Isabelle (Barbara) Daniel Hall, Later Fiske and Calhoun (her two marriages), was born on September 9, 1919 in Tucson,'Arizona. Her family were from North Carolina, and we're very proud of their Revolutionary War and Civil War roots. For more information please please see her family tree.). Her mother, Isabelle (Belle) Daniel Jones, had brought her brother, Abram Venable Jones, To Tucson to try to recover from tuberculosis.In that time of the only cure was thought to be dry air And heat. Belle took a job at a newspaper office In the nascent City of Tucson, and rode her horse Pe 9 miles each way every day to work. She had to leave her brother in a tent in the desrt where they were homesteading a ranch the Double J. She asked the Presbyterian minister to visit her brother. Apparently afraid of tuberculosis, he refused. Belle was furious. She immediately asked the Episcopalian minister if he would visit her brother.This minister immediately agreed. So Belle became an Episcopalian, Without a single glance back to hundreds of years of Presbyterianism in her family. FB newspaper office she met a young editor and journalist named John Hall Junior, who had roots in Alabama but had been born in Florida. The two fell in love, but were unable to marry because of their obligations to her brother and his mother who also had tuberculosis.It was not until 1918, when Bill was close to 40 years old, that they were finally able to marry. (AV Jones died in 1915, much mourned by Belle & her sister Polly, who came out to join her.) They married on March 20, 1918, and barbara was born In September of the following year. Sadly, John contracted Spanish flu while up in Phoenix, where he was working because he had punched out someone in his newspaper office of an editor or publisher, who had made an inappropriate remark about a lady. John was a man of high moral values. He died Of the flu and February 1920, when barbara was only six months old. It's the same thing had happened to her mother, her father had died when she was six months old. Her mother was very upset and blamed Barn for her entire childhood because she could not go to Phoenix to nurse John With a small baby. This might or might not have saved him. Belle Never remarried. Barbara Was raised by her mother, her aunt Polly, and to some extent by her cousins Isabella &'Archibald Caldwell. Barbara could draw as she said "I could always draw." Everyone in the family had some talent, but Barb 's ability to draw was remarkable. She was called Babble, Scots for baby, Which became Babs. When she met my father he suggested that Babs was not a very dignified name for a painter and that she might call herself Barbara, Which she did. She studied art in Los Angeles and then went to New York . Play or she got a job at Harvey Comics, Drawing The Black Cat, Girl Commandos, and The Blonde Bomber. My father may have worked on stories for the latter strip. He was a writer, and the WPA had closed it's doors so he no doubt needed some work. He did not consider comics a real art forum much to the dismay of later cartoonists. He suggested that Barbara no longer draw Comics but become a , serious painter.. She immediately tore up to $300 worth of finished artwork, which was horrifying to my father who had not expected her to take him at his word immediately.. They were married on January 8, 1946,This was at the behest of her mother, who did not want her daughter living in sin with a man in New York City or anywhere else. Despite my mothers Pedegree, it seems that his mother Rebecca Fishman, what is the most dismayed at The prospect of her son marrying a Shiksa. In any case they got married, and on April 10, 1946, they bought land in Vermont and opened it as an artist retreat. People came up from New York and would pay a few dollars for a week of relaxation, swimming, and raspberry picking. But it was not until the 1960s and 70s that many people begin to flood through Quarry Hill. Barbara, as much as Irving, Drew people to Quarry Hill. She also wanted children. He did not want any because he felt that artists and writers should give their attention to their work. But A friend convince them that they would be "the mother and father of a new race." I was born on August 12, 1950, and my brother William on February 4, 1954. A few years later my cousin David moved in with us, and my mother then had three lively children To care for. She in Irving invited many people up to Quarry Hill, and it was a very interesting period of time. She taught art but was not able to get much work done. She did do some marvelous tempera paintings and use of bad preparatory work on the panels.I will have to leave the story here for now but I will come back and finish this later. Thank you for reading all of this.
I wanted to share this family photo of Barbara Calhoun with the community. Location: New York City. Date: .
Click here for the image details page or here for the full-sized version (1537 x 2049).
