2021-Week7-The Hoosier Pocket Billiard Champion

 I have had the devil's own time tracing the lineage of my maternal grandfather's family.  This much I know.  My grandfather ran away from home at about age 13 and did God only knows what to survive until military records show he enlisted about 10 years later clear across the country. His mother, my great-grandmother, a vaudeville singer/dancer, first shows up in New York state records when she married for the first time.  Her mother, my great-great-grandmother, has been found in Buffalo newspaper articles involving her marriage AND divorce to her first husband, John Lipp...a real catch, that one.  Beyond that is all a matter of speculation for now.

I do know from correspondence my own mother had with my great-grandmother's sister that there was a younger brother named Eugene Henning.  When I started looking into Eugene, I found dozens of newspaper articles and advertisements about his playing billiards professionally all over the United States and even Canada, a fact not mentioned in his sister's letters.  By looking into his FAN club, I was reassured this was indeed my relative.  Remarkably, one article mentioned that Eugene had written and published a biography about his exploits.  Of course, I went straight to Google, not really surprised to find the book was out of print, having been published in 1913.

I recently attended a meeting of one of our local genealogy societies and the speaker that day gave a presentation on how to locate your family in printed documents.  One source she talked about to find books not on-line is worldcat.org.  I plugged Eugene's book into the search box and, sure enough, found 5 libraries throughout the country with a copy of his book. 

I started with the Indiana State Library and sent an inquiry to see if the book could be borrowed through an inter-library loan. The librarian responded within a day saying they only held one copy in their reference section and it could not be loaned out.  He went on, however, and said that because the book was rare, it would be a good candidate for digitizing, and he promised to let me know when it was available, projecting it would be late spring.  To my amazement, two weeks later he sent me the link where I could read Eugene's life story. 

 https://indianamemory.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16066coll44/id/1424

I jumped right into it hoping Eugene would enlighten me on the mysteries of my family's heritage.  I was disappointed to find extremely little in the way of family history, but there were a few nuggets that perhaps will lead me to other helpful sources.  

His story starts when he is about 12 years old, and on the very first page, tells of being left by his mother at an orphanage in Coldwater, Michigan. His father has died and his mother has no means to support him.  I was unaware the family had relocated from Buffalo, NY back to Michigan, so this points me back to researching in Michigan. I went to Google to see exactly how far Coldwater was from Grand Rapids where I knew the family had some roots, and in the process, discovered another book that purports to have the records of children left at the orphanage. I am now working on how to get access to that book!

The second fact I got from Eugene's book was his short marriage to a woman he met in Washington state.  I had earlier come across a newspaper announcement for his marriage license, and he had used the name Eugene Peter Liff Henning.  This had me scratching my head, and I wasn't 100% certain this was "my" Eugene until I read about his marriage in the book. I now must order a copy of the marriage license because I want to see exactly how it's completed.  I have speculated that Eugene's father was actually Mr. Lipp to whom his mother was married prior to becoming Mrs. Henning.  At the time of her divorce, she was either pregnant with Eugene, or he was an infant.  But this is the only reference I've found where he's used that name. It's obvious to me that "Liff" was a poor transcription of "Lipp".

The book is harrowing in parts. He was adopted from the orphanage by a farmer who abused him, most likely adopting him for the labor he could get out of him. Eugene soon ran away with the intent of finding his mother in Buffalo, but quickly figured out he would have no idea how to look for her.  He eventually made his way to Buffalo and back to Cleveland, OH by working on boats.  He frequently traveled from one place to another hitching rides in empty boxcars.  He writes of being afraid to fall asleep for fear of the other hoboes traveling with him.  He was in a boxcar one night when the train derailed and four others were killed, and although he was pretty badly injured, he managed to crawl away.  Once he started playing billiards professionally, he more than once abandoned all his belongings to skip town either in fear for his life from local pool hall hooligans, or because he lost all his money and couldn't pay for his lodging. No wonder his WW I draft registration card shows he's missing a kidney, deaf in one ear, and other injuries.

He evidently had some talent for running a restaurant kitchen, but he didn't seem to have much business sense.  It seemed he couldn't totally overcome his proclivity for gambling and would return to competing in billiards again after living a relatively conventional life for a while.  

When he published his book in 1913, he was about 34 years old.  He had divorced his first wife, but had not yet met his second wife, so this part of his life is beyond the scope of the book.  They would have a son together, Robert, his only child as far as I know.  I do know that son never had any children of his own.  

Eugene was able to find his mother eventually, as well as his two sisters.  In his will, he didn't mention his son, so I presume they had no relationship to speak of.  He did ask that his remaining assets be used to give a monthly stipend to his sister, Charlotte, except for the $1 he bequeathed his other sister, Jeanette (my great- grandmother) "for reasons well known to her".

The thought of him making his way alone as a young boy, a child really, weighed on me for several days.  At the same time, I am grateful for finding the book in a library where they took the care to make it available for me.  I look forward to seeing where the little bit I learned from it will take me.