Laura and Harry

Laura Norcross and Harry Baum grew up on almost adjoining homesteads along New Brooklyn Road—a rural community just outside of Williamstown, New Jersey. In the garden county of the garden state, with a fame for tomatoes unchallenged. There was a bond, born out of proximity. 

The Norcross family had been around for decades by the turn of the last century—maybe centuries according to some legends. And with current internet ancestry can be traced back in Britain to the Battle of Hastings, and by some accounts to the Holy Land b.c.e. People of prominence seem to take good stock of themselves over the eons.

On the other hand, there’s Harry. Father Johanne and mother Caroline deposited on the migrant docks along the Delaware River in Philadelphia in 1883. The middle-est of all middle children, Harry was probably conceived in the middle of the Atlantic. Newly pregnant Caroline had four urchins in tow at the landing, and four more born in South Jersey after Harry. 

The Baums settled into a small German enclave in Williamstown, even started a German-speaking Lutheran Church there. Johanne refused to learn English, and got by in his small world. Actually, he never really wanted to come, and broke down at the docks in Hamburg, blaming "Jewish money lenders" for taking his small farm. When the U.S. entered the Great War, Harry’s youngest brother, named Johanne after their father, went off to the trenches. It probably nearly killed Johanne senior for the junior to fight against the “Faderland.” 

Thus, we have the “roots” of the Baum tree in America—a name that actually means tree. 

both dark and bright

attitudes crossed the sea—

some homegrown here