March 12’s of Yesteryear: Family Legacies and Rough Patches

Yesterday was March 12th.  But with the relentless movement of time, yesterday is already gone, as are the many March 12’s of yesteryear.  

33 Rundel Park,
Duane Haskell's home 

On one of those March 12th’s, eighty years ago, that is to say, March 12 of 1939, a man named Duane Haskell sat down and wrote a letter.  It was a thoughtful letter, kind but firm, from a teacher to a student’s mother.

The letter was written to my mother’s mother, Adeline Dossenbach Wheeler, about my mother, Melley Wheeler, who was 11 years old at that time.  In 1939, Mr. Haskell was a full-time music teacher at East High School, and was also Melley’s private violin teacher.* 

Above: East High School
Below: Charles Carroll School #46

The letter suggests that Melley was having a difficult year at the Charles Carroll School #46 (this is verified by a report card from that year), and that her teachers feel she is suffering from nervousness, and that they consider the problem to be enormous.  It sounds as if the teachers have advised Adeline that Melley should discontinue her musical studies.  

Adeline was worried, and so she consulted Mr. Haskell to seek his advice.  He, in turn, wrote her this letter.  

Duane Haskell in 1926

Mr. Haskell soothingly suggested that the problem was not “nearly as complex or enormous as the people at school have led you to believe.”  He advised that Melley should continue with her music, but cut back on her piano, and also stop playing the violin at events outside the home.  Mr. Haskell offered the common sense that Melley “will do well to do the things that she enjoys most” and that “with spring at hand, more out-of-doors sports will help.”  Furthermore, Mr. Haskell recommended that everyone around Melley should stop the constant discussion of her nervousness, as “she probably worries about it and that is bad for her.”  

Melley Wheeler, early 1940s

What a relief this must have been for Adeline!  

Often, our current worries are a result of things that happened long ago.  To better understand why the possibility of Melley being nervous was especially troublesome to Adeline, especially if the nervousness was connected with her violin and piano studies, we can look to the past.   

In this case, there was definitely a family legacy.  Adeline had an uncle, Otto Dossenbach, who was a successful child musical prodigy in Rochester in the 1870s and 1880s.  He was known as “Rochester’s Wonderful Boy Violinist,” and he played all over Rochester, throughout New York State, as well as in other states and Canada.  

Otto Dossenbach's Press Notices, 1870s-1880s

Otto was successful, which was certainly a result of his being pushed hard at both his violin studies and also his performances which began when he was 11 years old.  By 1889, at just 27 years old, Otto was exhausted; he was suddenly pronounced “insane,” and spent the rest of his life as an inmate in the Rochester State Hospital until his death in 1936.  

Would Adeline have been thinking of Uncle Otto when she worried about her daughter Melley?  Called “Crazy Otto” by some family members, he was certainly the stuff of family stories.  

My mother remembered that her mother, Adeline, used to visit a relative in the State Hospital, while the kids waited in the car.  Perhaps as Melley displayed signs of extreme nervousness, Otto’s story loomed large on Adeline’s mind.  

1939 Melley, Theodore,
and Barbara Wheeler

Indeed, the past is always close behind, but there was most certainly a very different reason why 11-year-old Melley was having a difficult year.  The Wheelers were having problems in 1939 which must have affected all of the children — Melley, her older sister Barbara, and her younger brother Theodore.   

The Wheeler family lived with Adeline’s mother, Nellie Eldridge Dossenbach, ever since Nellie’s husband (Adeline’s father) Theodore had passed away in 1924.  In 1939, the year of our letter, Nellie filed suit against her daughter Adeline, attempting to take back the deeds to two properties which she had signed over to her daughter some years earlier.  The properties were 28 Upton Park, the family homestead where Nellie had happily lived with her husband and daughter for two decades, and also the cottage at Conesus Lake (899 West Lake Road), which Nellie and Theodore had acquired in about 1904 (and which stayed in the family until 1970).  

Nellie Eldridge Dossenbach

Nellie wanted them back.  In 1939, the Wheeler family was now living at 415 Yarmouth Road, in the Browncroft neighborhood, and I suspect that Adeline and her husband Marvin were preparing to sell the homestead of 28 Upton Park.  Perhaps this is what spurred Nellie to fight for the properties.  It was a nasty fight, which ultimately caused Nellie to move out of the house; the legal drama didn’t end until Nellie’s death, four years later, in 1943.  

415 Yarmouth Road

The Dossenbachs were well-known in Rochester, and this story hit the papers.  Surely, it was humiliating, and, surely, there had been much arguing in the family which led up to it.  And, surely, much of this was kept secret from the children (as was the custom then), who sensed trouble and anger and sadness, and didn’t know why.  

All families have rough patches, this is true.  Theirs, yours, mine — it’s part of our journey through life.  Melley remembered how her grandmother Nellie used to sew the children’s clothing, creating matching dresses for the two girls.  How confusing it must have been for the children to see their grandma leave and never come back.  

It is no surprise, then, that Melley’s nervousness spilled into her life at school.   But Melley was fortunate to have a teacher on her side, a man who  believed in her, and a man who exhibited a great deal of common sense.  

I’ll bet that Mr. Haskell saved Melley that year.  

What did he write?  Well, see for yourself.  Here is the letter that Duane Haskell wrote to a little girl’s mother on a March 12th of 1939.   Thank you, Mr. Haskell!  

*_______________

Note: the letter, as well as a Report Card from 1939, spells her name “Melly,” but it is, in fact, “Melley,” which is the spelling I use here.