Milliage Stewart Archibald Forbes
The Uncle I Never Met
In my post about the Hawthorne Cottage, I mentioned my mother’s brother Milliage. His full name (as given in the title of this post) was his father’s name preceded by a new first name. I’m not sure where “Milliage” came from, but I suspect it was to honor a relative of one of his parents. They were both of Scottish descent. His mother was born in Canada, and his father in Edinburgh (orphaned at an early age, he came to live with relatives on Prince Edward Island).
Our mother had a younger brother, Milliage. They lived in the northern part of Stockbridge. Travel was more difficult in those days than it is today, so the two siblings attended Lenox schools, being easier to get there than to the school in the center of Stockbridge.
Many of my readers knew (or knew of) my horse named Stewart. I named him that in honor of my grandfather and my uncle, and also as a nod to my mother, who told me of her horses. When her father was the caretaker of Highwood in Stockbridge, the owners of the estate allowed her to keep two Morgan horses in their stables.
Milliage is honored on the Stockbridge WWII Monument with a star (Died in Service). He was the uncle we never knew, killed in the line of duty on December 7, 1941. Yes, that was the “Day of Infamy” at Pearl Harbor, although he was not there. He died in an accident while on military training maneuvers in upstate New York. That was nearly four years before I was born.
For me, December 7th is the saddest day of the year, because I imagine how grief-stricken my mother and her parents must have been to lose such a handsome, outgoing, and promising young man.
My father was drafted around that time, and was stationed in Florida. My parents were married there on July 10, 1942. I’m sure the loss of her brother must have been very much on their minds, as the time approached when my father would be shipped overseas (he went to North Africa, and from there into Italy).
The photo below was supplied by my brother Rick to a group as described in the news clipping he sent me. It was incorporated into the design of a banner to honor Milliage that will be placed in the center of Lenox.
I believe this is the final version:
