Richard Caldwell "RC" Wyeth

Source of Bio: Christina Wyeth Baker (the bride in the photo), The Wyeth and Wythe Families of America (Berwyn Heights, MD: Heritage Books, Inc., 2019), wyeth-wythe.blogspot.com Richard Caldwell Wyeth was a talented folk artist with an analytical mind and an excellent ability to tell fascinating true stories. He had great observational skills and could quickly discern a person's character. Although he only had an 8th grade education, he was extremely intelligent. Where he grew up in rural Vinton County, Ohio, the high school was too far away to ride a valuable horse and leave it standing in the hot sun all day. RC, as he preferred to be called, learned the carpentry trade as a young man. He was so adept at it, he became a contractor and planned and constructed full housing developments. He built his own house, complete with beautiful hard wood floors and hand-made furniture, out of one cottonwood log. My father's middle name came from his maternal great grandfather, Rev. Captain David S. Caldwell, a United Brethren minister who so admired Abraham Lincoln's policies that at age 41, he left his Seneca County, Ohio church to enlist as a private in the 123rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The hard working, scholarly minister soon achieved the rank of Captain. In Jun 1863, the captain was captured at the 2nd Battle of Winchester and imprisoned in Richmond, Virginia's Libby prison. In one of the most famous and successful POW breaks of the Civil War, Caldwell escaped through a narrow, rat-filled tunnel in Feb 1864. From a combination of wits and guts and help from a couple of slave families, of the 109 escapees, RC's great grandfather was among the 59 who succeeded in reaching the advancing Union front over 50 miles away in Williamsburg. Also notable was the Wyeth side of RC's family. His first ancestor to reach America's shores hailed from Saxtead, Suffolk County, England. Nicholas Wyeth was born while Queen Elizabeth the 1st was still on the throne. He settled in Cambridge, MA just after Harvard College was founded there. In fact, a few Harvard buildings now sit on some of the same land, near Cambridge Common, held by the Wyeth family in 1645. Richard's paternal great grandfather also served in the Civil War. Francis John Higginson Wyeth's service was recognized by a certificate signed by Abraham Lincoln. Stephen Wyeth, father to Francis, served in the War of 1812 and moved with Francis from Massachusetts to Ohio in the 1850s. Burdened by increasing taxes and diminishing liberties, Stephen's father, Ebenezer Wyeth III and two of his brothers, Jonas and Joshua, joined Colonel Henry Knox's Artillery Regiment of the Massachusetts Line of the Continental Army in Dec 1775. After their ranks suffered crushing defeats in New York state and lost New York City to British troops, American soldiers deserted by the thousands. With more due to leave 31 Dec 1776, when their enlistments ended, General George Washington was keenly aware that without an army the American Revolution would come to a humiliatingly abrupt end. Of the period, political activist Thomas Paine wrote, "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." The three brothers did not shrink from the service of their country. Ebenezer III, Jonas and Joshua's pension applications show each one of them continued to work to expel British tyranny from the American Colonies long after their Continental Army contracts expired at the end of 1776. In choosing to serve America, Ebenezer III, Jonas and Joshua followed the lead of their father, Ebenezer Wyeth Jr., who was RC's 4th great grandfather. Ebenezer Jr. and several other members of his family were Cambridge, MA minutemen who fought in the first battle of the American Revolution on 19 Apr 1775. They were willing to risk everything for an abstract ideal called democracy. RC had strong faith in those democratic ideals and advocated that all human beings were equal. Having grown up during the Depression, he firmly believed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved democracy in the United States by creating programs to help the hungry and provide work for the unemployed. When the local bank foreclosed on their Vinton County farm and work was not available, Richard's family was desperate. RC jumped at the chance to join the voluntary public work relief program Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The CCC, a major part of FDR's New Deal, provided manual labor jobs in conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by the government. The CCC gave RC an income to share with his family back home. More importantly, the work increased his morale and improved his self-worth. For the rest of his life, RC told anyone who would listen that FDR's concern for the common man made him a life-long Democrat. Over the radio in 1941, RC, then a married father of a 22-month-old son, heard FDR condemn the date that would live in infamy. At age 24, RC was well beyond draft age so he did what he could to support the War effort on the home front. Soon the draft period was lowered from 21 to age 18. Since voting age remained at 21, until the 26th Amendment to the Constitution was signed in 1971, those young men could not even vote. Then in the months before the Germans and Japanese surrendered, conditions were so dire, older men with children were drafted in record numbers. Richard was 27 years old when he started boot camp training at the Naval Station in Great Lakes, IL on 11 Nov 1944. He boarded the escort class aircraft carrier, USS Kadashan Bay, just after it had been hit by a Kamikaze pilot. As their ship carried them deeper into the War zone, RC was a father figure to many of the boys who shared the seamen's close sleeping quarters. He described sleeping in bunks stacked three or four deep and so near to the sailor above, he could not sleep on his side. The most chilling story RC told of his time in the Navy was hearing the young, fearful, and homesick boys crying themselves to sleep. Fortunately, World War II ended before RC's ship reached Japan. He was honorably discharged from the Navy on 17 Nov 1945 in Oakland, CA. While standing on a street with thousands of other recently released sailors, an older gentleman tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Son, I am headed for New Jersey. Would you like a ride?" The fellow ended up letting RC drive his car all the way to Ohio. Though harrowing, RC particularly enjoyed driving though the Rocky Mountains. That journey across the United States was fresh in his mind when RC painted a large historical mural in the early 1970s. The canvas depicted his first ancestor in the New World, Nicholas Wyeth, and the progression of his descendants across America and into the future. RC was proud of his ancestors' contributions to the founding of our nation and of his own military service. RC treasured his family. After his mother Marselle died, RC gave his father a home next door so he could look after Florin in his old age. RC also loved his children. Though it often was in ways not readily apparent to them. He was very proud of how well they all turned out. Sadly, he wasn't able to spend much time with his youngest child. She was only 3 months old when he died. RC did, however, leave an honorable legacy for all of his children to build upon.