Remembering the Three Edmunds on Father's Day

             As a child, June was always the birthday month celebrating the two Edmunds in our family. Dad, Edmund, Jr., was born on June 15. My grandpa, Edmund, Sr., was born on June 16. Grandpa was almost 42 years old when Dad was born in the Bend on their farm located on the Arkansas River. My grandparents had purchased the small farm just two years before Dad’s birth.

          Grandpa had been born in Girard, Kansas in 1877. Grandpa was the first-born child of my great grandparents, John Fredrick and Elizabeth Studebaker Gates, both deaf. Grandpa’s first language was American Sign Language. https://bernadeanjgates.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-first-language-of-edmund-gates-sr.html

          The first Edmund Gates known in our family history was born on May 15, 1805, according to a contribution by his wife, Passingfair Shore Gates in History of Jo Daviess County, Illinois.

The First Edmund - born 1805

          Edmund was born in Iredell County of North Carolina, to Joseph and Elender Traylor Gates in 1805. He married Passingfair Shore in 1828 in Morgan County, Illinois, about 30 miles west of Springfield, Illinois. They settled on a claim in Jo Daviess County in the northwest corner of Illinois. The north Jo Daviess County line borders Wisconsin while its west county line bumps up to Iowa.

          The will of Joseph Gates, the first Edmund’s father, was proved on June 24, 1851, with his wife receiving one-third of his real estate and personal property. The remaining two-thirds of Joseph’s holdings were bequeathed to his son, Edmund.

          The other four descendants living were left one dollar. At first glance, based on the insistence on equity in the 21^st century, Edmund’s will written in the 1850s smacked with unfairness.

          Upon a brief, further investigation, the three of the four adult children, beside Edmund, listed had already relocated to Macon, Missouri, and were doing well in their own right at the time of their father’s death.

Edmund Gates, Sr.  - born 1877

          Edmund and Passingfair’s youngest child, John Fredrick, was around 11 years old when his Grandpa Joseph died leaving the bulk of his assets to John’s father. On June 16, 1877, when John Fredrick’s wife, Elizabeth Studebaker Gates gave birth to their first child in their Kansas home, they named him Edmund after John’s father, Edmund, who had died 2 years earlier in Illinois.

          Edmund, Sr., my grandpa, relocated to the Bend, leasing land until he purchased the Gates farm in 1917. It reached centennial status in 2017 when it marked the 100th year it had been in the Gates family. My Aunt Lou Gates lives on the farm. Her son, Tim Gates, owns this landmark farm.

           In 1919, my father was born on that farm on June 15. Grandpa immediately chose to give my father his name since my father was born only one day prior to his own birthday.

Edmund Gates, Jr. - born 1919

          The meaning of the name Edmund is “prosperous protector” or “happy defender.” The first two Edmunds seemed to fit the first meaning, but my own father was the epitome of a happy defender of our family and all he held dear – his loved ones, his rural way of life, his country for which he served in World War II, and his strong spiritual beliefs grounded in God’s Word.

The father of the [uncompromisingly] righteous (the upright, in right standing with God) shall greatly rejoice, and he who becomes the father of a wise child shall have joy in him. Proverbs 23:24 Amplified Bible – Classic Edition