I thought it might be fun on Memorial Day weekend to provide an account of someone who lived on my farm, Evard Snell. He came to the property as a young boy to live with his Aunt Rachel and Uncles Jenk & Thomas, original Welsh settlers to Richland. Things weren’t so good back home in Vineland. As a boy he’d walk the tracks to Milmay to visit a Civil War vet at Doughty’s Tavern. Samuel Morey was a master coaler and axeman who told stories of battles at Bull Run, Winchester, and Gettysburg. He passed away in 1942 at the age of 103. His lore encouraged young Evard to run away at 14 and enlist for WWI service in Baltimore. An earlier Vineland attempt was truncated since everyone there knew Evard was too young to join the cause. Snell was stationed in China when WWII broke out, so fought throughout the Pacific theater. Here’s a newspaper account about his famous Vineland flag:
Both Ole Uncle Jenk and his brother passed on as very old men in the mid 1960s, about the time I went to Richland School. Their house even then had no electric, the tracks blocking access. Kerosene lamps emitted a bright pure white light, the best Richland General Store had to sell. They would putt, putt, putt down the road in an ancient sedan en route to the AC racetrack; a scary site when combined with their long black coats and long white hair as I waited for the school bus.
Have a great Memorial Day weekend!
S–M
First U.S. Flag Hoisted In Recaptured Solomons Came From Philadelphia
Philadelphia Record, WASHINGTON, August 29, 1942(?). The first American flag to be hoisted over territory captured from Japanese in the present war was a tattered and faded scrap of bunting measuring six by eight inches. It was carried by a Marine officer around the world for eight years., the Navy Department announced today. The little flag was run to the top of a Japanese staff at Kukum, on Guadalcanal Island in the Solomons, on August 7, eight months to the day from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Raised by Philadelphian.
The man who raised it was Lieutenant Evard J. Snell, whose wife and two sons live at 1324 S. 50th st., Philadelphia. Lieutenant Snell was one of a little group of Marines pushing inland in the first phase of the Solomons battle. The lieutenant bought the flag at Vineland, N.J., on Memorial Day in 1934. Since then it has flown from a barracks in the Philippines in 1936, over a tent in Cuba, and as an identification on a ricksha used by the lieutenant in Pekin and Tientsin in 1937 and 1938. The story of the little flag’s big moment was relayed to the department by a Marine Corps combat correspondent.
Wife Weeps With Joy; Unaware He Was Officer.
Lieutenant Evard Jenkins Snell is a tough, sentimental Leather-neck with a trunkful of World War 1 medals and the reputation of being the only living man ever to outscore Colonel Anthony J. Drexel Biddle in hand-to-hand combat. Last night his wife, Myrtle, 26, who lives with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. William J. O’Brien, at 1324 S. 50th st,. was told the story
Continued on Page 9, Column 6. (which I don’t have!)
Both Ole Uncle Jenk and his brother passed on as very old men in the mid 1960s, about the time I went to Richland School. Their house even then had no electric, the tracks blocking access. Kerosene lamps emitted a bright pure white light, the best Richland General Store had to sell. They would putt, putt, putt down the road in an ancient sedan en route to the AC racetrack; a scary site when combined with their long black coats and long white hair as I waited for the school bus.
Have a great Memorial Day weekend!
S–M
