[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Home Page |Surname List |Index of Individuals |InterneTree |Sources


View Tree for Joseph Arthur Frédéric Joseph Arthur Frédéric "Art" Genest (b. 23 Aug 1905, d. 22 Apr 1986)

Joseph Arthur Frédéric "Art" Genest (son of Alexis Genest, Jr. and Marie Anne Aurélie Verreault)1858 was born 23 Aug 1905 in Waterbury, CT1858, and died 22 Apr 1986 in Troy, MI1859. He married Mildred "Millie" Graves Sparks on 06 Oct 1927 in probably Meriden, CT1859, 1860, daughter of Frederick L. Sparks and Edith May Prouty.

 Includes NotesNotes for Joseph Arthur Frédéric "Art" Genest:
Art "was brought up Catholic in the French tradition and that would include mandatory attendance at church each Sunday. He brought us up Catholic by the same tradition. My Mom had to agree to bring the children up Catholic in order to marry him in the Catholic Church. And at that they married them in the sacristy (the little room where the clergyman gets ready for church). My mother always resented that." --Ken Genest
As a child he and his siblings went to a one-room schoolhouse in Cheshire, CT, Union District School.
"He'd smoked since the age of 12, he said," remembers Rich Genest.
"He was kicked out of home at age 14 [about 1919/20] by his father. He stayed at a neighboring farm. The peoples' name was Bishop, and they befriended him," Ken Genest tells us.
Had a country store with a grocery route as a young man; his father set him up with it. Once Arthur had a ruptured appendix; the horse knew the route by himself.
One time they were out in a lightning storm and Arthur asked if they could take shelter, but they had to stand out in the storm.
Had a milk route.
Ken Genest tell us about his parents' meeting, "He was a young orderly in the Meriden Hospital when Mom was the night supervisor there. He courted her in a motorcycle and sidecar, which scandalized her mother. She said he was a 'black Frenchman' and disapproved the marriage."
Art had a tire store in Meriden, CT, Budget Tire Co., 1927, Grove St. and sold Dunlop tires, motor oil, and batteries.
The family sometimes went camping in Lake Sannapee 1932.
He worked for Dunlop Tire & Rubber Co. as the sales supervisor for Connecticut through the mid '30s. In 1937 or 1938 he opened his own tire store and sold Seiberling and U.S. Royal tires until the start of WWII.
The tire store in the picture "is the first of two stores he had. I believe both of them were called 'Art Genest Tires.' I remember because I had a teacher who said she saw that so much she began to think my last name was 'Tires.'"
"Wheels and tires have gotten smaller and wider since then, down to 15", 14" and even 13". That's measure across the tire bead part of the wheel's rim. But now they are going back up to 16" as an option wheels on some premium model cars.
"Of course tires weren't radial or steel belted then. That made for a lot of tire resale business because they weren't as strong or durable, recapping and even regrooving. Grandpa did that with a hot cutting iron, by hand, carving all new treads by eye!" --Ken Genest
"When the war came, Grampa owned a tire store, and they didn't make any tires during the war. And nobody knew how long the war would be, and so Grampa thought that if he moved to a farm as far north as he could be, they'd be safe from the bombs that were falling on London and England. I mean, we didn't know that the Germans might annihilate Great Britain -- because they almost did -- and then start in on us. And then there were the Japanese, and they were just all so eager to annihilate us. And the only thing that really saved us in those days was that the planes couldn't fly that far, so they would have to establish bases in order to refuel and come back up in the air, and so that's what Germany was doing. Once they won Great Britain, they would be that much closer to flying to us, and then it was the next step to take over Iceland, Greenland, and so forth, and the next thing we knew, we'd have planes dropping bombs on New York City and the East Coast. And so Grampa, right away, he was going to save his family, and so he moved to New Hampshire, bought a farm, and whatever happened, he knew he would be able to provide food for his family. That was the way his thinking ran. After the war, they sold that farm and moved back down to Connecticut where their families were still established, and they live in Meriden again." --Jacqueline Grineff Sieffert
The war ended in 1945. Art moved his family to Manchester, NH, in 1947.
"After I went to work in Detroit the third time, in 1957, my folks moved out here to Michigan (c. 1960) and rented a little house at the corner of Metro Parkway (16 Mile Rd.) and Groesbeck. Cows grazed behind it, and Grandpa used to take Lisa back there to see them. The house was behind a fruit stand. Now there's a big shopping center there.
"They helped out with the rocking of the new little arrival at 23058 King Drive, named Amy Lynne. She would start to cry as soon as anyone put her into her crib, but was quiet and went to sleep when we held her and rocked her, at which we all took turns. Then one day on a trip to the pediatricion, he diagnosed a hair growing on the underside of her eyelid and, once that was removed, she slept fine from then on, except for a nightmare now and then.
"My Mom couldn't stand the fighting between me and Jackie, so she and Dad moved back to Connecticut, into the house trailer at Loring's Court in Yalesville (Wallingford). That was the last place they lived while they were both alive.
"I think they pretty much cleaned out their savings with those moves. I remember the sad sight of the little rental trailer with all their earthly belongings hooked to the back of the little white Rambler American station wagon, ready to go back to Connecticut." --Ken Genest
On the trailer lot in Wallingford, CT, Art had a garden as big as the space the trailer occupied. His son Rich recalls, "The trailer, the burpless cucumbers, and don't forget my father's greatest pride (even got his picture in the newspaper with them): his outstandingly large and delicious tomatoes--up on poles, no less! That trailer park in Wallingford was a picnic area when I was a kid; it was called Loring's Grove. Well, one summer day, a nasty thunderstorm dropped a tornado on Loring's Grove and destroyed it. The trailer sites were developed after the land was cleared of debris. I think the name of the place became Loring's Court."
The simulated ruby ring of his that Amy now has might have been his mother's.
Art read a lot of French and improved his mastery of the language. He was said to speak Parisian French rather than Canadian French. He wrote French to granddaughter Lisa in letters.
Ken Genest: "In the 1980s, he was very sick - couldn't get out of bed. It was a virus or the flu. They hospitalized him, and, I guess, he had already sold the trailer and was moving to a nice senior citizen apartment complex in Cheshire. Dob had to clean the trailer, and I don't think he was in a mood to do it delicately or discriminatingly. My high school yearbook, diploma, a lot of keepsakes went."
Rich Genest: "One couple from Louisiana stopped by the house back in the late 1970s when Dad was visiting us. They were on a trip (to California, I think), checking phone books along the way for the name Genest, and found us that way. Dad enjoyed their visit very mush because the woman (whose maiden name was Genest) conversed with him at length in French."

More About Joseph Arthur Frédéric "Art" Genest:
Baptism: 27 Aug 1905, St. Anne Church, Waterbury, CT.1861
Burial: Unknown, Walnut Grove Cemetery, Meriden, CT.1862
Census: 1930, Meriden, New Haven Co., CT.1863
Confirmation: St. Bridget's Church, Cheshire, CT.1864
First Communion: St. Bridget's Church, Cheshire, CT.1864
Godfather: Alfred Genest.1864
Godmother: Lea Genest.1864
Residence 1: Bet. 1960 - 1964, 16 Mile Rd. & Groesbeck, Clinton Twp., Macomb Co., MI.1865
Residence 2: Bet. 1964 - 1981, 15 Loring Ct., Wallingford, CT.1866
Residence 3: Abt. 1981, retirement home, Cheshire, CT.1867
Residence 4: Abt. 1983, Bethany Villa, Troy, MI.1868
Social Security #: 059-05-2400.1869

More About Joseph Arthur Frédéric "Art" Genest and Mildred "Millie" Graves Sparks:
Marriage: 06 Oct 1927, probably Meriden, CT.1870, 1871

Children of Joseph Arthur Frédéric "Art" Genest and Mildred "Millie" Graves Sparks are:
  1. +Richard Arthur Genest, b. 07 Dec 1928, Meriden, CT1871, d. 20 Dec 2006, El Paso, TX1872.
  2. +Kenneth Paul Genest.
Created with Family Tree Maker


Description | How to Order | Samples | Free Demo | Quotes and Reviews | Books
Home | User Groups | Mail List | Add-Ons | Support

© Copyright 1996-2007, The Generations Network.