Community Life

Return Of The Hamiltons And Other Neighborhood Musings

By Kathleen O’C. Hamilton

September 1993

Historical September 1993 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.

“They’re back!” This is the swift response to the return of now six of the twelve adult children of Peg and Louis Hamilton in recent months to roots in the Skinker DeBaliviere Parkview community.

This phenomenon was thought to be of interest to the Times readers, and I was asked (as one who married into the. clan and could give more of a reporter’s viewpoint), to entertain you readers with this account.

The fact that now six of the twelve Hamilton children have come home to the original neighborhood of their parents and grandparents proves once again that St. Louis is really a villageespecially this part of the west end of the city where almost everyone, if one looks hard enough, is no more that “Six Degrees of Separation”, as the recent Broadway play demonstrates, from being connected or related to mother person in some way.

A starting point of this saga could be the fateful meeting of one Margaret (Peg) Prendergast of 60xx Westminster. and Louis Hamilton of 2xx Westgate in Parkview, at the newly formed St. Roch’s Drama Club (perhaps a forerunner of the current noted thespian group in Skinker DeBaliviere), in the spring of 1935.

The young couple were to many at St. Roch’s in the fall of 1936. Peg had graduated from St. Roch’s (where her grandson, Dan would also graduate filly years later).

She finished at Rosati Kain. Louis had completed his engineering degree at nearby Washington. University. Like many Irish Catholic families in what Louis calls the “pre-pill era”, they proceeded to have a large family – and twelve children was considered larger than the average. Peggy Hamilton, Peg and Louis’ sixth child, now of 60xx Waterman (via California and Texas), recalls helping her mother sew name tags on the eldest son, Jeff’s clothing (before laundry markers came into vogue), when Jcff was going to Notre Dame in the mid fifties. Peg, the mother, was getting teary-eyed because her “baby” was going off to college. Peggy remembers pointing to Lou, the twelfth child in the crib,and saying: “Mother, that’s truly your baby!” It all depends on the point of view. Peg Prendergast Hamilton was born in 1914, the youngest of seven children of Theresa Smith and Jeffrey J. Prendergast.

He looks like a jovial man from his pictures, and was the veterinarian for the city of St. Louis.

This was a job with much wider impact than first thought since horses were still a major mode of public and private transportation in the early 1900’s.

The Prendergasts lived in a commodious house at 52xx Maple Avenue, just a block away from the “Meet Me in St. Louis” house on Kensington Avenue that Judy Garland sings about in the song, “The Boy Next Door’.

For those (and there are many St. Louisans who still identify communities in the city by parishes whether Catholic or not) who want a more precise focus on the area, it is St. Mark’s parish.

I remember my grandmother being concerned when she knew I was marrying Alan Hamilton, the second of the twelve, that he was from ?outside” our parish of St. Roch’s! Although Alm was not the “Boy next door, he was really the grandson of ow neighbors in Parkview, the Tom Hamiltons, who lived two doors down from my family on Westgate. Unfortunately, Grandpa Jeff Prendergast was also a large man with a failing heart, and he died when Peg was four years old.

I truly believe Peg Hamilton developed her extraordinary social skills, humor, and stamina in raising a large family from those early days in her mother’s house as the youngest of seven children.

To further illustrate the small world of St. Louis, Theresa Prendergast had two sisters, Agnes Cronin and Margaret Ebbs. Aunt Margaret Ebbs was Betty Renard’s grandmother, and Bob and Betty live only four doors from Alan and myself in the 62xx block of McPherson.

It wasn’t until I met Alan at a Notre Dame dance in college that I realized the Westgate connection – but not the number of children in the family. Alan’s two brothers, Jeff and Bill, also were to many two of my college classmates at Maryville. Bill Hamilton, the third of the twelve, told me slyly at that fateful dance that he was one of three brothers.

I thought it was a nice coincidence since I was one of three sisters. Little did I know what was in store when I was invited to the Hamilton house during that Christmas break from college.

I often think a video would be the most definitive description of my first meeting of the Hamilton family.

I walked in the front entrance hall, and immediately to my left were a pair of elaborate double storm doors, without glass, that framed the entrance to the living room. 1 could hear the “woosh” of the doors as they repeatedly opened and closed – and many small boys seemed to be running in and out through the lower opening of the glass free doors. What also caught my eye was the mannequin’s leg that was attached to the ceiling in the corner of the entrance hall.

The toe of her shoe had a hook on it which held some rings of car keys. Peg Hamilton was crossing the entrance hall on her way to the living room, carrying a large. carved turkey on a tray.

She was a warm and hospitable person, and noticed me eying the mannequin’s leg hanging from the ceiling.

After greeting me, she explained that a family friend with a wicked sense of humor had brought the leg over to commemorate the time Peg had fallen through the ceiling when the Hamiltons were extending the second floor for dormitory space for the eight boys.

She had slipped through the then unfinished flooring, causing her leg to temporarily stick through the ceiling. “Of course”, she said, “what made it more difficult to get out was the fact 1 was nine months pregnant!” “Of course”, I said, summoning up all the equanimity I could muster for my nineteen years. Then, I ceremoniously opened one of the glassless storm doors into the living room so Peg could put the turkey on the coffee table. Peg also commented that her husband, Louis, was in the metal window business, and he felt storm doors would keep out some of the noise of the family from the living room. Unfortunately, the boys were running through the doors before the glass was put in.

For safety’s sake, the doors remained glassless.

I ruminated on all this, and the growth of the family from the three boys, as I had thought, to eight boys and four girls, while I savored the turkey as the storm doors kept whooshing open and closed, Shortly after Alan and I were married and returned to live in St. Louis from Washington D.C., Louis Hamilton had to relocate with his family to Los Angeles, California. Peg would call during those first few months, saying it was “so lonely with only seven children now at home!” Alan and I were now the sole “St. Louis Hamiltons” up to the late seventies.

This is the period where we grew to know and appreciate his great aunt, Grandma’s sister, Agnes Cronin. a spirited widow who lived in an apartment on Delmar, just east of what is now Regional Hospital. Aunt Agnes was a fiercely independent eighty year old with crackling brown eyes, snow white hair, and porcelain skin, who always enjoyed her weekly trips to Moll’s, an elegant grocery store, which was in its twilight years in the late sixties.

It was an imposing edifice at the intersection of DeBaliviere and Delmar. with the enormous rococo looking signature clock out front that is now ensconced on Laclede’s Landing.

It was also during the seventies that Alan and 1 and our family moved three times in three blocks in Parkview, taking advantage of the era’s rehabbing boom. 1 began to be aware of “Prendergasts Past” in Skinker DeBaliviere.

As an eager real estate agent, 1 remember holding an Open House on a home in the 60xx block of Westminster, and realizing that it was the same one that Peg and Grandma Prcndcrgast had lived in when Pcg married Louis Hamilton.

After the wedding at St. Roch’s in 1936, “Papa Joe” Garavelli, who owned the original Garavelli’s restaurant on DeGiverville and DeBaliviere, and who had been a great friend of Peg’s late father, Dr. Jeffrey Prendergast, hosted the wedding reception at his restaurant. Pcg had worked for “Papa Joe” after school at Rosati Kain as a cashier.

She fondly recalled Papa Joe personally slieing hot roast beef. sandwiches on dollar rolls as an after school snack for her and her good friend and vivacious fellow student, Frances Dolan. Shortly after Peg and Louis moved back to St. Louis from California in 1979, Peg died suddenly.

Her death left a tremendous void.

As her oldest sister, Aunt Helen Matthews said: “She was the pole that held up the tent.” But fate and Providence had a wonderful way of renewal, for in 1980, Louis Hamilton married Frances Dolan Holloran, Peg’s longtime friend from high school. Fran was a widow with ten grown children!

The steps of the Church of Mary Queen of Peace in Webster were completely filled by the bride and groom, their combined twenty two children and spouses and grandchildren.

I also remember that Peg’s oldest sister, Aunt I lelen and her husband, Del Matthews, talked about their first apartment on Nina Place and Waterman in the 1930’s. Aunt Helen used to say that on Saturday mornings, Del would walk one block to Don and Zeller, (the elegant catering company and restaurant, now the headquarters of Central West End Bank) on DeBaliviere, for wonderful breakfast rolls. Helen said that she could smell the fragrance of the fresh bread and rolls from the bakery of Don and Zeller as Del was walking up Waterman with their breakfast. Really, it was the glory days for the “foodies” of that era with Garavelli’s, Don and Zeller and Moll’s, all within blscjis of each other.

The streetcars ran along Pershing, then west past Parkview where they turned around at Big Bend. Life was very civilized with such convenient transportation. Perhaps with the Light Rail now running, and the lure of a number of fine area restaurants such as Redel’s, we have again come full circle in our neighborhood.

It was in 1978 that the “Return of the Hamiiltons” began. Young Lou Hamilton, the twelfth child, came back from college in California to seek his fame and fortune in St. Louis.

In 1992, Lou married Tricia Roland at St. Roch’s Church, on the fifty-sixth wedding anniversaty of his parents’marriage in that very church. Lou, Trish and Josh Roland, a recent graduate of St. Roch’s, now live on the 6lxx block of Kingsbury.

In the summer of 1989, Louis Hamilton celebrated his eightieth birthday with a grand reunion, and Peggy Hamilton moved back to St. 1,ouis from Houston to help her brother, Alan, in the apartment management business.

She now lives on the 60xx block of Waterman. Jocelyn Hamilton, fifth of the twelve children. also moved to St Louis. and following in the tradition of her grandfather. Jeffrey Prendergast. has become active in politics as a member and secretary of the Board of Election Commissioners for the city. appointed by Governor Carnahan. last year, Georgia Hamilton, the fourth of the twelve, moved from New Hampshire to St. Louis with her younger daughter Georgia’s older daughter and her husband also live here with their baby girl who is Louis Hamilton’s first great grandchild! Jim Hamilton. the eleventh child, has not moved to St Louis from his Michigan home. but he did marry his wife, Rose, to round out 1992 in St. Louis on New Year’s Eve at our house on McPherson Truly. 1992 was not a dull year!

The most recent Hamiltons to move back to St. Louis are Marc. the “seventh child of a seventh child’, and his wife Nan They moved here only two months ago from Texas. and now live on the 60xx block of McPherson Marc said that he and Nan decided to move back to St Louis after many years in Los Angeles It would be a great lifestyle change as family members began relocating here from around the country.

He thought that they “naturally chose Skinker DeBaliviere, and with a little luck, we can get the remaining family members back here, too!”