MR. WILLIAM RATHBONE EDWARDS, GREEN LAKE, WISCONSIN.
BERLIN - William Edwards of 184 S. State St., Berlin, will mark his 90th birthday at his home Tuesday with a cake and small gathering of friends and neighbors.Mr Edwards can look back over a career in the quarries, which began in his home village of Penmaenmawr, Wales. His father and brothers worked in the quarries there and before he was 14 years old he would go up to the quarry and halp by carrying tools to the blacksmith or bringing lunch.
At pay day he sometimes got a shilling or so. He had to walk up the mountain to work, because he had a brother killed by the cable car trolley and his parents would not let him ride it. Another brother aged 97, still lives in Wales. A sister lives on the old homestead.
Edwards has never been back for a visit; heart attacks suffered by his wife and later by himself prevented the planned trip twice. She died in 1966.
He spoke of coming to America third class in 1904 at a time when a derpression brought people from all over Europe in droves - among them Jews who were persecuted in Russia and came even lower that third class. Edwards said he used to watch them down in the hold of the ship singing and dancing and making the best of it.
The stonecutter came first to Pennsylvania and worked with an almost exclusively Welsh group cutting blue stone. Later he worked in Stone Moungtain. Ga. From there he went to quarries in Utah, then to Wilkinson, Wash., near Seattle. From there he went to quarries in St. Helen, Oregon, then back to Washington again. At that time his girlfriend from Wales was making plans to come over and they were to be married in Seattle.
His wife, the former Elizabeth Williams, came over from Penmaenmawr in 1909 to Berlin where her father worked in the Berlin quarry. She intended this just to be a visit to her father. However, a depression thre the quarrymen out of work in Washington and the wedding waited until Edwards came to Berlin and got a job. He has lived in Berlin ever since.
The couple had two daughters, Mrs. Elizabeth Mumbrue and Mrs. Olwen Kulnick of Milwaukee, and one son, Glen, of Hayward, California. There are three grandaughters and one great grandaughter.
Mr. Edwards said when work shut down in Berlin he did other kinds of stonecutting in other places. Before he retired he was working summers only, cutting building stone in Food du Lac.
He is amember of the Masonic Lodge and Union Congregational Church and was a member of the Stonecutters Union as long as it existed.
He disclaimed any talents for singing, which many of his fellow Welshmen possessed. He also credited his father and brother of being poets - another Welsh talent he said he did not share.
His lifelong enthusiasm has been for gardening and flowers. He still has a garden, although each year he has had to make it smaller. He has a knack of making houseplants grow well.
He said, "I like to see things grow and love nature in all its glory."