|
October 1853
|
Elizabeth’s maternal grandfather, George Garrison Stambaugh is born in
Illinois.
|
|
January 31, 1857
|
Elizabeth’s maternal grandmother, Adda Woolley is born in
Colchester, McDonough County, Illinois.
|
|
February 1862
|
Elizabeth’s paternal grandmother, Julia E Miller is born in
Warren, Vermont.
|
|
December 2, 1863
|
Elizabeth’s paternal grandfather, George Henry Robinson is born in
Waitsfield, Vermont.
|
|
May 20, 1883
|
Elizabeth’s mother, Mary Elizabeth Stambaugh is born in
Cheney, Washington.
|
|
February 20, 1886
|
Elizabeth’s father, Harold Wesley Robinson is born in
Warren, Vermont.
|
|
1903
|
Harold graduates from Waitsfield High School.
|
|
September 1906
|
Harold enters Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
“The thing that’s really interesting how people’s
lives—they all hinge together in some funny way. When
[Harold] was in Dartmouth...there had been a person that’s
like Billy Graham, whose name was Billy Sunday. And he was travelling
around on all the college circuits and he would put up a big tent and
have revivals. My father went, this was the thing to do. Billy Sunday
asked for all those who, when they felt the hand of the lord on them,
when they felt the call, for them to all come down and sign a card.
And all of my father’s classmates did, so he knew he was safe
and he went down—he knew he would never receive the call
[chuckle]. So he went down the isle and signed it. Well, I’m
sure that that made a difference to him,”
Harold himself describes this event in the beginning of the chapter,
“Life In China” from
Grandpa’s Story, A Yankee in
China, (pp. 42-3):
I have no clear recollection of how I first got the idea of
going to China. It must have been while I was in Dartmouth
College, and it may have been when I was attending a Student
Summer Conference at East Northfield, Massachusetts. I met
there people from different parts of the world and was enchanted
by the stories which they told of the people with whom
they lived and worked. One of them was Dr. Samuel Zwemer
from Arabia. Dr. Wilfred Grenfeld of Labrador was another.
The only person I remember who spoke on China was Dr.
Edwards of the Harvard Medical School, who had not been in
China, but was about to go there as a medical missionary. I am
not sure that I heard him at Northfield, though I did in
Dartmouth.
I believe that it was at Northfield that I signed a Student
Volunteer card which stated that “if it is God’s
will” I would become a foreign missionary. I felt
perfectly sure that it would not be God’s will for me to
do any such thing, but by signing the card I thought that I
would get rid of the feeling that I ought to be willing to
become a missionary.
After I signed that card, a Student Volunteer Band was organized
at Dartmouth and much to my surprise I was elected as its first
leader. We had regular meetings, read lives of great missionaries,
got missionary speakers to address meetings at Hanover and kept
up the missionary interest on the Dartmouth campus. So far as I
know I was the only one of that Band who ever got to the foreign
field. Probably I was the one who least expected to go when I
signed the card.
My early impression of a missionary was that he was a preacher,
and that was the last thing that i planned to be. Besides, a
preacher had to know languages. I hated them. That and the fact
that I liked mathematics had helped me decide to become an
engineer.
|
|
1909
|
Mary graduates from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.
|
|
Fall 1909
|
Harold delivers his first sermon in a Congregational Church in
North Pomfret, Vermont.
|
1910
|
Harold graduates from Dartmouth. “He had a photogratphic memory;
he said he didn’t know that he was bright. But he must have
had a photographic memory which he subsequently said he lost. Everybody
else thought he was bright. He could just read a page and tell you what
was on it and where it was. And that’s a photograhic memory. I
certainly don’t have any of that. I don’t know where he
lost it but it was a very curious mind he had. And it was always
curious and always wanted to learn. A friend of his, who graudated
from Dartmouth, I guess, ahead of him, wrote to him and said,
‘Come on out to Hawaii, it’s a great place.’ And
that’s where this guy had gone. So this farm boy, from this state
of Vermont, who just thought of himself as a hired hand, and then had
gone off to college and found out he had a good mind, decided to go
to Hawaii and teach mathematics because his major was civil
engineering—he loved math.”
|
|
1910
|
Harold meets Mary aboard the S.S. Wilhemena after both board in
San Francisco bound for Honolulu, Hawaii. Mary is going to teach
in the Kawaihao Seminary for Girls in Honolulu after being turned
down for the job of principal in a school in Davenport,
Washington because she “was not a man” and had heard
of the opportunity from a Whitman classmate who was then teaching
at Kawaihao. Harold is going to teach mathematics at the Mid
Pacific Institute in Honolulu to replace his friend Ralph
Richardson who had been offered an engineering position for the
construction of Pearl Harbor.
|
|
1912
|
Mary leaves Kawaihao Seminary and begins teaching at Mid Pacific Institute.
|
|
|
|
Summer 1913
|
Harold decides to go to theological seminary to prepare for the
ministry and proposes to Mary while visiting her parents in
Long Beach, California on his was back east. She accepts his
proposal.
|
|
Fall 1913
|
Harold enters Union Seminary. While there he also enrolls in
Columbia University for courses in education and psychology.
|
|
1913-1916
|
Mary continues teaching at Mid Pacific in Honolulu.
|
|
June 15, 1916
|
Harold is issued his passport in
the District Court of Boston for missionary work in China.
|
|
May 1916
|
Harold graduates from Union and is ordained in the Congregational
Church of Brooklyn where Dr. S. Parkes Cadman is pastor.
|
|
July 22, 1916
|
Harold leaves his family home in Warren, Vermont headed for
Spokane, Washington to wed Mary Stambaugh, prior to the couple
making their first voyage across the Pacific Ocean to China.
|
August 8, 1916
|
Harold and Mary are married in Mary’s parents home in
Spokane, Washington.
|
|
August 26, 1916
|
Harold and Mary leave the U.S. by ship bound for China (as recorded on
Harold’s second Passport
Application, issued by the American Consulate in Tientsin, China, on
September 3, 1918).
|
|
September 20, 1916
|
Harold and Mary arrive in Peking where they are enrolled in the
North China Union Language School for a year and live in the
American (Congregational) Board Mission compound.
“In China they went out with a Mission Board called the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. ABCFM
it’s called, and it’s very familiar to me. They
were based in Boston. They were the same group that sent
missionaries out to Hawaii in the 1800s, 1850s, and colonized
Hawaii and robbed all the—put foreigners, Americans, into
the pineapple plantations and this is the way it works.”
|
|
Late Summer 1917
|
The Robinsons move to Paotingfu, 90 miles south of Peking.
|
|
January 1, 1918
|
Harold Stambaugh Robinson is born in the Presbyterian Hospital in Paotingfu.
|
|
January 1, 1919
|
“Happy New Year!”
Harold Stambaugh Robinson on his first birthday.
|
|
1919
|
“We always kept goats... they were milk goats, they were
female goats. And Harold is having a good time feeding the goat.
He must have been about a year and half there. I think this was
in Gwantzeling
up in the mountains in the summer time. These
goats, I do remember them so well.”
|
|
October 4, 1920
|
James Wesley Robinson is born in the Presbyterian Hospital in Paotingfu.
|
|
June 8, 1923
|
Harold and Mary board the SS Korea Maru in Shanghai, China with their two
sons, Harold and James, ages 5 and 2,
bound for the Port of San Francisco, where they arrive on
July 3. This is their first furlough back to the U.S. after
living in China beginning in September 1916. Their first
destination is Mary’s parents home in Long Beach, California where
they stay until Harold has purchased a used Buick in which he
drives his pregnant-with-third-child wife and two sons across
the continent to his home in Warren Vermont.
|
November 1, 1923
|
Elizabeth Adda Robinson is
born at 6:40 pm in Barre, Vermont.
She is held here by her maternal grandmother, Julia Miller Robinson.
|
|
Nov ’23-Feb ‘24
|
Mary is in hospital in Barre after developing phlebitis.
|
February 10, 1924
|
Elizabeth is baptized by Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, pastor of the Central
Congregational Church of Brooklyn, New York. After Dr. Cadman’s
death, Central Church united with another Brooklyn church and the
union was named “Cadman Memorial Congregational Church.”
|
February 14, 1925
|
Harold and Mary board the SS Calawaii in Los Angeles, with their three
children, Harold, age 7, James, age 4, and Elizabeth, age 1 and a half,
bound for the Port of Honolulu where they arrive on February 21. The
family is enroute to China after their first furlough. This is
Elizabeth’s first trip to China. The return to China was delayed
because of “some sort of warlording going on in Hopei province
where [Harold and Mary’s] first assigned mission station was
located in the capital walled city of Paothingfu.” [See:
My First Trip To China]
|
|
1929 or 1930
|
When Elizabeth is six or seven the Robinsons are transferred by the
Mission Board from Paotingfu to Techow (pronounced "Duh'joe") in
Shantung province.
|
|
June 16, 1932
|
Harold and Mary board the SS President Cleveland in Kobe, Japan with their three
children, Harold, age 14, James, age 11, and Elizabeth, age 8,
bound for the Port of Seattle, Washington, where they arrive on
June 28. This is their
second furlough back to the U.S.
|
|
1934-35
|
Elizabeth produces her own book of “My Pomes” complete with
minature sketches at the beginning of each piece and a drawing of The Author
at the back. A black and white
representation is included which may provide easier reading than
the original faded color scan.
|
|
January 9, 1937
|
Mary’s mother, Adda Wooley Stambaugh dies in Long Beach, California, 22 days before she would have turned 80 (born in Colchester, Illinois, on January 31, 1857).
|
June 27, 1937
|
Elizabeth boards the SS Empress of Asia in Shanghai, China with her Mother,
bound for the Port of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada where they arrive on
July 12. Their destination is Mary’s parents home, Adda and George
Stambaugh, at 337 Carroll Park West, Long Beach, California. Mary’s
purpose was to care for her ailing father and needed Elizabeth to accompany
her on this errand of mercy. In later years Elizabeth recounted how Mary
needed her daughter to come with her because Mary’s father was a
difficult man and Mary felt she could not help him without some support
for her own situation.
|
|
1938
|
Elizabeth and her parents move to Tungchow, Shantung province where Harold
and Mary had been reassigned by the Congregational Board in Boston.
|
|
1938-39 (?)
|
Tungchow (sp?) — fill in more
|
July 19, 1940
|
Harold, Mary, and Elizabeth (now age 16) board the SS President Coolidge
in Kobe, Japan, bound for the Port of Los Angeles where they arrive on
August 3. This is Elizabeth’s final trip from China to the U.S. after
completing her junior year in High School in Tungchow.
|
|
1940-1941
|
Elizabeth attends her 12th grade year at Newton high school, living in
Auburndale, Massachusetts.
|
|
1941-1945
|
Elizabeth attends Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts
(graduating in June 1945) receiving a BA in Art History with a
minor in English.
|
|
April 1, 1944
|
Mary’s father, George Garrison Stambaugh dies in Long Beach, California, at age 90 (born in Illinois, October 1857).
|
|
1944
|
James Wesley Robinson graduates with honors from Harvard Medical School.
|
|
November 1, 1944
|
Elizabeth meets John Waldo Ratcliffe at her 21st birthday party during
her senior year at Wellesley.
|
|
1945, 1946
|
After graduation from Wellesley, Elizabeth begins working in July
for over a period of about 6 months in the capacity of “Girl
Friday” to Edward W. Forbes, the last living grandson of
Lidian Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wife. At that time
Forbes was the retired Director of the Fogg Museum in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Her work for Edward Forbes spans two periods, the
second of which ends in 1946 prior to her marriage to John
Ratcliffe. As a wedding gift, Mr. Forbes gives Elizabeth a water
color of his of Naushon Island.
|
|
Late 1945 (?)
|
Elizabeth moves to NYC to go to nursing school and decides she
isn’t cut out to be a nurse after 6 weeks after which she
returns to Cambridge, Mass.
|
|
January 12, 1946
|
Rev. H.W. Robinson marries Harold S. Robinson and Julie Ann
Burnett in Minneapolis, MN.
|
|
1946
|
Rev. H.W. Robinson marries James W. Robinson and Hope Buist.
|
|
October 12, 1946
|
Rev. H.W. Robinson marries Elizabeth A. Robinson and John Waldo
Ratcliffe in Cambridge, MA. He is 26 and she is 22 years of age.
They initially live in Norfolk, Virginia while John is serving
his time in the Navy (as Lieutenant Junior Grade Medical Corps,
U.S. Naval Reserve) and then they move to Framingham, MA,
eventually living at 64 Maple Street.
|
1948
|
Stephen Robinson Ratcliffe is born in Boston Lying-in Hospital (now part
of Brigham and Women’s Hospital)
|
|
1950
|
Bruce Allen Ratcliffe is born in Boston Lying-in Hospital (now part
of Brigham and Women’s Hospital)
|
|
December 1950
|
Harold and Mary Robinson return from China to the U.S. for the last time.
|
|
1952
|
Patricia Anne Ratcliffe is born in Framingham Union Hospital, Framingham, MA.
|
|
1952
|
Ratcliffe Family moves from Framingham, MA, to Hillsdale Garden
Apartments in San Mateo, CA.
|
|
1952
|
Harold Sr. has his own church in Guerneville, California.
|
|
195-
|
Ratcliffe Family moves to 426 Edgewood Road, San Mateo, CA.
|
|
March 10, 1955
|
Elizabeth receives a personal letter written on this day from Pearl S. Buck
replying to a letter of appreciation Elizabeth apparently had written
concerning a book Ms. Buck wrote about China.
|
|
1955
|
David Thompson Ratcliffe is born in Mills Hospital, San Mateo, California.
|
|
1960
|
Ratcliffe Family moves to 2185 Parkside Avenue, Hillsborough, CA.
|
|
1961
|
Susana Prieto-Stambaugh, the daughter of
Betty Jeanne Stambaugh,
Elizabeth’s first cousin, travels from her home in Mexico
City to Harold Stambaugh Robinson’s home in Walnut Creek,
California, entering
the US on December 1. During her visit, Harold’s family
comes to the Ratcliffe’s home over the holidays. Grandpa
and Gramma Robinson (who live in San Mateo at that time) are also
present. This photograph is taken in the front yard at Parkside.
People in the photograph are, left to right: Steve, Elizabeth,
Tom Robinson, Susana, David, Jenny Robinson, Gramma and Grampa
Robinson, Harold and Julie Robinson, John and Bruce Ratcliffe.
The Ratcliffe’s beloved black lab Pingo is front-and-center.
|
|
Late 1963
|
Harold and Mary Robinson retire and move from San Mateo Park to
the Carmel Valley Manor, in Carmel Valley, CA. The Congregational
Church in San Mateo where Harold was a “Visitation
Minister” is involved in building the Manor, and Harold and
Mary are invited to become some of the first residents by the
Church.
|
|
1964-1965
|
Elizabeth takes one year of art history graduate studies courses at Stanford
University in Palo Alto.
|
|
Early 1966
|
Elizabeth and John Ratcliffe divorce after 19+ years of marriage.
|
|
Fall 1966
|
After graduating high school in June, Stephen enters Reed College in Oregon.
|
May 19, 1968
|
George Friederic Handel’ Messiah is performed in the San Mateo Congregational Church beginning at 8:00 PM. The Director is Patricia Hudson and Organist is S. Leslie Grow. Elizabeth attended this performance and purchased the 3-record box set (manufactured by Century Records in Saugus, California). The music was played often in the house, especially during the end-of-year holidays.
|
|
May 25, 1968
|
Elizabeth sells Parkside house. Following this, she buys 1547 Brandywine Road in San Mateo and in the summer moves with Bruce, Patty, and David to the San Mateo Eichler Highlands.
|
|
Fall 1968
|
After graduating high school in June, Bruce enters Oberlin College in Ohio.
|
1968-1971
|
Elizabeth teaches Senior Humanities (Art History Component) at
Mills High School, in Millbrae, CA. During one of these years in
February, she receives a “happy valentine’s!”
card made from and signed by her students with beautiful
calligraphic writing, stating:
dear mrs ratcliffe,
thank you
for
sharing with us.
you have a special way
of expressing the
beautiful things
inside you . . .
and you also have class.
|
|
March 13, 1970
|
Elizabeth purchases the house at 7907 Rapp Lane in Talent Oregon for $14,000.
She moves there in the fall of the same year.
|
|
June 30, 1970
|
Elizabeth receives a Secondary Standard Teaching Credential in
Education from the College of Notre Dame, Belmont, CA.
|
|
Fall 1970
|
After graduating high school in June, Patty enters Colorado Springs College.
|
|
Fall 1970
|
After one year of public high school, David enters The Thacher
School in Ojai, CA for 10th through 12th grade.
|
|
September 1971
|
Elizabeth enters the University of Oregon in Eugene to pursue
a Masters Degree in Art History.
|
|
June 1973
|
Elizabeth receives a M.A. in
Byzantine Medieval Art History from the University of
Oregon.
|
|
1973
|
Teaches Parent Effectiveness Training (PET) part time at Lane
Community College, Eugene.
|
|
September 1973
|
After graduating high school in June, David enters Oregon State
University in Corvallis.
|
November 17, 1973
|
Stephen Ratcliffe marries Ashley Bartlett Perdue in Bolinas, California.
|
|
November 8, 1974
|
Mary Stambaugh Robinson dies in Carmel Valley, California.
|
|
1974-1975
|
Elizabeth works at the Service League of San Mateo County providing
Marriage and Family Counseling and personal growth counseling to
San Mateo County jail inmates and their families.
|
|
May 23, 1975
|
Elizabeth completes her second Masters thesis,
“The Old
Masters Art Collage As An Instrument Of Learning About
Oneself.”
|
|
August 29, 1975
|
Elizabeth graduates from Cal State Hayward with a
M.S. Counseling degree.
|
|
1975
|
Elizabeth’s first grandchild, Oona Ashley Ratcliffe, is
born of her parents, Stephen and Ashley.
|
|
1975
|
Elizabeth works in the San Mateo County Probation Department as a
co-therapist in family therapy sessions with offenders in custody
placed in the Community Rehabilitation House.
|
|
1975-1980
|
Elizabeth serves as vocational / psychological staff counselor at
Displaced Homemakers Center (DHC) & Advocates for Women. In
1977 she writes “One
Year Later..... An overview of what we’ve accomplished
during our pilot project’s first year of operation: May 1976
- April 1977” for the California Senate that appropriated the
money to start a DHC. The group’s hope was that this report
would convince legislators to renew their initial grant which the
Senate did. See Also: For Homemakers Who
Lose Their Jobs... flyer.
|
|
1976-1977
|
Teaches part time Parent Communication, Women in Transition at
Hayward Adult School, Hayward, CA.
|
|
1977
|
“The Old Masters Art
Collage: An Art Therapy Technique For Heuristic Self-Discovery”
is published in Art Psychotherapy, Vol. 4, pp. 29-32. Pergamon Press.
|
|
1978
|
Elizabeth receives her Marriage and Family Counselor license in 1978.
|
|
1978-1980
|
Internship training at the Berkeley Psychotherapy Institute.
|
|
1978-1980
|
Teaches (30-40 hrs/week) Assertiveness Training, Career Decision,
Dealing With Anger at Displaced Homemakers Center, on Mills
College Campus, Oakland, CA.
|
|
1979
|
Receives training in Music Therapy from Ruth Dunbar in San Francisco.
|
|
October 7 to
November 4, 1979
|
Elizabeth travels to Japan to visit Patty who is living in a 4-year period
that includes teaching English and studying No-ren, the art of kimono dying.
|
|
October 25, 1979
|
In Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, Elizabeth gives a presentation on
mid-life women and work in the U.S. From a
1980 article in the
Bulletin of the Society to Introduce Kanazawa to the World:
At the invitation of the Society to Introduce Kanazawa to the
World, last October Mrs. Elizabeth Ratcliffe gave a lecture
about her counseling speciality, women facing mid-life crises
in the USA. The speech was well received and stimulated much
discussion in Kanazawa about “displaced homemakers.”
The stimulation was mutual: Mrs. Ratcliffe was inspired to
report back to American women about the situation in Japan. On
March 8, she led a workshop on “New ways of experiencing
women’s mid-life crisis as a ‘dangerous
opportunity’—in Kanazawa Japan and Oakland
USA,” as part of the International Women’s Day
activities in Berkeley.
Yukiko was her interpreter at this speech. The two women begin
a correspondence after Elizabeth returns to Oakland which they
maintain and nuture over the next 35 years.
|
|
1980-1983
|
Co-founder of The Divorce Clinic,
a low-fee service for both spouses in
Oakland, CA.
|
|
1981
|
Teaches Assertiveness Training part time at Vista
Community College, Berkeley, California.
|
|
March 5, 1981
|
Harold Wesley Robinson dies in Carmel Valley, California.
|
1981
|
Grandpa’s Story, A Yankee in China by Harold Wesley
Robinson, is published by Surf Cottage Press, Elizabeth &
Stephen Ratcliffe, editors. It is compiled from two sources. The
first, called Grandpa’s Story, was begun sometime between
August 1940 and May 1950 in Tientsin, China where Harold and Mary
had moved eight months after the Communists took over Tungchow
where they had been living. In his “Author’s
Note” Harold recounts how he was still working on this
manuscript in 1951, after he and Mary returned to the U.S. in in
December 1950. The second source, A Yankee in China, was written
after Harold and Mary retired to Carmel in 1963. Additional
sections include Mary’s “Grandma’s
Supplement,” Afterward, and three Appendices. Appendix A is
of Harold’s father’s and mother’s family
history, a Robinson Family Tree. Appendix B is an Editor’s
Note concerning Harold’s strong identification with his
birthplace of Warren, Vermont. Appendix C contains copies of two
articles Harold wrote in the early 1920s for National Geographic:
“The Hairnet Industry in Northern China” (Sep 1923),
and “Keeping Cool (?) in North China”. The second
article, although requested and paid for by the Geographic,
was never published.
|
|
December 7, 1981
|
Elizabeth sells the house at 7907 Rapp Lane in Talent Oregon.
|
|
1981-1982
|
Teaches Effective Parenting part time at Vista
Community College, Berkeley, California.
|
|
April 17, 1983
|
Patricia Ratcliffe marries Kirk Robert Phillips at Martin’s Beach,
Half Moon Bay, California.
|
|
1983
|
Elizabeth purchases the duplex at 1312 Albina Avenue in Berkeley,
Califonia.
|
|
1982-1994
|
Senior lecturer and supervisor of Art Therapy graduate students
at College of Notre Dame, Belmont, CA.
|
|
April 18, 1987
|
Bruce Ratcliffe marries Gloria Burrola in Fresno, California.
|
|
1989
|
Elizabeth’s second grandchild, Simone Paris Phillips, is
born of her parents, Patty and Kirk.
|
|
1989-1997
|
Long term volunteer supervisor and board member with Berkeley
Creative Living Center for adults with chronic mental illness.
Board member for Bonita House and Casa Vincentia, Oakland.
|
|
June 3, 1990
|
Harold Stambaugh Robinson dies in Mendocino, California.
|
|
1992
|
Elizabeth’s third grandchild, Nanette Elizabeth Phillips, is
born of her parents, Patty and Kirk.
|
|
1997-1998
|
Receives training in Jungian sand play with Flavia Millikan, ISPA.
|
|
1997-FILL-IN
|
Training received in Theories of Shame by Marc Miller, PhD.
|
|
August 21, 1998
|
Gloria and Bruce divorce.
|
|
November 3, 2001
|
Elizabeth marries Lewis Perry at the First Congregational Church
of Berkeley, CA
|
|
2005
|
Elizabeth’s fourth grandchild, John Waldo Ratcliffe, is
born of his parents, Stephen and Molly.
|
March 30, 2006
|
David Ratcliffe marries Nina Nicholyevena Vansuch in Santa Cruz, California.
|
|
2009
|
Elizabeth’s first great-grandchild, Emmanuelle Oona
Michalski-Ratcliffe, is born of her parents, Oona and Tomas.
|
|
June 2010
|
Elizabeth closes her Psychotherapy Private Practice.
|
|
February 25, 2011
|
James Wesley Robinson dies.
|
|
2012
|
Elizabeth’s second great-grandchild, Aurelia Ana Michalski-Ratcliffe, is
born of her parents, Oona and Tomas.
|
|
2015
|
Elizabeth’s third great-grandchild, Isa Ashley Michalski-Ratcliffe, is
born of her parents, Oona and Tomas.
|
|
December 17, 2015
|
Elizabeth Ratcliffe dies in Piedmont Gardens, Oakland, California.
|
