Endpaper

Dyersville, Iowa

Settler origins for Ernest’s maternal line is located 100 miles east of Pauline’s Parkersburg. When people think of Hemingway’s Gulf Stream writing, do they consider the influence of Dyersville, aka Field of Dreams, and the author’s early childhood under the same roof with raconteur kin. His maternal grandfather, dubbed Abba, recalled farming sheep and cattle 30 miles west of the Mississippi with such loathing that he drove a team of horses into a river (fatally, due to swift current, and occasion for running away at age seventeen). Abba’s brother-in-law, Tyley, son of a widowed sea captain, was raised with Ernest’s grandmother and their sister on a global voyaging cargo ship until the father chose Dyersville to settle his school-age progeny.

Not sure which of these two maternal lines descend from the Lake District’s Windermere near the famed 16th century quality graphite mine and birth of pencil industry. Perhaps the Hancocks. The sea captain sold Liverpool property, whereas Abba was born and educated in London. Though Abba’s wholesale cutlery firm with a brother-in-law operated an office branch in Manchester…

  • At the Hemingways: A Family Portrait, Marcelline Hemingway, 1961–1962; via University of Idaho 1999 edition with 50 years correspondence between siblings

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