Fruits of One Tree

  Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather, Herbert Eugene Downs, and used to ask him to tell me about his life when he was young. My grandfather told me that his father was Eugene Loomis Downs, and that he was born in Iowa, but moved to New Jersey when he was a teenager. Eugene married Laura Eloise Ludlow, and they had three daughters before my grandfather was born; he was the youngest. [1] My grandfather recalled that his father had a Nash dealership. (Nash was one of the first auto manufacturers). With that information, I was able to find many newspaper articles about Eugene’s career in the auto industry, including racing early cars. However, I found almost nothing about him between early 1920 and his death in 1929. My grandfather also told me how, when he was sixteen years old, his parents divorced, and he had to drop out of high school to get a job to support his mother and sister. This was in 1920. I thought this was why my grandfather didn’t have a photo of...

One of my maternal great-grandparents was Eugene Loomis Downs. He was among the first generation of his branch of the Downs family in two hundred years to be born outside of the New Haven, Connecticut area. The Downs name was also written as Downes half the time. We only have one photo of Eugene. In it, he is wearing a light-colored suit and holding a pipe. It appears there was a person standing next to him, who has been cut out of the photo; you can see a striped fabric next to his leg. Eugene’s parents were Edwin Barlow Downs and Margaret Timmons Downs. [1] They were married in Rahway, New Jersey on November 28, 1854 [2] and after a move to St. Louis, Missouri, where Edwin was a car conductor in 1860, [3] they moved to Rahway, Union County, New Jersey, where Margaret’s parents Archibald and Eliza F. and brothers William W. and Daniel L. Timmons lived. [4] Eugene’s older brothers and sister were born in Rahway: Edwin S. Downs on September 16, 1860, [5] George W. Downs, August 26,...