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| Thomas
Clayton Wolfe was born on October 3, 1900, the youngest of eight children.
His parents, W. O. and Julia, and siblings lived in a five-room home
located at 92 Woodfin Street in Asheville, North Carolina. Wolfe later
wrote about his memories of the roaring fires and sumptuous meals
of his early childhood. In 1906, Julia Wolfe purchased the Old Kentucky
Home boarding house, located a block away at 48 Spruce Street. Six-year-old
Tom went with his mother when she moved in to run her new business.
Although the two houses were only a block apart, Wolfe felt separated from the rest of his family and isolated in the boarding house. Julia was protective of her youngest child and insisted that he stay close to her. Although he was allowed to spend the days with his brothers and sisters at his father's house, at night he was summoned by Julia back to the boarding house. |
|
THE
WOLFE FAMILY
|
| MOTHER
AND FATHER - Married in 1885 A turn-of-the-century image of Thomas Wolfe's parents, William Oliver and Julia Westall Wolfe, taken around the time Tom was born. "The strange figure of Oliver Gant cast its famous shadow through the town . . . . And what Eliza endured in pain and fear and glory no one knew . . . . For from the first, deeper than love, deeper than hate, as deep as the unfleshed bones of life, an obscure and final warfare was being waged between them." —T. W., Look Homeward, Angel |
 W. O. & Julia Wolfe - 1900 Courtesy NCDAH |
 Julia & Leslie, ca. 1885-1886 Courtesy of the Pack Library |
AN
EARLY TRAGEDY - Leslie's Death Julia Wolfe and her first-born child, Leslie E. Wolfe. Nine months after W. O. and Julia were married, the first of eight Wolfe children was born. Sadly, Leslie lived just nine months before she died of infant cholera. "The
first, a girl, died . . . of infant cholera |
| THE
SECOND CHILD - Demure, Shy, Maidenly . . . Effie became the oldest sister in a large, rambunctious family. Quiet by nature, she was married at the age of 21 in the Old Kentucky Home. "She was a timid, sensitive girl, looking like her name—Daisy-ish industrious and thorough in her studies . . . . She had very little fire, or denial in her; she responded dutifully to instruction; she gave back what had been given to her. She played the piano without any passionate feeling for the music, but she rendered it honestly with a beautiful rippling touch." —T. W., Look Homeward, Angel |
 Effie Nelson Wolfe (1887-1950) Courtesy NCDAH |
 Frank Cecil Wolfe (1888-1956) Courtesy NCDAH |
THE
THIRD CHILD - The Wandering Rebel . . . Frank had a difficult position in the Wolfe family. As the oldest boy, a good deal of responsibility was placed on his shoulders at an early age. "Angered by [Eliza's] pregnancy [with Eugene], Gant went almost daily to Elizabeth's house in Eagle Crescent, whence he was delivered nightly by a band of exhausted and terrified prostitutes into the care of his son Steve . . . . 'Son,' said Elizabeth, shaking Gant's waggling head vigorously, 'don't you carry on, when you grow up, like the old rooster here. But he's a nice old boy when he wants to be.'" —T. W., Look Homeward, Angel |
| THE
FOURTH CHILD - The Dependable Performer . . . The family often relied on Mabel. She took over the running of her father's house on Woodfin Street and was frequently called into service at the boardinghouse as well. For several winters she escaped by touring in a Vaudeville group. "Helen . . . a tall thin girl, with large hands and feet, big-boned, generous features, behind which the hysteria of constant excitement lurked. The bond between the girl and her father grew stronger every day . . . . Her face was full of heartiness and devotion, sensitive, whole-souled, hurt, bitter, hysterical, but at times transparently radiant and handsome." —T. W., Look Homeward, Angel |
 Mabel Elizabeth Wolfe (1890-1958) Courtesy of the Pack Library Image ca. 1914-1916, "Singer—Ragtime to Opera." |
 Grover Cleveland Wolfe (1892-1904) Courtesy NCDAH |
THE
TWINS - Forever Young . . . The fifth and sixth children in the Wolfe family were twins. Fond of politics, W. O. named his boys after the presidential candidates of 1892—Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. In 1904 Julia opened her boardinghouse in St. Louis for the World's Fair. Grover, then 12 years old, contracted typhoid and died while the family was in St. Louis. "Eugene grew conscious of a gentle peering face, a soft caressing voice, unlike any of the others in kind and quality, a tender olive skin, black hair, sloeblack eyes, exquisite, rather sad, kindliness . . . . This was Grover—the gentlest and saddest of the boys." —T. W., Look Homeward, Angel |
| Benjamin
Harrison Wolfe Ben worked for the Asheville Citizen, as well as a newspaper in Winston-Salem, N.C. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, he contracted pneumonia while on a visit home from Winston-Salem. He died in an upstairs bedroom of the Old Kentucky Home, one week short of his 26th birthday. "So, to Ben dead was given more care, more time, more money than had ever been given to Ben living . . . And as the wind howled in the bleak street, and Eliza wove a thousand fables of that lost and bitter spirit, the bright and stricken thing in the boy twisted about in horror, looking for escape from the house of death. No More! No More! (it said). You are alone. You are lost. Go find yourself, lost boy, beyond the hills." —T. W., Look Homeward, Angel |
 Benjamin Harrison Wolfe (1892-1918) Courtesy NCDAH |
 Frederick William Wolfe (1894-1980) Courtesy of the Pack Library |
THE
SEVENTH CHILD - The Salesman and the Sailor . . . Fred was a good natured, outgoing "natural born salesman" who had a long and colorful life. As an adult, he settled in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Active in establishing the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Association, he remained involved with the Memorial until his death at the age of 85. "Luke had been the [local] agent [for the Saturday Evening Post] since his twelfth year: his reputation for salesmanship was sown through the town; he came with wide grin, exuberant vitality, wagging and witty tongue, hurling all his bursting energy into an insane extraversion. He lived absolutely in event: there was in him no secret place, nothing withheld and guarded—he had an instinctive horror of all loneliness." —T. W., Look Homeward, Angel |
| THE
EIGHTH CHILD - The "Book-Brooder" . . . Tom, the youngest of the eight Wolfe children, was born to a mother in her early forties and a father over fifty. His mother’s over protectiveness coupled with his father’s alcoholism often resulted in Tom’s attempt to escape his tumultuous home life by turning to books. It was through books that Tom learned of the world beyond Asheville's mountains . . . "By 1900, Oscar Wilde and James A. McNeill Whistler had almost finished saying the things they were reported as saying, and that Eugene was destined to hear, twenty years later." —T. W., Look Homeward, Angel |
 Thomas Clayton Wolfe (1900-1938) Courtesy of the Pack Library |
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