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This is one of the very few
photographs of Walt as a baby or toddler
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On New Year's Day, 1888, Elias Disney and Flora Call were married. Over the next five years they added three sons to their family: Herbert in 1888, Raymond in 1890,
and Roy in 1893. By the time Flora became pregnant again some eight years
later, the couple were living in Chicago, where Elias was making a living
as a carpenter and builder. On December 5, 1901, a fourth child, Walter
Elias Disney, was born, named after the family's pastor. (The pastor, in
turn, named his son Elias, after Walt's father.) Two years later a little
girl, Ruth, arrived and the Disney family was complete. But
Elias and Flora were unsettled by the raucous, saloon-centered nature
of their neighborhood. When two boys in the neighborhood were arrested
after killing a policeman, that was the last straw. |
Elias's brother Robert
owned some property in Marceline, Missouri, a community of about 5,000
that had sprung up along the route of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
Railroad. And so, in April 1906, the Disney family settled there on
a 45-acre farm. They lived in a square, small house built by a recently
deceased Civil War veteran named William Crane. Their house was shaded
by broad weeping willows, cedars, and silver maples. When they arrived,
Walt could smell the perfume of the apple blossoms from the
small orchard behind the house. That fall the same trees
hung heavy with crispy red Wolf river apples, "so big that people came
from miles around to see them," Walt recalled. For the rest of his life
he remembered the community spirit that infused this corner of the world
-- particularly at harvest time, when friends and neighbors worked together
like one big family. |
Walt and his family moved
to this home in Marceline, Missouri, in 1906 |
Walt and his sister, Ruth,
dressed in their Sunday best
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Walt and Ruth, as
the babies of the family, had few tasks on the farm, and those they had
weren't overly strenuous. Their memories of the farm were almost entirely
favorable -- with the possible exception of the time they got into deep
trouble for doodling on the barn with black sticky tar. The same wasn't
true of his older brothers, who labored mightily to help Elias squeeze
a decent living out of the land. As Walt grew older, his universe expanded
to the town, where he became friendly with a variety of interesting characters
like Erastus Taylor, a Civil War veteran who told Walt a succession of
dramatic tales of battles long past. Family members were ever present,
including Grandma Disney and Uncle Mike Disney, who was a railroad engineer.
Uncle Mike would come roaring into town behind the throttle of a giant
locomotive, carrying striped bags of candy for the children. Aunt Margaret,
Uncle Robert's wife, "would bring me big tablets -- Crayola things --
and I'd always draw Aunt Margaret pictures and she'd always rave over
them," Walt later recalled. |
In 1908 Herbert and
Raymond decided they had had enough of farming, and of their father's
insistence that they use any extra money they could earn to help support
the family. Now 16 and 18 -- grown men by the standards of the time --
they departed for better times in Chicago. In the fall of 1909, Walt
started at the brand-new Park School in Marceline. But he wasn't to be
there long. In the fall of 1910 Elias contracted typhoid and almost
died. He recovered, slowly, but knew he couldn't keep the farm afloat.
So the farm was sold for $5,175, and the family moved to Kansas City
in the summer of 1911. Paradise was lost. |
Walt's father, Elias Disney,
and his mother, Flora
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