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1887 Joseph Lester Asbury

Born: July 31, 1887

Died: 1960

Buried:


His father was 1846 Alexander Perry Asbury.

His mother was 1848 Almira Beecher.

He was married to Vervian Ona Waite (born 1893), who was the
mother of his first son, 1918 Joseph Lester Asbury Jr..  Vervian
died in 1920, during the 1918 worldwide influenza epidemic.  She also
bore a son named "Vernon" who died shortly after birth, in 1921.

Joe was married in 1923 to 1893 Isabel Fitts.  
They had one child together, 1924 William Fitts Asbury.

Joe was known as "Ben" among his siblings, the nine surviving 
children of Alexander Perry Asbury and Almira Beecher Asbury. 
The "Ben" nickname adhered to little Joe because of A.P.'s 
admiration and support for Benjamin Harrison, an Indianapolis 
lawyer and Republican who defeated Grover Cleveland for the 
presidency in 1888.  Joe was born in 1887.  A.P. told him then 
"throw up your hands for Ben Harrison" which Joe dutifully did 
with a grin. Thus Joe became Ben. 
 
President Harrison, an appointed Brigadier general, had led one 
of the volunteer Indiana regiments during the Civil War.  
Alexander Perry had served in such a regiment, perhaps the very 
one Harrison had led.  And, besides, A.P. was a great admirer of 
Abraham Lincoln and thus an ardent Republican.
 
After Vervian and Vernon died in 1920, Joe went to live with 
his brother Emery and his large family on a farm near Puyallup,
Washington.  Baby Joe became his life in those hard years.  Joe 
began referring to him as "Daddy's little pal."  The nickname
"Pal" lasted the 86 years of Pal's life, which ended in 2005. 

Joe obtained a job teaching journalism and Spanish at Stadium High
School in Tacoma.  The compensation wasn't much. He had but one suit 
of clothing whose trousers had been patched so often that he was  
humiliated.  When he wrote on the blackboard he always faced the 
students, and wrote at his side, to prevent the students from seeing 
his impoverishment. 

Joe later became a hotelier and a newspaperman, primarily in Utah 
but also in Washington and California.  He moved his family frequently.

There is some information about Joe in his son William's autobiography.

Here is a transcription of an informal family history written by Joe 
about the family history of his father, Alexander Perry Asbury, 
and his ancestors.

Joe died of a heart attack when he discovered his second wife, 
Isabel Fitts, dead by suicide.