When You Raise Them Right

by Peggy Chong

From the Editor: Peggy Chong, now known as the Blind History Lady, takes on a question that many of us ask ourselves as we read about prominent blind people in history: how did their children turn out? What part did blindness play in the lives of those children? This article doesn’t answer all of those questions, but it does clearly suggest that blindness is no obstacle to career success for our offspring. Enjoy the article:

Often blind adults are convinced by sighted family and friends not to have children for many reasons. If their eye condition is not hereditary, then excuses such as you’ll not be able to raise them safely; you won’t know what they are doing; and the worst of them being, you will be a burden to them, forcing them to grow up too fast and take care of you when they are still children.

All of that is bunk! I can speak from personal experience and the experiences of many blind friends and acquaintances I know who decided or were surprised to learn they were going to be a parent. Just like sighted people, we have our successes and failures. I am convinced that raising good, successful children requires a lot of skill, love, and luck.

As the Blind History Lady, I haven’t taken much time to learn what the children of some of the blind ancestors I have researched did after leaving home. But today I want to tell you a bit about a blind man, how he lived, and what became of his children. They caught my attention in a blurb about Aaron in a county historical website. He is a fine example that a blind person can be a great parent and good role model for his children.

Aaron Boyer was born February 17, 1833, in York, Pennsylvania, the son of Daniel and Rosina Boyer. He was the seventh of fifteen children. At age twelve he had an accident that caused him to lose most of his sight, and he dropped out of the Indiana public school near his home. He worked in his dad’s distillery until he was fifteen when his father sent him away to work for another distiller to bring needed income into the family.

Aaron began to show signs of rheumatism. Not liking liquor and working in the immoral alcohol business, he returned to the family farm but did not stay long. Again, he was sent out to earn his keep. He took jobs as a plasterer and then worked for the Miami Canal Packet Company, driving a team on a canal packet. In the fall of 1849, he was so badly crippled with rheumatism that he had to seek other employment.

In early 1850 he worked with a surveying party on the Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton Railroad. But the inclement weather inflamed his rheumatism and his eyes, so he was forced to stop working and return to his father’s house, now in Germantown, Indiana. At seventeen he became totally blind.

Aaron began making brooms at home, selling them himself or through merchants in the area. He entered the school for the blind in Indianapolis in the fall of 1856 as a student, but he quickly became the broom shop instructor. After a year he felt he could do better on his own than staying on as a teacher at the school, and for a short time he moved to Ohio to start a broom factory.

From 1855 to 1864 he primarily manufactured brooms by himself in Wayne County, Indiana. His first purchase of broom corn was for five dollars, and two dollars of that amount was on credit. Moving to Crawford County, Illinois, he carried on the same business until 1866. Aaron next moved to Elmwood, and two years later he moved to Galesburg and began his own business in a factory measuring fifteen by twenty feet. He hired sighted men and later women to work for him.

His buildings burned and were re-built, each bigger and more modern than before. Aaron hired as many as twenty-five men and women to work for him. Although not documented, most likely his sons worked in their father’s broom shop for a time.

Aaron retired at the age of sixty-four. His factory was turning out 15,000 to 18,000 brooms each year. Five years later he sold the broom factory to some of his former employees.

Aaron married three times. In 1853 he married Elizabeth Buck, and they had a child who died in infancy. Soon Elizabeth passed away. On October 3, 1858, he married Sarah Harper. She died in 1875, leaving three sons and one daughter. At the time of her death one son was sixteen, another fifteen, the youngest son was seven, and his daughter was only four. After raising his children on his own for two years, he married Julia Mitchell. They had four children, the first two dying in infancy. Abel and Orris, much younger than their siblings, were almost a separate family.

Aaron died on Christmas Eve of 1903. His two youngest boys were still in their teens. Their mother died just one year later. For many families so many losses and half-siblings spaced so far apart could lead to even more heartache. But Aaron instilled deep love for everyone and a responsibility not just to family but to the broader community.

His Sons

Charles Boyer married and had two daughters. Minnie was a corn sorter for a broom factory in Paris, Illinois, when the girls were young. Charles worked in a broom factory until his death in 1933.

Andrew Jackson Boyer was born in 1860 and died in 1913 in Cook County, Illinois. He moved to Chicago and became a broom maker in a large Chicago factory.

William R. Boyer was born in 1867, became a member and soon a leader in the International Broom and Whisk Makers Union. He rose to the rank of secretary/treasurer. In 1914 he led a strike on behalf of the girls and young women of the US Broom and Brush factory in Chicago. The union focused its attention on this factory out of the other twenty-six listed broom and brush factories in the area because of its pattern of exploitation.

Several newspapers, in particular the Chicago Day Book, followed Will and the efforts to unionize the shop for more than two years. According to the papers and Will, the U.S. Broom and Brush Company recruited recently immigrated young girls to work in its factory at long hours and with wages only a third of what was paid to other broom and brush makers doing the same work.

The first attempt at unionizing in 1914 was met with hostility. Will and others called the meeting and told the girls they would not be fired if they came to the meeting at the Schoenhofen Hall. There were officials who could speak to some of the girls in their own language. But, at the time of the meeting, two of the foremen were standing in the doorway across the street and took down names. The next day those leading the organizing of the girls were fired.

The fired girls who could speak English went back to Will. He ensured that the union hired them a lawyer. The girls explained how one of the foremen yelled and abused them. Warrants were sworn out by the union for the arrest of the foremen. Thanks to William, many of the girls found work in other broom factories before the union was voted in by the current employees.

William also spoke out and worked to bring legislation to identify convict-made brooms that were sold at a lesser cost than those made by paid broom makers forcing lower wages in the private broom factories.

He married and had at least one child. William died in 1937.

Abel was born in 1886 and was the only child to attend college. He stayed close to home, choosing Knox College in Galesburg. He worked at many labor-intensive occupations. He painted houses, raised chickens, and worked as a gardener before becoming a refrigeration engineer. He worked as a switchman for one of the railroads in town. He married and had at least four children. By the 1940s he held a position with the Highway Commission in Illinois, helping to frame the new US highway systems reaching across the country through Illinois. Abel died in Galesburg in 1973.

The last son born to Aaron, almost thirty years after his oldest living child, was Orrin, born in 1888. Orrin married and had at least four children. After working for the railroad and suffering an injury that left him permanently scarred, he purchased a farm in Cascade County, Montana, and tried farming for a few years. He served four years in the National Guard in the 1910s. He returned to Galesburg in 1919. Orrin began working as a police officer for Galesburg that year. He retired as chief of police in 1945. Orrin died in Galesburg in 1960.

It is clear that Aaron’s blindness did not interfere with his becoming an upstanding parent and a man who could hold a family together. Each of his children lived lives in which their father could be proud, and all of them did their small part to make the world a better place.

A note from the Blind History Lady: If you would like to schedule a presentation, contact me at [email protected]. You can read more of my books at https://www.smashwords.com.