PHILIP D. ARMOUR
Philip D. Armour was born on May Sixteenth, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-two, near the little village of Stockbridge, New York. He died at Chicago, January Sixth, Nineteen Hundred One. The farm owned by his father was right on the line between Madison and Oneida Counties. The boys used to make a scratch in the road and dare the boys from Madison to come across into Oneida. The Armour farm adjoined the land of the famous Oneida Community, where was worked out one of the most famous social experiments ever attempted in the history of civilization. However, the Armour family constituted a little community of its own, and was never induced to abandon family life for the group. Yet, for John Humphrey Noyes, Danforth Armour always had great respect. But he was philosopher enough to know that one generation would wind up the scheme, for the young would all desert, secrete millinery, and mate as men and young maidens have done since time began. "Oneida is for those whose dream did not come true—mine has," he said.
The Armours of Stockbridge traced a pedigree to Jean Armour, of Ayr, brown as a berry, pink and twenty, sweet and thrifty, beloved of Bobbie Burns.
The father of Philip was Danforth Armour, and the father of Danforth Armour was James Armour, Puritan, who emigrated from the North of Ireland. James settled in Connecticut and fortified his Scotch-Irish virtues with a goodly mixture of the New England genius for hard work, economy and religion. His grandfather had fought side by side with Oliver Cromwell and had gone into battle with that doughty hero singing the songs of Zion. He was a Congregationalist by prenatal influence. And I need not here explain that the love of freedom found form in Congregationalism, a religious denomination without a pope and without a bishop, where one congregation was never dictated to nor ruled by any other. Each congregation was complete in itself—or was supposed to be.
This love of liberty was the direct inheritance of James Armour. It descended to Danforth Armour, and by him was passed along to Philip Danforth Armour. All of these men had a very sturdy pride of ancestry, masked by modesty, which oft reiterated: "Oh, pedigree is nothing—it all lies in the man. You do or else you don't. To your quilting, girls—to your quilting!"
When Nancy Brooks was beloved by Danforth Armour the Fates were propitious. The first women schoolteachers in America evolved in Connecticut. Miss Brooks was a schoolteacher, the daughter of a farmer for whom Danforth Armour worked as hired man.
Danforth was given to boasting a bit as to the part his ancestors had played as neighbors to Oliver Cromwell at the time, and the only time, when England was a republic.
Miss Brooks did not like this kind of talk and told the young man so straight at his red head. The Brooks family was Scotch, too, but they had fought on the side of Royalty. They were never rebels—they were true to the King—exactly so!
Now, there are two kinds of Scotch—the fair and the dark—the Highland and the Lowland—the Aristocrats and the Peasantry. Miss Brooks was dark, and she succeeded in convincing the freckled and sandy-haired man that he was of a race of rebels, also that the rule of the rebels was brief—brief, my lord, as woman's love. Then they argued as to the alleged brevity of woman's love.