Greetings family and friends, today's photo from the Ralph Family Album pictures our grandfather, Charles O. Ralph, at a gathering of East Landsdowne, Pennsylvania neighbors a little over 100 years ago.
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“Burgess originally meant a freeman of a borough (England, Wales, Ireland) or burgh (Scotland). It later came to mean an elected or unelected official of s municipality, or representative of a borough in the English House of Commons. The term was also used in some of the American Colonies. In the Colony of Virginia a “burgess” was a member of the legislative body, which is termed the “House of Burgess”
Our paternal grandfather, Charles Ormston Ralph, was born in Philadelphia in 1889 and grew up in the west section of the “City of Brotherly Love”. Charles’s dad William was a letter carrier and the family likely led a modest lifestyle. Charles married Florence Reber in 1908 and my dad, William Henry Ralph (Billy), was born in 1911. The Ralph’s moved to East Lansdowne, a fairly new Philadelphia borough, that had been created from a local family farm in 1902. Grandpa Ralph worked as a machinist making boring bars for locomotives for the H.B. Underwood Company and he and Florence may have likely rented one or more floors of a large signature two story home. He was a member of the East Landsdowne Fire Company No. 1 and with apparent political aspirations was also a candidate for the position of town Burgess. We haven’t been able to find evidence that he was elected, however Charles appears in the circa 1919 photo (sitting at the table fourth from the left) to be an admired pilar of the community. Within a few years the Ralph’s separated and Florence and Billy moved to Oakland and lived with her sister Laura until settling on the “farm” in Castro Valley and remarrying. Charles followed a few years later, remarried and established a Chicken Farm in Castro Valley and later a fuchsia nursery, planting the Ralph’s California roots.
East Lansdowne Fire Company Membership
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