CARR, Dr. J. Ross & Icea V. (GAUMER)

CARR, GAUMER

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 3/4/2015 at 09:41:46

Historic Hopeville
Clarke Pub. Co. Osceola IA.

BIOGRAPHY ~ DR. J. ROSS & ICEA CARR

Dr. J. Ross Carr was born near Grand River, Iowa in 1877. He was a rural school teacher four years near Hopeville, when he decided to give that up and go to college. Dr. Carr stated In 1961: "I entered the liberal arts course at Drake University ... paying my first semester's tuition. I never paid tuition after that; I always had a Job as an assistant teacher ... for three years in mathematics, then when I decided to enter medical school, worked as a doctor's assistant for four years."

The doctor was a busy fellow in college. He had married Icea V. Gaumer in 1912, before becoming a teacher. He fired a dozen neighborhood furnaces ... carried out ashes; he washed dishes in a restaurant, and he was assistant to the late Dr. Frank Ely of Des Moines.

He started his first practice as a doctor in Hopeville, but they soon lost him to the town of Grand River. He never lost his touch with Hopeville, and many of the vicinity still chose him as a doctor for their families. Dr. Carr died [September 25] 1966, and Icea (Gaumer) Carr died [March 27] 1974. Both are buried at Hopeville Cemetery.

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Reflections of Grand River, Iowa: 1881 - 1981
p. 64. Clarke Pub. Co. Osceola IA. 1981.

Dr. J. Ross Carr was born three miles east of Grand River [August 22] 1877, and was an infant when his family [William M. and Ella (Rilea) Carr] moved to Kansas to live for four years in a sod house.

Still a preschooler, Dr. Carr was moved back to Conway, Iowa, where his father operated a weekly newspaper. The elder Carr also produced weekly papers at Hopkins, Mo., Mound City, Mo. and Blanchard, Ia.

Adept in mchanical (sic) skills, Dr. Carr operated a printing press for his father. In that, Dr. Carr served in unmeasurable skill. Even so, Dr. Carr carried scars of a finger mashed in his press operation.

Graduated from Mound City High School, Dr. Carr became a rural school teacher for four years before his desire for higher education was aroused.

He enrolled at Drake University with a teacher's career in mind, but he was graduated in 1907 as a doctor of medicine. He began his practice the same year at Hopeville, Ia., now a crossroads ghost community nine miles southwest of Murray.

Icea Gaumer fell in love with Dr. Carr, some years her senior, when she was a child. In February 1912, she became his bride.

Mrs. Carr made her debut as his assistant to the physician at Beaconsfield, where a child suffered a split tongue by falling with some sharp object in her mouth.

The Carrs came to Grand River in 1914, and by 1918, when the first "Spanish influenza" epidemic broke out, Mrs. Carr was a seasoned manager of the doctor's operations. During the epidemic, the doctor showed up for about one meal a day, usually breakfast, at his home. He lived a tense, high strung existence, and when he wasn't using his spare moments to sleep, he developed his great idea for the tatting.

Fifty years of sacrificing service as a country doctor should qualify anyone for some hall of fame, but Dr. Carr became an expert at tatting, and this earned him national acclaim.

Dr. Carr faced up to a challenge from a female post office clerk. From her, he learned simple tatting, but the easy victory was not enough for the doctor; he devised techniques that made most women envious of his skill.

Dr. Carr invented and built a "supershuttle" by which he could handle seven strands of threads, each in a different color if desired, to produce an amazing array of designs in his fancy work.

Besides producing tatted doiles, many of them in original designs, Dr. Carr, when nearing eighty, had designed some tatted baby booties, a startling display of unusual knot tying.

The Carrs had three children: Adrian B. (Killed in Germany in W. W. II), Jim A., Jr. of ..... and Mrs. James Harryman of .... There were eight grandchildren.

NOTE: Adrian Benton Carr was interred in Germany. Dr. Carr died September 25, 1966. Icea Viola (Gaumer) Carr was born December 27, 1889, the daughter of Benjamin Franklin and Laura Belle (Smith) Gaumer, and died March 27, 1974. They were interred at Hopeville Cemetery, Clarke County, Iowa.

Oella Catherine (Carr) Harryman was born January 27, 1915, and died June 22, 1995, West Des Moines, Iowa. She married on October 29, 1933 James K. Harryman and they had four children, Roger Lee, James "Walter", Adrianna Margaret and Claude Ross. James K. Harryman was born March 4, 1910, and died in June of 1979. Oella and James were interred at Hopeville Cemetery.

Adrianna Margaret (Harryman) Norton was born December 29, 1940, and died August 31, 2000. She was interred at Hopeville Cemetery.

Note by Sharon R. Becker