I Still Dream About You

A Crocker Family History

WHAT MOST PEOPLE HADN’T KNOWN WAS THAT THE CROCKER family had descended from a long line of thirled men, and even after the practice had ended in 1799, in the ensuing years, they had not fared much better.

Angus Crocker had been cold, dirty, and hungry much of his life, one of twelve children raised in a filthy hovel that sat outside the coal mine where his father worked, barely scratching out a living. Angus had been a good student, but just like his brothers, when he was ten, he had been sent down into the mines. A boy of his class, with no money, had no hope of ever rising higher than a miner, but when Angus was fifteen, fate stepped in and changed his life. In 1863, during the Civil War in America, there was a shortage of men to work the mines of Pennsylvania, and when a letter was posted that a mining company there was hiring and paying good wages, Angus jumped at the chance. He worked the night shift in the coal mines outside of Pittsburgh and sent himself through school during the day. Within eight years, he had worked himself up to mine boss, then to shop foreman, then to superintendant. Ambitious and smart, he caught the eye of a few men at the top. Impressed by Angus’s ability to strike a bargain and control his men, they promoted him to a management position, and he was soon traveling to and from Scotland to negotiate the company’s interests there. Kicked up in social status, he was on one of these trips to Edinburgh when he met and married Edwina Sperry, the only child of the industrialist James Edward Sperry. It was a good match. By law, upon her father’s death, Angus would have complete control of his wife’s inheritance and of all the Sperry mines in Scotland. As a dutiful son-in-law, he gave up his job in America and worked exclusively for his father-in-law. Thirteen years later, after the father died, he and his wife moved into the large family home in Edinburgh, and Angus Crocker took over the running of the mines. With the father’s money and Angus’s ability, the Crocker-Sperry mines soon became the biggest producers of coal in the country.

At age thirty-nine, Edwina Sperry-Crocker was pregnant for the first time, and Angus was deeply relieved. At last, there would be an heir with both Sperry and Crocker blood flowing in his veins. For Angus, it meant another large step away from the dirty coal mines of his youth. To be sure that everything went well, he hired a private nurse to attend to his wife’s every need in her last important weeks of pregnancy.

When the day finally arrived, the family doctor was called to the home, and Angus paced the floor downstairs, waiting for news. Edwina was frail, but after a long, hard labor, the young nurse, wanting to please her wealthy employer, rushed to the upstairs landing and announced to Angus that his wife had just given birth to twins. He had a son and a daughter! Twins had not been expected, but all Angus cared about was that he had a son, whose name would be Edward. He needed a son to carry on the Crocker-Sperry name and protect the business. Now no one, not even his grimy, greedy brothers and sisters, always looking for a handout, could ever dare steal what was rightfully his. He had an heir! Jubilant, Angus immediately retired to his study, poured a whiskey, and started planning the boy’s future. Tomorrow, he would send for his lawyer and change his will; everything he owned would now go to his son. In the unlikely event that he were to die before the boy came of age, arrangements would be made for a generous monthly allowance for his wife and the girl, but the day the boy turned eighteen, everything, the mines, the properties, would be his son’s to pass on to his own son after him.

Later, when he left Scotland and built his new home in America, Angus stood and watched with great pride as the stonemason carved THIRLED NO MORE above the entrance.