31 – Flew the Coop

Louis E. Kenyon, 1890-1924, and chickens

My father's uncle Louis E. Kenyon was not given a middle name, and so he adopted a middle initial; no one seems to know why he chose the letter E. His father was Louis Austin Kenyon, and so perhaps he just went for the next vowel in the alphabet. In the 1900 United States census and the 1905 Wisconsin census he's listed as Louis Jr., but it's "Louis E." in a 1907 Fond du Lac phone directory when he was just 17, and from then on in all records:

Fond du Lac city directory entry, 1907

The photo of Louis and the chickens is one of a handful we have of him, this one depicting him post WWI back at the Fond du Lac County Insane Asylum; he worked as an engineer at the facility, so hanging out with chickens must have just been something he liked to do.

Louis E. had married a Laura Drier sometime in 1915, but came home one day to find her dead in early 1916. And so, footloose again and feeling very patriotic, he volunteered for the Wisconsin National Guard, knowing it was a precursor to getting into the war, and by the end of 1917 he was on his way to France as part of the American Expeditionary Forces. He wrote frequent letters home which I've transcribed and organized into a book. In a letter from France dated April 29, 1918, he mentions getting into chicken farming:

"Am having the time of my life, trying to learn French whenever I can corner one of the natives I jabber with them until they run away; it isn't so awful hard to understand. You write about John & Harry, well it happened I was thinking about them the other night, and I sent a postal card to both. In one way I would just as soon be home and making furniture, but everything is new to me over here so you can imagine how I nose around. Have got some new designs in tables & buffets, that beat anything you ever saw. I wrote Ed a letter last week, if he gets it he will have a good laugh, he is right about that, chicken farm, for that is just what I am going to do when I return." 

Louis was honorably discharged from the Army on May 17, 1919, and returned home to the asylum. His discharge papers note he was last assigned to Company B of the 127th Infantry, and when he had enlisted he was 26 years of age, a cabinet-maker, with brown eyes, black hair, dark complexion, and stood 5 feet 4 1/2 inches. We know from his letters that he was a "runner," or someone who took messages between command posts, that he spent some time in the trenches in Alsace, was knocked out of the war by an artillery shell during a big battle near Riems, recuperated in the south of France, and was part of the occupation of Germany after the war.

Louis E. Kenyon, somewhere in France

In the 1920 US Census we see Louis listed as an engineer at the Fond du Lac Insane Asylum, working for his father again, the returned war hero. He married Dorothy Neice in August 1920 and the following June had a first son, Donald Louis. So apparently the closest he got to owning a chicken farm was the the chicken coop on the asylum.

Louis with son Don, at the asylum

Louis liked to drink, and spent much of his free time with friends about town; his wife Dorothy claimed in later years not to have known him that well. He only lived a few years longer, dying in November 1924 of pneumonia, leaving behind two sons ages 3 and almost 1 and a widow. Dorothy and her sons continued to live with her father-in-law well into the Great Depression in the 1930s; Don, the oldest son, only had vague direct memories of his father, but knew him pretty well through those WWI letters Louis had written home.