Moment in Time (January 26, 2022)

The James Oscar Thomas house was built on the bluff overlooking the Thomas farm, the river, and downtown Columbus. At the bottom from left to right is the newly created Northwest Boulevard, which was built to connect Goodale Blvd. with the new Upper Arlington community development. The inset shows Caroline Thomas Harnsberger looking over several of her books about Mark Twain.

Last week’s Moment in Time featured early Grandview settler and landowner Daniel Thomas and his grandson, James Oscar Thomas. The latter Thomas assumed ownership of his grandfather’s farm and raised his family in their home on the hill above Goodale and Northwest Boulevards (shown in the above photo from a 1918 Norwester magazine). James and his wife Edith had five children, including their oldest and only girl, Caroline, who was born a year after their 1901 marriage. They also had an adopted daughter from Italy, according to census record

Caroline Thomas was very interested in music and literature, participating in orchestra and studying in the English and French track in high school at Grandview High School. She acknowledged her father for supporting her interests, and stated that her parents always had classic books in their house and provided time away from work on the farm to read and practice her violin, her instrument of choice. She indicated that he always had a deep interest in the life and work of Mark Twain, introducing her as a child to Twain’s wit and wisdom, and her avid interest in him continued throughout her life.

After graduation from Grandview High School in 1920, the talented violinist enrolled at Northwestern University, studied at the prestigious Julliard School of Music in New York for three years, and then spent a year at the Conservatoire de Paris to further her violin expertise. She played Carnegie Hall at age 22. While in Paris she married Audley Harnsberger, an engineer with Pure Oil Company, who she met in Upper Arlington, where the Thomas family relocated after selling their farm to the Northwest Boulevard Company. After their marriage, she and Audley moved in 1926 to Winnetka, Illinois, just north of Chicago, where they raised three children, and lived until the early 1980s when Caroline moved back to Ohio after Audley died.

Because of her interest in Mark Twain, in the early 1940s she traveled to Hollywood to meet Twain’s surviving daughter, Clara Clemens Samossoud, and they became fast friends. The friendship prompted Clara to provide Caroline access to Twain's unpublished notes, letters, his marginal commentaries and also to discuss with her his spoken thoughts and philosophies. Caroline read all of Twain’s many books, and as an anthologist became very interested in his quotes, including quotes attributed to him that he may not have uttered. She set about compiling his quotes and statements and wrote her first book, Mark Twain at Your Fingertips, published in 1947. Over the next thirty years she wrote other books about Twain and was a script consultant for television and stage productions about him. She became the ultimate authority on Twain, and was often referenced in stories and articles about him.

Noting her expertise, her publisher asked her to put together a book of Abraham Lincoln quotations. Caroline also wrote A Man of Courage, the first biography of Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft. She later spent weeks at the Library of Congress researching American presidents for her Treasury of Presidential Quotations, which became a Literary Guild bonus book. Harnsberger also managed to meet George Bernard Shaw, the reclusive 92-year-old playwright, at his English country home. After Shaw’s death, Harnsberger obtained the rights for a book in which she compiled his quotations, Bernard Shaw: Selections Of His Wit And Wisdom. In total Mrs. Harnsberger wrote thirteen books, including the books on Mark Twain (including Mark Twain's Clara, based on her relationship with Clara Clemens published in 1982) and the books on Lincoln, Shaw, and Taft, a book of Greek and Roman mythology, The Life and Times of James Oscar Thomas, and a book on the history of Winnetka, Illinois.

In the mid 1960s Harnsberger opened Music in Northfield, a store where she sold stringed instruments and sheet music, repaired violins and guitars, and conducted music lessons. She also became a professional musician, playing violin for the Chicago Women's Symphony and for 37 years played with the Evanston Symphony, which she helped establish. She was also an avid painter and accomplished golfer.

Her husband Audley was a pilot, frequently flying with their two sons, who also became licensed pilots. As Audley became older, his blood pressure was a concern, so Caroline became licensed at the age of 50 (one of the first women to get a pilot's license) so that she could fly with him as his copilot. As she studied for her license, and while flying with him, the anthologist again came to the forefront, and she compiled all of the things she needed to know to pilot the plane should the need arise. She published these observations as A Pilot's Ready Reference Manual. That book sold more than 30,000 copies with twelve editions. Mrs. Harnsberger originally published the book under the name C.T. Harnsberger, because the publisher didn't feel that a reference book on flying by a woman would be taken seriously by pilots!

Caroline Thomas Harnsberger lived the last seven years of her life at First Community Village in Upper Arlington, which was seen as a homecoming, since her father helped establish First Community Church in Grandview and her mother was a resident at the Village when it first opened. Caroline continued to focus on painting and writing, and passed away in 1991 at 89 years old. (Note: Portions of this article were excerpted from the Winnetka Historical Society web site and a newsletter of First Community Village.)