped Cate and/or Amy find the answer to the question who was Pa-Pa’s father, I remembered his big scrapbook and now I find out more than I knew the first time I read these two pieces from his history. Although I saw more of him from 1952 onward than anyone else in the family with the exception of Lucille Huffman of Sylvania, OH, I suspect he shared some thoughts with me alone. She was his friend and dancing partner whom he hoped one day to marry. His book, You Can’t Escape God was possibly going to be a big seller in his mind. I doubt that Lucille expected it to be so, as she certainly would have applauded, but she was never married to my knowledge and depended only on her own steady work in Toledo in office management, I believe, to keep her solvent and fed. That book was on his work table when he died on March 15, 1978 and I did the best I could to finish it 15 years later and put it on the web at www.gratisbooks.com with intent to one day edit and add footnotes. That may be a family task for another, if I do not get to it because of effort to make Vertical Farming work to feed small family farmers, if and when the government discovers that it can’t create meaningful work that feeds, houses and protects the loyal subjects of a repeat of the great social experiment that father and quite a few others condemned. He lost his job with the A.P. because he argued that Stalin was not a good, but a very bad man. He did not believe that God wanted all of us to depend upon the government to take care of and save us from ourselves. He believed that God wanted each of us to learn to take care of ourselves and to learn in this life why we want to believe such is needed to prepare us for the hereafter.


Somehow I think Dr. George Washington Crile and Howard Hughes both agreed and he knew it as did a long line of his and our ancestors before him.

Father left the A.P. I suspect because of this discovery that the top men in New York were certain that Stalin was leading the kind of change needed not only in Russia but also in the U.S. The communist revolution took the new republic away from its democratic founders and turned it into a bloody civil war that ended with Stalin in control for the next thirty years and his successors managed to keep the party in control until 1992 when Anne and I were there to see it happen.

Soon I will write more on what he did after that first big time experience in New York.


R.R. Tryon, Jr. 8-12-09

Here is what his reporters presentations looked like:


BY R.R. TRYON
ASSOCIATED PRESS STAFF WRITER

CLEVELAND, JUNE 8, [probably 1934 before his promotion to NY and Google confirms it!]—(AP) A CONCLUSION BY DR. GEORGE W. CRILE THAT EVENTUAL EXTINCTION OF MANKIND MAY RESULT FROM PRESENT “HIGH-SPEED LIVING” IS DISCLOSED TONIGHT IN A BOOK JUST PUBLISHED BY THE NOTED CLEVELAND PHYSICIAN.
THE DANGER, DR. CRILE ASSERTS, ARISES FROM THE TENDENCY OF CIVILIZATION, ESPECIALLY “HIGH-STRUNG” MODERN LIFE, TO STIMULATE TOO FREQUENTLY AND TOO POWERFULLY THE THYROID AND ADRENAL GLANDS, THE BRAIN, AND THEIR INTER-CONNECTING NERVES.
UNDER SUCH CONDITIONS, THE NOTED SURGEON HOLDS, THIS GROUP OF ORGANS, TERMED THE KINETIC SYSTEM, IS APT TO BECOME OVER-DEVELOPED AND HYPER-SENSITIVE, AND THEN TEND TO DESTRUCTIVELY DOMINATE THE ENTIRE BODY.
JUST AS THE IRISH ELK BECAME EXTINCT PRESUMABLY BECAUSE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES DEVELOPED ITS HORNS SO LARGE THAT THE LAST GENERATION NO LONGER COULD SUPPORT THEM, SO DR. CRILE BELIEVES THE HUMAN ANIMAL IS THREATENED WITH OVER-DEVELOPMENT OF ITS KINETIC SYSTEM, ESPECIALLY THE THYROID GLAND AND THE BRAIN.
IN HIS BOOK ENTITLED “DISEASES PECULIAR TO CIVILIZED MAN”, THE DOCTOR PRESENTS A VAST AMOUNT OF EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT AN ASSERTION THAT “IT WOULD APPEAR THAT THE BRAIN AND THE THYROID GLAND ARE UNDERGOING A PROGRESSIVE EVOLUTION OWING TO THE OPERATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ORTHOGENESIS.”
THIS PRINCIPLE HOLDS THAT WHEN AN ANIMAL SPECIES BEGINS TO VARY DEFINITELY IN ANY DIRECTION IT CANNOT REVERSE ITSELF, AND THAT SPECIES CONTINUES TO VARY IN THAT DIRECTION EVEN IF IT IS TENDING TOWARD DESTRUCTION.
UNDER THE APPLICATION OF THIS PRINCIPLE TO THE BRAIN AND THE THYROID BLAND, HE SAYS, “THEY WOULD INEVITABLY REACH A HEIGHT OF ACTIVITY AND SPEED THAT MIGHT DESTROY THE INDIVIDUAL. THUS MAN CONCEIVABLY MIGHT BE DESTROYED BY THE SAME TOOLS THAT ENABLE HIM TO REACH THE GREATEST HEIGHT OF HIS CIVILIZATION.”
YEARS OF STUDYING HUNDREDS OF CLINICAL CASES HAVE CONVINCED DR. CRILE THAT THE KINETIC SYSTEM ALREADY IS CAUSING A WHOLE SERIES OF SERIOUS “CIVILIZATION DISEASES.” AMONG THESE HIS BOOK LISTS PEPTIC ULCER, HYPER-THYROIDISM, NEURO-CIRCULATORY ASTENIA (SOMETIMES CALLED “SOLDIER’S HEART”), AND AT LEAST ONE VARIETY OF DIABETES.

MOST OF THES DISEASES, THE DOCTOR BELIEVES, ARE RESULTING FROM THE INCREASING FREQUENCY OF CIVILIZATION’ STIMULI UPON THE INCREASINGLY POWERFUL KINETIC SYSTEM, WHICH IN TURN –WITH TOO GREAT FREQUENCY AND POWER—STIMULATES THE BRAIN, SPEEDS THE HEART AND LUNGS, AND HALTS DIGESTIVE PROCESSES.
OCCASIONALLY AN INDIVIDUAL SUFFERER MAY BE CURED BY A TREATMENT OF RATIONALIZING AND REST, DR. CRILE SAYS, BUT IF THIS FAILS, HIS RECORDS SHOW MORE THAN 90 PERCENT OF THE CASES CAN BE CURED BY AN OPERATION TO LESSEN THE KINETIC SYSTEM’S DRIVING POWER.
SEVERAL TYPES OF OPERATIONS ARE POSSIBLE, BUT THE MOST EFFECTIVE AND PREFERABLE, HE SAYS, IS THE SEVERING OF THE NERVES LEADING FROM THE TWO ADRENAL GLANDS, LOCATED DEEPLY IN THE ABDOMEN. THIS BREAKS THE ‘VICIOUS CIRCLE” WHICH ORDINARILY PERMITS THE ADRENALS TO STIMULATE THE THYROID TO HYPER-ACTIVITY, WITH THE THYROID IN TURN STIMULATING THE ADRENALS.
“BY SUCH MEANS,” DR. CRILE SAYS, “WE CAN SAVE THE INDIVIDUAL BUT WE CANNOT MODIFY THE SPECIES.”
HE HOLDS, HOWEVER, THAT A LESSENING OF THE STRAINS AND SPEED OF MODERN LIFE POSSIBLY MAY ALLEVIATE THE MENACE.
ONE OF TH PECULIARITIES OF THE CIVILIZATION DISEASES IS THAT THEY TEND TO AFFECT CHIEFLY RACES AND INDIVIDUALS OF HIGH MENTAL ATTAINMENT. DR. CRILE’S RECORDS INDICATE THAT DOCTORS ARE THE MOST SUSCEPTIBLE AMONG PROFESSIONS, AND THAT WOMEN ARE MORE OFTEN VICTIMS THAN MEN.

--R.R.T.—
117P


a35
PRECEDE NEWARK PLANE
BY RICHARD R. TRYON
ASSOCIATED PRESS STAFF WRITER
NEW YORK, JAN 14 [1936?] (AP)- AMERICA’S NEWEST SPEED KING OF AVIATION, HOWARD HUGHES, A YOUNG DARE-DEVIL FROM CALIFORNIA, CROWNED HIS THRILLING AIR ACHIEVEMENTS TODAY BY COMPLETING THE FASTEST TRANSCONTINENTAL FLIGHT EVER MADE.
HUGHES FLEW WITHOUT A STOP FROM BURBANK, CALIF., TO NEWARK, N.J., IN 9 HOURS, 27 MINUTES AND 10 SECONDS—SMASHING BY MORE THAN HALF AN HOUR THE RECORD OF 10 HOURS, 2 MINUTES AND 5 SECONDS SET BY COL. ROSCOE TURNER SEPT. 2,1934.
THE NEW RECORD-HOLDER FLEW MOST OF THE DISTANCE AT 18,000 FEET, BREATHING PART OF THE TIME FROM A TANK OF OXYGEN.
HE ATTAINED A SPEED OF 295 MILES AN HOUR OVER ONE LONG STRETCH. HIS FLIGHT COVERED APPROXIMATELY 2,450 MILES, AND HE AVERAGED CLOSE TO 260 MILES AN HOUR FOR THE ENTIRE DISTANCE.
“I’VE BEEN WANTING TO DO THIS FOR THREE YEARS, “SAID HUGHES, ERSTWHILE HOLLYWOOD FILM PRODUCER, “I FEEL PRETTY GOOD ABOUT IT.”
THE TALL, DARK-HAIRED FLIER, WHO SHATTERED ALL SPEED RECORDS FOR LAND PLANES LAST SEPTEMBER WHEN HE AVERAGED 352.46 MILES AN HOUR OVER A CLOSED COURSE NEAR SANTA ANA, CALIF., BROUGHT HIS TRANS-CONTINENTAL FLIGHT TO A PERFECT ENDING IN NEWARK, N.J. AT 12:42:10 A.M. EASTERN STANDARD TIME.
HE HAD TAKEN OFF YESTERDAY WITHOUT PUBLIC NOTICE AT 3:15 P.M. E.S.T.
HUGHES SAID THE WIRELESS ON HIS NORTHROP MONOPLANE DID NOT WORK AT ANY TIME DURING THE FLIGHT.
“I DIDN’T TALK TO ANYONE, NOBODY TALKED TO ME, AND I DIDN’T TAKE TIME TO EAT,” HE GRINNED.
FROM NEWARK, HUGHES HASTENED TO A NEW YORK HOTEL (WALDROF-ASTORIA) BUT DESPITE THE STRAIN OF HIS FLIGHT AND THE HOUR OF HIS ARRIVAL HE INSISTED, “I’M FEELING FINE AND AM GOING OUT TO A NIGHT CLUB BEFORE SUN-UP.”
THE INTREPID FLIER WAS PROUD OF THE PERFORMANCE OF HIS SPEEDY PLANE AND MOTOR.
HE USED A NEW-TYPE SUPER CHARGED RADIAL MOTOR (WRIGHT CYCLONE) BUILT TO ARMY SPECIFICATIONS.
“IT DEVELOPS 700 HORSEPOWER AT 15,000 FEET,” HE SAID,”BUT I FLEW MOST OF THE TIME HIGHER UP TO SAVE GAS.”
HE CARRIED 700 GALLONS OF GASOLINE WHEN HE LEFT BURBANK AND SAID 100 GALLONS WERE LEFT WHEN HE LANDED.
“IT WAS THE BIGGEST LOAD EVER CARRIED IN THIS TYPE OF PLANE,” HE ADDED.
THE PLANE, A SINGLE SEAT (NORTHROP) MONOPLANE, WAS LEASED SEVERAL MONTHS AGO FROM JACQUELINE COCHRANE, FEMININE SPEED FLYER.

AB6

HIS ROUTE TOOK HIM OVER SANTA FE, N.M., KANSAS CITY, INDIANAPOLIS, AND COLUMBUS, O.
“OVER SANTA FE, I LOOKED AT MY INSTRUMENTS AND FIGURED I HAD USED ABOUT 100 GALLONS MORE GASOLINE THAN I HAD INTENDED TO,” HE RECALLED AS HE DRANK A HIGHBALL IN HIS NEW YORK HOTEL ROOM.
“SO, I WENT TO A HIGHER ALTITUDE.
“I WENT FROM INDIANAPOLIS TO COLUMBUS IN 35 MINUTES—ABOUT 295 MILES PER HOUR.
“WHEN I REACHED PITTSBURGH, I STARTED POURING ON THE COAL, AND KEPT IT UP ALL THE WAY TO NEWARK.”
OFFICIALS OF THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICAL ASSOCIATION CONFIRMED HUGHES’S RECORD BREAKING PERFORMANCE.
“I HAD GOOD WEATHER ALL THE WAY EXCEPT FROM THE COAST TO SANTA FE, WHERE I HAD TO DO SOME BLIND FLYING,” HUGHES SAID.
AT NEWARK, NO ONE WAS EXPECTING HIS ARRIVAL UNTIL HIS PLANE SWOOPED DOWN OUT OF THE NIGHT SKY. BUT A CROWD SOON COLLECTED.
“DO YOU KNOW YOU’VE CROSSED THE CONTINENT FASTER THAN ANYBODY HAD EVER CROSSED IT?” SOMEONE ASKED.
“I GUESS SO, I WASN’T THINKING ABOUT THAT,” HUGHES REPLIED.
AT NEW YORK HE SAID HE HADN’T ATTEMPTED TO MAKE THE FLIGHT IN SECRECY.
“I JUST DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO TELL ANYONE WHEN I LEFT,” HE EXPLAINED.
“I HAD BEEN WAITING FOR GOOD WEATHER FOR ABOUT THREE DAYS AND WHEN I GOT WORD THAT THINGS WERE RIGHT, I JUST STARTED RIGHT OUT WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING.”
HUGHES SAID HE HAD BEEN INTENDING TO “COME TO NEW YORK ON BUSINESS, ANYHOW”.
THE NEW HOLDER OF THE TRANSCONTINENTAL RECORD SAID HIS FLIGHT PROVED CERTAIN ADVANTAGES OF HIGH ALTITUDE FLYING.
HIS CABIN WAS HEATED AND HE SAID HE SUFFERED NO DISCOMFORT, OTHER THAN HUNGER.
HUGHES SAID HE INTENDED TO REMAIN IN NEW YORK SEVERAL DAYS.
BN533AES



Some comments to add to RT Sr. biography.


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