ABOUT 1905, my grandmother-to-be embarked on a madcap car trip with her mother’s first cousin, Harry Vars. Along with two other relatives and a chauffeur, they motored 800 kilometres, from Buffalo to Norwood, Ont., and back. Ruth Birdsall’s letters home were breathless with awe and amusement. (“I have to pinch myself to see if I am real.”)
There were numerous flat tires, startled horses, curious crowds, and sunburns, but the teenaged Ruth took it all in stride. (“Arthur [the Vars chauffeur] gave himself a black eye when he was fixing [the car], so he was the centre of attraction all the last part of the trip. Every place we stopped, they wanted to know if the ‘Canuck had done him up.’ ”)
It’s hard to say whether the car in the accompanying photo – that’s Harry Var’s wife Gertrude and son Addison – was the one used for the Norwood odyssey. Harry Vars (1864-1926) was fascinated by cars (and speed boats) and he had lots of money to feed his hobbies.
Some might argue Harry had earned his good life. And my grandmother’s family helped get him there.
Grandma’s grandmother, Catherine, was a Vars before she married a Norwood merchant named John Almus Butterfield. In the early 1880s, Harry Vars moved in with the Butterfields after a tumultuous childhood in which his mother, stepmother, and father (Catherine’s brother) all died. Perhaps Harry learned a thing or two about business from John Butterfield whose store promotions boasted a long list of items – from groceries to boots – before noting that “Customers will find our stock complete, comprising many articles it is impossible here to enumerate, and all sold at moderate prices.”
Thus inspired, Harry moved on to Buffalo, where he made his fortune in what we could kindly call early-pharmaceuticals – wonder drugs such as Burdocks Blood Bitters and Dr. Thomas’ Eclectric Oil.
• Irresistible side note: In 1926 Harry, ever the adventurer, was on a world trip with Gertrude and her sister when he died after falling off a gangway while boarding a ship in Shanghai.
All in the family
My grandmother, Ruth Butterfield (Birdsall) Elmhurst (1888-1974), was a gifted letter writer right up to the mid-1940s when she was left partially paralyzed after brain surgery. The letters about the Harry Vars car trip – and scores of others – were preserved by my aunts, the late Rachel (Elmhurst) Grover and Barbara (Elmhurst) Mather. I dove into these letters during the Pandemic, first out of curiosity and then as the basis for a book, Life & Legacy, published in 2021. How I loved that project!
But my 80-page magazine-style effort pales beside the history of the Vars family my cousins Rob and Andy Elmhurst and Holly McBride lent me a couple of months back. At 839-pages, this 1976 hardcover book compiled by Harold A. Vars is overwhelming – and ultimately fascinating. As I muddled through pages of family crests, archival correspondence, and significant family dates, I recalled the bemused smiles of my cousins’ parents (the late Laura and Dick Elmhurst) when they hauled out the book during a visit. Apparently, a long-lost Vars relative had wandered into the Elmhurst farm one day, eager to present the book to the Norwood, Ont., branch of the family.
• Reassuring side note: If you read my last blog, you’re probably getting nervous right about now. Indeed, this is the same book that launched my dizzying quest to find out which relative owned Paul Revere’s horse. Don’t worry – I am NOT about to relive the tangled Larkin family tree! (You can find that in my previous blog – if you must. https://kathrynstorring.wordpress.com/2024/01/07/hey-paul-revere-took-my-relatives-horse/)
Besides, who needs that darn horse? The Vars family has fascinating tales of its own.
A duel or a murder?
Let’s start with the relative who introduced the Vars to the New World, Lord John DeVars. His bio, presented in various forms in the Vars family history book, reads like a movie plot.
• Lord John DeVars: Born in France about 1653, Lord John fell in love with Newport, Rhode Island, during a scouting trip about 1682. He returned home, sold his property, and set sail with his wife, Mary, and their wee son, Isaac.
Some accounts point to a duel, others to a duplicitous ship captain: one way or the other, by the end of the trip, Lord John DeVars was dead, the fortune gone, and Mary and Isaac were ditched in Rhode Island.
Mary later remarried and settled in Westerly. Isaac shortened his last name to Vars, married Rebecca Larkin, and put down deep roots. (How does this connect to our fun-loving car-guy Harry Vars? Harry’s great grandfather, Joseph, was born in Westerly. And Joseph was Isaac Var’s great grandson.)
• Cheeky side note: We took a day trip to Westerly in 2013 when our son Nate and his wife, Emma Sarconi, were living in Providence. Strangely, the Vars history is a big yawn now that Taylor Swift has a summer home in town. (We tracked down Taylor’s little cottage instead of the Vars family graveyard.)
What’s in a name?
Taylor Swift is such a modern name, right? But I have to admire some of the Rhode Island names from the past.
The Vars family tree has aspirational names like Prudence, Pardon, Honor, Patience, Silence, Deliverance – and George Washington Vars. It also has names that puzzle a modern ear – Peleg, Dorcas, Enoch, Waity, Philander, Billings and Horatio.
Mysterious amputation
I was considering adding Isaac Vars’ son Theodaty to the above list when I stumbled upon an intriguing note about his leg: “Theodaty Vars died at the Vars homestead in Westerly, RI, in 1795, at age 85. Many years before his death, he lost one leg by having a hard oakum wad shot into it by a careless young man at a husking.”
Huh? OK, I would like to report that I know exactly what that means, but my genealogical zeal has limits, and that one is high on the list. Here’s what I know from a quick round of research:
• Oakum was made by adding tar to picked-apart rope. It was used to seal gaps in ship planks and log homes.
• According to The History of Rhode Island, “picking oakum” was one of the jobs assigned to residents of what must have been a dreary place despite the article’s upbeat assurances that it was “worthy of commendation and praise” – Westerly’s Asylum for the Poor.
• Harvest time included corn-husking parties.
So … was Theodaty Vars shot by a frustrated resident of the “Asylum for the Poor” or by a rowdy at a husking party? I don’t know, so let’s move on to this tantalizing addition from the Vars tome:
“The old crutches he used to walk with were in the house but a few years ago, but I think they have been destroyed by heedless boys as also many other things that were there and should have been sacredly preserved.”
No comment from me.
Bring in the prisoners
• Capt. John Vars (1735-1811; Theodaty’s son): During the American Revolution, this “staunch and true patriot” was furnishing new recruits with arms and ammunition hidden in his cellar when he was nabbed by the British. He was imprisoned at Newport for six to eight weeks.
According to the Vars book, Capt. John’s pregnant wife, Martha, went to the prison to plead for his release. “She received in answer to her tears and supplications the reply that John Vars should be hung if there never was another man born.”
But then … the commander in New Jersey received word that a number of British officers captured at the battle of Princeton, N.J., on Jan. 3, 1777, would be executed if “a hair of the head of Capt. John Vars was injured.“ He was released that night.
But it was not over. Before the British left Rhode Island, they burned about 20 houses, including that of John and Martha.
And on that sad note, let’s move on to the American Civil War.
• Private Charles C. Vars (1843-1914) (Theodaty’s great-grandson): Private Charles Vars, a Union soldier, penned a heartfelt account of his eight months as a prisoner-of-war entitled A Summer in Southern Prisons.
After his capture in Virginia May 16, 1864, he was marched, transported in packed freight trains, imprisoned, starved, and degraded. About the harsh life in a Confederate prison in Andersonville, Ga., he wrote: “It seemed to be the deliberate plan of the authorities to render all prisoners, who by reason of a strong constitution were able to retain a hold upon life, unfit for further duty.”
At one point, he made a wild dash for freedom through a tunnel dug by prisoners only to be tracked down by bloodhounds and placed in the stocks for 24 hours. “My sufferings will never be forgotten, and it is beyond my power to describe them.”
Finally, after time in a Florence, S.C., prison, he was among 1,000 prisoners parolled. Charles offers this stirring description of their first night of freedom, huddled on a wharf in Charleston. S.C.:
“Some were much excited with anticipation of what the morning would bring forth, some were crying, some praying, and some singing. It was a night never to be forgotten and no one outside of that party can realize the feelings of the men as they shivered in their rags through the long hours and watched for the dawn of the morning.”
He finally made it home to Rhode Island, where at first his family did not recognize him.
“From a stout, rugged country boy, as I was when I enlisted, I came from the service a broken down, almost entirely wrecked physically, human being, and never expect to fully recover from its effects.”
Still, later in the Vars book I found this notation: After Charles returned home, he enlisted for one year in the Veteran Army Corp, for a total of four years and four months in the service.
• One final note: For the record, these daring, resilient Vars genes clearly evaporated before the family tree got to me.
Moving Forward 
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