My grandparents lived in Shippensburg, PA. My mother was born there and my father returned there after the War of the Rebellion. My parents became good friends, principally through a revival meeting in the Church of God, at which Father took a positive stand for Christ; Mother had been brought up according to the strictest teachings of that sect. Their wedding story has been told as well incidents of their honeymoon.

Some months later (November 27, 1867) they established a home in Newville, PA in a stone house on Main Street near Corporation St., the house is still inhabited. Father had his shop (jewelry) at Dunlap's hotel. It was a new and lonely life for Mother but soon she made friends with kindly neighbors.

On March 1, 1868, a heavy snow fell, and on that blustery night at ten minutes after midnight, I chose to be born. Dr. Robinson and his good wife cared for the young mother. Father tramped a mile through the snow, drifted and unbroken, to meet the train on which Aunt Mary Geesaman came, when a nurse failed them. The boy was welcome. After consultations, Uncle Dave urged the name George Butts in recognition of the devotion of Dr. George Butts [born1794, died 1861] and his wife of Shippensburg [his wife died at 96 years of age; she was "Aunty Butts" to us.] to my mother during her orphaned childhood. I was taken to see the good doctor early the next year shortly before his death.

At six months, father and mother took me to Lancaster County and Philadelphia to show me off to relatives. This was the beginning of a life of travel.

Also in 1869, (March), we three moved to High Street near Main where we lived two years, blank to my memory. There is a legend that I kicked the high chair and myself from the table thus upsetting the status quo, but what child has not?

After Nellie's birth we moved to our more permanent home - the brick house at 13 Big Spring Avenue. [formerly Railroad Street and then Center] It was here that my conscious life really began.

To a boy's awakening mind, the surroundings were stimulating. The Cumberland Valley 18 miles wide was bounded north and south by two ranges of mountains which were criss-crossed by Indian trails, the best know Sterrett's Gap and Doubling Gap with its medicinal springs. The Scotch-Irish settled here and built a line of Presbyterian churches about ten miles from each other and about 35 miles north of the Maryland border. The Newville Presbyterian Church was in existence in 1736. A few men from our town went to the Indian Wars and many more to the Revolutionary War. Almost 50 are buried in the graveyards, including James Denny, a maker of wrought-iron cannon for the army. Confederate soldiers marched through the town but no organized confederate detachment ever got beyond the North Mountain; all were ordered to Gettysburg 25 miles from our town. What a chance to develop an interest in history!

The fertile countryside furnished plenty of food, flour from the mills, garden produce, fresh and home cured meats, and good cooks to prepare all. The Big Spring, "fisherman's paradise" furnished trout and the Creek, a mile away was crowded with other fish. Both streams afforded swimming in summer and skating in winter. There were many good chances to run away, and numerous times I was followed home by my father's switch. Being the oldest of the family I was supposed to be an example.

I was taken to Sunday school regularly; learned the alphabet there from an American Tract Society primer; scandalized my relatives by my antics.

At the usual age I entered public school, with pot-bellied stoves, solid pine desks, defaced by the jack knife's carved initials. Education was accomplished by kindly, encouraging women teachers- moral exemplars - in spite of punishment by ruler and switch. I proceeded regularly through the grades, made fair marks, took part in school exercises, "spelling bees" and public programs. Outside school I took singing lessons and business training.

In high school we had men teachers of higher educational attainments. [at different times Treher, Miller, Beitzel, McCrea]. They had little teaching apparatus. Textbooks were being developed and needed amplification by the teacher as a living supplement. Readers were farthest evolved, spelling was emphasized and English literature was drilled into heart as well as into mind. Mr. McCrea our last principal - pure Scotch-Irish - made Burns, Moore and Scott unforgettable. Our class of eight [Alice and Mary Watkins, Katharine Laughlin, Margaret Woodburn, Annie Walker, Ed D. Glauser, Harry M. Shulenberger and myself], organized socially but competed individually in studies and organized entertainments. In 1883 we were graduated from a three year course. My commencement oration had as subject, "Light" [Paradise Lost, Book III, Milton, first lines]. Ours was the second N.H.S. class to get diplomas. [First, Luther K. Watkins, 1882].

Boyhood in our town was lively, stimulating, varied. Boys learned to swim when thrown into deep holes in the creek. Men took us out at night to gig (spear) fish, blinding them with a torch as we waded in the water. We put outlines with many baited hooks in the evening across the Conduitguinil Creek and very early next morning tramped the mile or two to life the lines. That creek was a popular place to skate, especially at full moon with a good wood fire on the bank. Once on a dare I was skating near to a blow hole when I was tripped into six feet of icy and rescued only by strenuous efforts of my companions with fence rails. I have several life-long thigh scars, which resulted from trials, finally successful, to jump on skates a two-strand barbed-wire fence, stretched across the skating pond.

Camping out along the creek in Indian fashion satisfied our primitive instincts before Boy Scouts, commercialized boys' camps or Hopalong Cassidy were ever heard of. We ran to fires, following the hand - pumped Resolution fire engine. Sometimes we were allowed to join the "bucket brigade". One incident still remembered was a fire in a grocery, when I received bad burns of hand and arm, thrust into hot molasses while gathering pennies in the cellar too soon after the floor fell in.

At home we had morning prayers and blessing at meals. I was habituated to church attendance. In a winter revival in the Church of God, I was converted March 15, 1881, joined the church on the 23rd and was baptized by immersion in the Big Spring. I was simply a hearer in Sunday school and church; there was no young people's meeting. I accepted the church teaching, and argued my father into being immersed, though he had been sprinkled as a babe. During adolescence, I vacillated between very serious, even mystical moods - and back-slidings of various sorts.

Socially, I was no charmer. We had a happy crowd, but Ed Glauser had all the wit and appeal to the girls. Also my allowance was not large enough to set up ice cream, oysters, hayrides, Doubling Gap hotel dinners. I was somewhat backward. When I was fourteen, I passed an open door where an attractive girl was visiting and threw in a pound of dates of which she was fond. Of course I was found out. Romance was nipped in the bud when her father forbad her to write to boys.

I joined the Good Templars, (a temperance lodge), and the property-less YMCA organized after a union revival meeting. In 1884 three of us boys [Stewart, Glauser, Landis. See Hist Cumb. Co.132] organized the I.L.G. which was literary and social in its purpose, included only boys and developed the only library in town. It lasted for years. After high school I read for four years the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Course of simplified college text books. Part of the time I was one of a group of older well-educated people, who met to discuss these books. I received my four year diploma and two seals for reading this course.

Mrs. Landis says she raised our family, and from early-married days until retirement this was true during half of the time. When I traveled for Y.M.C.A. State Committees or for general agencies, I got home at irregular intervals - many times at weekends. When I was employed by local associations, I had hardly as much time at home as has the average business or industrial man. Always I have had adequate vacations, some of which have proven valuable in companionships with our boys, as the three week hike with the four boys to Kentucky, (to be mentioned later,) while the mother vacationed at home or elsewhere.

When our youngest child, Dorothy, was starting to school in Aurora, Ill, Father Carrothers gave Myrtle an automobile, (a Flanders 1911), which enabled her to go as she pleased in the years to come. Of her fourteen round trips to California where her parents lived in their later years, four were in her own auto; the other ten by train. She became a California enthusiast - mountains and missions, climate, flowers and friends.

Our family consisted of four boys and a girl. Each of them went to public schools and were graduated from high school.

1. William Carrothers Landis, born September 4, 1896, at eighteen years of age started his career with the Westinghouse Air Brake Company and (1954) has by gradual steps reached the Vice-Presidency and General Managership of that company.
2. George Gideon Landis, born January 5, 1899, was graduated from Ohio State University as Electrical Engineer, and for thirty years has been with Lincoln Electric Company, Cleaveland as chief engineer, inventor, vice-president and director.
3. Laird Landis, born December 5, 1900, went to Oberlin College for two years, and for twenty years was on the Cleveland News. Since then he has been assistant to the President of the Fourth Federal Reserve Bank.
4. Richard Wagner Landis, born January 4, 1903, was graduated by Oberlin College, and after short periods with Bethlehem Steel and Warner-Swazey went with Bendix-Westinghouse when it was organized in 1933 and has been with that company ever since.
5. Dorothy Hortense Landis was born October 26, 1905. She was graduated by Oberlin College in 1927, the last year of Henry Churchill King's presidency. Both she and Richard received A.B. degrees. Four years later she married Paul E. Jones (also Oberlin) and went to Sao Paulo, Brazil. They remained in Brazil twenty years while he was employed by General Motors and later by St. Regis Paper Company. They returned to the United States in

In 1954 there are living the parents and the above five children, with five children-in-law, seventeen grandchildren, (including two by marriage,) and three great-grandchildren. The only deaths in the family have been two daughters-in-law.

We have always had good houses in good neighborhoods. Most of them have been rented, but Myrtle when we were married had her own house, and in 1905 we bought and put an addition to a hundred year old house in Worthington, Ohio. We owned a house in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. for a short time and a large home in Oberlin, Ohio, for eighteen years. This is our best and best loved domicile- our homestead. In 1945 we sold this house and bought in Findlay, Ohio, the city of Myrtle's girlhood.

Our children attended Sunday school until they left home for college or work. Each joined some church. Myrtle and I have been Methodists or Congregationalists except for our upbringing in the Church of God. None of our children has been attracted to the Y.M.C.A. as a life work though they are officers and members.

Much of this paper is left out at this point. (I got tired of typing)

Besides being careful and prosperous farmers, my ancestors had been skillful and widely known in trades. A Landis ancestor had made grandfather clock cases and Landis wagons and plows were in demand. My grandfather was a watchmaker, and my father continued from before the Civil War until his death in that trade. Even during the War while in active service he repaired watches in camp, or traded for old watches, repaired them and sold them. Four of my uncles and numerous cousins have followed the trade.

Very early in my life, father gave me instruction and experience in simple operations in watch-clock-and jewelry repairing, adding gradually more difficult tasks as my skill increased. By fourteen I did most of the clock repairing. After finishing school, I worked for a year or more at the bench at home. Then, as father's family had grown to three sons and four daughters, to relieve his budget, I went to work for my watchmaker uncle in Mechanicsburg, PA. I learned much from Uncle Rufus Shapley who was a mechanical expert of inventive mind. He took an intelligent interest in Harry Drawbaugh's invention of the telephone and talked through it clearly before Bell's was perfected. He was witness in Drawbaugh's suit against Bell in U. S. Court but Bell won because he beat Drawbaugh to a patent. For several days I had vacation from work to read to Uncle Rufe the lengthy court proceedings.

My aunt fed me bountifully; I was well housed and clothed. Only once was I tempted to leave for similar work in Maryland, a very exasperating experience. After two weeks the prodigal returned. I went home for Christmas, 1885. My brother, Clair, was critically ill. Our doctor wanted Dr. Grove for consultation. Mother thought it heroic that I walked to Springfield, three miles, on a bitter cold Saturday night to get the doctor, who when he came, said only that everything possible had been done. Shortly after the crisis came, it was weathered as it would have been had I not taken the walk. Ruth, my parents' last child, was born that December 27th.

In 1888 I went to Bedford to work in a jewelry store as watchmaker and general repairman. I did satisfactory work for seventy-five dollars a month. I made many friends in the Methodist church and in the town. I was active in Epworth League just organized. Through cousins I became interested in a family of three girls - one church organist. Their father's mind began to fail, and a cousin and I stayed with him in his rash efforts to escape. I was taken with the youngest daughter - the church organist - and a pleasing friendship continued until spoiled some years later by her meddlesome brother. She was Miss Durb Shuck, who died 1948 still single.

This family was deeply devoted to temperance. My ancestors, my parents and I were opposed to the use of and traffic in alcoholic drinks. State Prohibition in 1889 was the main issue before the Pennsylvania electorate. With many friends I attended meetings and spoke throughout the county for the amendment. To hecklers I said, go ahead and drink , but I shall outlive you, and I have. I even sang with a men's chorus, "The Brewers' big horses can't run over me," and "The feast of Belshazzer and a thousand of his lords." Nevertheless the state voted down the amendment.

This year occurred the Johnstown flood forty miles away. The intense excitement depleted our town. My employer went leaving me to guard the goods.

More left out at this point. From here on spotted and brief excerpts.

• Worked in a bank in Central City
• Attended University of Denver
• 1894 went as YMCA delegate to the London Jubilee Convention
• June 27, 1895 - married Myrtle Carrothers
• 1896 - graduated Findlay College
• 1898 - advanced degree from Oberlin College
• 1898 - began work with YMCA which was to be his life calling.
• 1898 - served in Spanish American war work with YMCA to extent that called for a discharge in August.
• 1917 - continued YMCA work during WWI with Pennsylvania 28th Division
• 1923 - Field Secretary for Retirement Fund of YMCA
• 1929 - retired from YMCA to be with family in Findlay, Ohio