Fireblossom Friday : Edward Emerson Simmons

"Girl Reading" by Edward Emerson Simmons

Hello dear Toads and pond followers. Fireblossom here with a very special (to me) Fireblossom Friday, which requires just a smidgen of backstory. Not too awfully long ago, I had my DNA tested by one of those popular sites. My results weren't very surprising but one unexpected and pleasant result is that I made a connection with a cousin I hadn't known before. We dove into researching the family tree a little bit, and so I pulled out some materials I had. Way back in 1990, I thought I ought to ask my dad if he would tell me some stuff about the family history, because I knew he had researched it, and because he was already 78 at the time (I was a late-life baby) and I thought it's now or never, maybe.

"The Lightbearer" design by Edward Emerson Simmons, executed by Louis Comfort Tiffany

In January of 1991, I received 15 typewritten pages--not surprising at all from my newspaperman father. He loved a research project. Naturally, I read it several times upon receiving it. I found out all kinds of things, from my philandering great-grandfather who made three fortunes and blew them all on fast women (except the third--he died aboard ship while in the process of blowing that!), to his wife the long-suffering schoolteacher who died at age 89 when she caught herself on fire from the stove, ran out into the street and died, to my step-grandfather, a card-carrying socialist who lost his job at Ford Motor Company during the depths of the Depression for standing up to Harry Bennett, Henry Ford's henchman and right hand man. 

"Gathering Wood" by Edward Emerson Simmons

My father also mentioned a painter on his side of the family, but I had never heard of the man, and this was more than a decade before I would be connected to the internet, so researching him was something I never pursued--until, spurred by my cousin, I researched him quite recently. Lo and behold, he was a painter of some note! His work graces the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, the Library of Congress, and several state capitols. His name is Edward Emerson Simmons. My father says he had a copy of Simmons's autobiography "From Seven To Seventy: Memoirs Of A Painter And A Yankee" but goodness knows where it is by now. Not in my hands, anyway.

"Melpomene" by Edward Emerson Simmons, Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington DC

My father was 19 when the painter died, but before that happened, Edward Simmons gave my father this bit of family wisdom: "We Simmonses are peculiar galoots but each one can usually do one thing good enough to get by." ("well" enough, Edward!) For Edward, it was obviously painting. For my father it was newspaper work. For me, hosting Fireblossom Friday perhaps? In any case, I probably have the "peculiar galoot" part down. ;-)

"High Sea" by Edward Emerson Simmons

To goose you to greater poetic heights, I offer the work of my relative, Edward Emerson Simmons, for inspiration. You may use any of these provided (public domain) or any you can find HERE. Then just link up and go visiting. Do please be sure to credit Edward for his work. :-)