Grayson and Banning family histories
In the mid-1800s, Hans and Edwina Grayson and town founders, Jasmine and Parker Banning, are the first to settle near the large lake in central Wisconsin that later takes on the name of the town: Jaspar—a merging of the names Jasmine and Parker.
The Bannings establish a lumber mill on the southern end of the lake, making use of the railroad, which Parker had helped lay tracks for, to ship his product to Saint Paul and Chicago. Banning Mills has employed many over the years. Continues to operate even now.
Hans Grayson started with 160 acres, but over the next few years increases his farm acreage to an entire section. He is able to send his son, Jon, to college where Jon meets, and soon marries Cecilia, a socialite from Chicago. While Hans’ home was fine for a farmstead, it is nothing like what Cecilia is accustomed to.
After Hans’ death, Jon builds what soon becomes known, affectionately by some, derisively by others, as the Grayson Mansion. Its design is based on a plantation house she had seen as a child. However, Jon is not the farmer his father had been. Nor does he have any skill so he could find meaningful employment locally. An inheritance after the death of Cecilia’s father rescues them from foreclosure once.
But when Jon passes away at the age of 48, the family is again heavily in debt. The Mansion and the section of farmland surrounding it is sold for pennies on the dollar of its actual value. The Graysons’ four sons are forced to work in the Mill, and the name descended into obscurity.
Unlike his siblings and cousins, Emery Grayson is unashamed of his last name. Although his own family rarely references this history, fellow high school students relish in reminding him of his heritage.
Still, he often stops at the Mansion gates wondering what sort of people his ancestors really were. Of course, he knows these particular ancestors—he wasn’t sure how many ‘greats’ to put in front of ‘grandparents’; just one? or was it two?—had overextended themselves and thus lost this magnificent, productive acreage.
Now it is being sold off piecemeal by the aging owners to developers who want to expand the town. And he can’t begrudge the elderly couple. Even though they had quit farming several years ago, they still need to survive.
The Grayson Mansion
Just so long as they don’t get rid of it all so that the Mansion itself is destroyed. Because the more often he stopped there, the more determined he is to one day possess it. To restore dignity to the Grayson name.
He just has to decide how. Education is the key. Of course, the richest kids he knew in school are sons and daughters of doctors at the clinic and hospital. And surgeons are the richest. So he needs to start buckling down in his studies. Up to this point his grades and his attitude have been anything but stellar.
That is about to change.
His older siblings—a brother and a sister—chide him mercilessly. “You’re never gonna be anything.” As do his parents, Richard and Shirley, though his mother is slightly more sympathetic to his desire to better himself: “I wish you good luck, son. But don’t set your sights too high. Not so far to fall when you fail.” Obviously not all parents want their children to have a better life than they’ve had.
However, first year biology at the UW/Jaspar halts any further consideration of surgery. If he can’t get through dissecting a frog, there is no way he’ll ever be able to cut into a human being. Not even to save a life.
What then? General Practitioner?
Then he thought about his family’s attitude toward him furthering his education. How many other kids lived with that same negative attitude and were deterred—or worse—by it? What if he could help them overcome the beating down he got from everyone?
But how?
At a dance shortly after high school graduation, Emery Grayson notices a tall, slender blond girl across the dance hall from himself. He doesn’t remember ever having seen her before. Asking his friends about her proves fruitless most of the evening.
Finally, one fellow student scoffs at his interest in the woman. “You’re crazy, Grayson!” he finally announces. “That’s Elizabeth Banning! Of Banning Mills. You know. Where your old man works?” And where Emery has worked summers and after school since he was sixteen.
But it no longer matters. For she has noticed him. After he finally works up the courage to introduce himself, they are inseparable. Emery has never known anyone so easy to talk to. So comfortable to be with when nothing is said.
Gradually, because of Elizabeth Banning’s influence, he loses his ‘rough around the edges’ demeanor and vows to never become cold or callous to those less fortunate. He would never forget his roots. Help everyone he could. Offer a hand up whenever possible.
FRIDAY, JULY 11: Shortly after he graduates from the UW with his doctoral degree in psychology, he and Liz elope to Reno, Nevada, where they spend the weekend at the Reno Remington Hotel. Eventually, Liz’s parents, Leonard and Adela Banning, warm to the idea of their daughter’s marriage to Emery. Realize he is determined to make a good life for himself and Liz. Enough to throw a small party to celebrate their marriage—even if it is two years after the fact.
That Fall, Emery enters medical school, his eye on adding Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine along with ‘psychologist’. After he receives his DO, four years of residency are also required followed by up to four years internship.
But their needs are few and between his part-time job and Liz’s job as head accountant for Banning Mills, they build a small next egg.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 10: Three years into their marriage, Emery and Elizabeth’s twin sons, Kevin and Jerome, are born a month prematurely. The two couldn’t be more different from each other. Kevin, the first-born, weighs seven and a half pounds and is nineteen inches long. Jerome weighs only five pounds but is twenty-one inches long. While Jerome has dark fuzz covering his head, Kevin is bald—not one little hair sticking up. Jerome is colicky and always seems to fuss over something. On the other hand, Kevin, content just to be alive, is soon cooing and smiling at everyone. And strong! Rolling onto his tummy months before Jerome. Inquisitive, curious about anything that moved. Jerome demands constant attention, always acting hungry but eating little at any one time. Kevin lets out one sharp cry to proclaim his hunger and then refuses to relinquish the bottle until it has been sucked dry.
Much to Adela Banning’s relief, Jerome finally calms down after three months. She had begun to wonder if she was doing something wrong. However, the doctor proclaimed him healthy at every checkup.
Elizabeth smiles indulgently. She is so thankful for her mother’s help caring for the newborns. Emery is working twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a day, coming home exhausted. But he still makes time for the boys. And is so gentle with them.
“It doesn’t matter who’s holding Jerome or why. Elizabeth tells her mother one day. “Feeding, changing or just holding him, he fusses.” Except Emery. Jerome immediately calms down when his father takes him in his arms.
“I’d like to know what your husband’s trick is,” Adela said with a chuckle. Elizabeth has to agree. There is a definite affinity between the two.
As completely opposite as they are, still the boys are close, always needing to be able to touch, hear or see each other. In fact, until they begin kindergarten, they are inseparable. The teacher has a full-time job trying to coax Jerome into interacting with other children. The closeness will remain with them well into their teens.
Despite their physical and temperamental differences: Kevin—his father’s build, tall and muscular; except for the straight patrician nose he shared with brother and father, his mother’s features, her sky-blue eyes, medium blond hair that earns him the nickname Sandy, her outgoing, easy temperament. Jerome—his father’s features, green eyes and dark hair, his quiet wary attitude; his mother’s slender build, but always underweight for his height.
The boys are five when the Mansion’s interim owner passes away, having sold most of the farmland to pay taxes, retaining only the three-story Mansion itself and the surrounding ten acres. With no relative to claim the property, it reverts to the city, which puts it on the market for back taxes even knowing they can probably get more for it from developers. They really hope someone with an eye to preserving it will step forward.
Immediately on learning of the sale, Emery convinces Elizabeth that it is the perfect place to raise their family—sight unseen. Since this house is the oldest in the city—the heritage of which led directly to the very founding of the city and therefore is historical—the decision to sell to a Grayson direct descendant came easily to all involved.
Elizabeth doesn’t know what to expect when Emery opens the side door beneath the carport. The elderly couple probably hadn’t spent a lot of time keeping it clean, so she prepares herself for the worst.
And is not disappointed.
This first room appears to have been the parlor. Elizabeth can imagine Cecilia Grayson holding many tea parties in this room. And it doesn’t look like it has been cleaned since she left. Dust is everywhere. Obviously, no one has hosted any tea parties in years.
A baby grand piano stands in the center of the room. Dainty chairs are scattered about, some beneath windows surrounding small tables, some in front of the large fireplace. “I see we’ll have to hire a cleaning service right away,” Emery concedes. Thank heavens!
They move to the next room, the kitchen. Everything dirty and again, unused in years. An ancient wood cook stove and ice box. What on earth did the Shepherds eat? Elizabeth opens the cupboards, finding chinaware that must also have been Cecelia’s—untouched but, because of the cupboard doors, not as dusty as everything else.
She’d never be able to cook in this kitchen! She swallowed her tears.
The room also has a stairway to the second floor. The treads look well-worn. Much more so than anything else she has seen so far. And a noticeable trail leads from it to a doorway.
Beyond that door is a pantry, shelves full of canned goods. Recently canned goods. The door at the rear of the pantry opens to the backyard. The grass, leading to a large garden, is beaten down. So, the Shepherds apparently entered the house through this door, evidently exclusively, and went directly upstairs.
Elizabeth wonders what is up there but wants to see the rest of this floor first.
She opens the door beside the pantry door. The scene takes her breath away. She leans against the huge dining table sitting just a few feet from where she entered. She has no words to describe what her eyes are seeing.
Emery entered directly behind her. “Are you all right, Liz?”
“Look! Look at this, Emery! What on God’s-green-earth holds this house up?”
It couldn’t possibly be only the huge stairway and the several pillars supporting the second story! She knows the dimensions of the house—eighty feet wide and sixty feet deep. And in that full depth not one wall from side to side? Of course, a wall ran the full depth separating where they had been—the parlor and kitchen—from this, the Great Room. She remembers having heard that term and now understands what it meant: wide open space!
Everything has layers of dust, but nothing can deter from the stunning grandeur before her.
There is a partial second story in an L-shape: 12 feet above the dining area, then extending the full depth of the east side maybe twenty feet wide. No support other than the pillars. No walls.
Stepping out from beneath that second floor, Elizabeth glances up. Three huge crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling at least twenty feet above them. Sunlight gleams in from a huge window on the second-floor level, dancing off the crystals.
“Emery! What are we going to do with all this room?”
“Let’s check out the second story.” She notes even he is astonished by what they have just purchased.
They climb the curving stairway, mindful of the age of the building. Wondering if it might collapse on them any second.
The office, or more appropriately, the library is at the top of the stairway. Shelves cover the two walls and between the four floor-to-ceiling windows. Books, hundreds of old books fill those shelves.
They would examine that room more closely later.
A walkway, its edge safeguarded by the wood banister, continues all the way to the front of the house, but doors open off it: a bedroom shares a wall with the office; then around the corner another bedroom; the last door opens to the master bedroom which extends from that second, corner bedroom all the way to the front.
French doors in the master bedroom lead to the balcony that wraps around the entire house. A breathtaking view toward Lake Jaspar across the street.
“Emery, I love it! Of course it’ll require a lot of renovation, but it’s magnificent!”
The curving stairway continues to the third floor, but first Elizabeth needs to explore one more room on the second floor. The door is to the left of the stairway. Whatever this room is, it is directly above the kitchen and the well-used stairs in the kitchen must lead to this room.
Elizabeth hesitates, curious but wary. Finally, Emery reaches around her and turns the knob. She gasps. “No wonder they never used the rest of house!”
The area runs the full depth of the mansion. A kitchen—fridge, stove, sink, cupboards, and small table with two chairs on the north end; a wall divides the south end in half forming a bedroom and living area. An apartment within the mansion.
Obviously, these rooms had been part of the original makeup of the house. But what had its purpose been?
And, unlike the rest of the house, they are neat as a pin.
“This is where we’ll live during the renovation,” Elizabeth proclaims.
It has everything their small family requires. There is plenty of room for the boys’ bunk beds in the living area. She is sure her parents will let them keep their furniture in one of their extra bedrooms for a while.
“The renovation will begin with the kitchen.”
“Most definitely,” Elizabeth agrees. “However, I think I’d like to move it into the main part of the house. We’ll never have any parties that need the entire first floor.”
“I’ll check into a contractor. We’ll definitely need some modern bathrooms which will require a major upgrade. But I can’t imagine anything more than a thorough cleaning for the rest.
“You really like it?” Emery wonders.
“Oh, Emery, you belong in this house! It suits you. And if Jerome keeps growing like he has been, we’ll need the headspace.” Emery laughs. The twenty-four-foot ceiling is surely more than enough headspace.
A few days later, Emery is looking through the shelves of books and discovers the Mansion’s original blueprints—untouched for nearly a century. Each room is marked with its purpose. The rooms they had moved into were marked ‘Servants’ Quarters’. Servants? His ancestors actually had servants? But, in smaller print ‘Nursery’. He chuckles. That makes more sense to him. Servants were an added expense Jon and Cecilia could ill afford.
Although considering the size of the house, they certainly needed help to keep it clean. At any rate, he decides to always refer to the rooms as the ‘servants’ quarters’.
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