The Gadfly At The Family Wisconsin Farmstead

Family Farmstead: It is of considerable import to Clan McCarville that the original farmstead home of Great Great Grandfather Dennis Daniel McCarville in Willow Springs, Wisconsin, has been purchased and is being restored by Rick King of nearby Darlington, birthplace of my father. The house, built of limestone, was erected, it is surmised, in the 1870s. Great Great Grandpa was at that time well into his senior years but by all accounts was a robust and active man who worked his farm until his dying day. Speaking of which...this photo shows the stairs leading to the attic, from which Great Great Grandpa fell in 1883 and died as a result. He was 99 years, 11 months and two weeks old. The man on the fatal steps is distant cousin Ron Black. It was from Great Great Grandfather Dennis that my Grandfather Ignatius Dennis (his father's name was Thomas) got his second name, which in turn became my father's third name (Ignatius Millard Dennis) until he legally dropped Ignatius in the 1920s and became Millard Dennis, or, as he discovered to his dismay as we moved from state to state throughout the 1940s and 1950s, "M. D." McCarville in the phone books, resulting in numerous late night emergency medical calls. The family name Dennis became my first name, and its feminine version (Denise) the first name of our oldest daughter. There was conjecture as to why my father dropped "Ignatius" as his first name. My late mother said it was because he did not like being called "Iggie" in school. However, given the alcoholism which overtook his father, drove the family into abject poverty and forced my father and his brothers to work at early ages to support the large family, I've always suspected my father sought separation from his own father. Grandfather Ignatius Dennis died in an institution in Clarinda, Iowa, in 1959. I met him but once, in 1953.

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