Last week’s Moment in Time featured Grandview’s first settler and landowner, Daniel Thomas, and his grandson, James Oscar Thomas.

The latter Thomas became the owner of his grandfather’s farm and raised his family in the house on the hill above Goodale Street and Northwest Boulevard. James and his wife, Edith, had five children, including their eldest and only daughter, Caroline, born a year after their marriage in 1901. They also had an adopted daughter from Italy, according to census records.

Caroline Thomas was interested in music and literature, participated in an orchestra and studied English and French at Grandview Secondary School. She credited her father for supporting her interests and said her parents always had classic books at home and took time off from work on the farm to read and practice the violin. She said that her father was interested in the life and work of Mark Twain, and during her childhood she was introduced to Twain. Her interest in him continued throughout her life.

After graduating from high school in 1920, Caroline, a talented violinist, enrolled at Northwestern University, studied at the Julliard School of Music in New York for three years, then spent a year at the Conservatory of Paris to deepen his expertise of the violin. She performed at Carnegie Hall at age 22. While in Paris, she married Audley Harnsberger, an engineer with Pure Oil Company, whom she met in Upper Arlington and where the Thomas family moved after selling their farm to the Northwest Boulevard Company. In 1926, she and Audley moved to Winnetka, Illinois, just north of Chicago, where they raised three children and lived until the early 1980s, when Audley died. Caroline then returned to Ohio.

Due to her interest in Twain, Caroline traveled to Hollywood in the early 1940s to meet Twain’s surviving daughter, Clara Clemens Samossoud, and they became friends.

The friendship prompted Clara to provide Caroline with access to Twain’s unpublished notes, letters, and marginal comments and also to discuss with her his spoken thoughts and philosophies. Caroline read all of Twain’s books and, as an anthologist, was 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 30 years she wrote other books on Twain and served as a script consultant for television and stage productions. about her. She became the ultimate authority on Twain and was often referenced in stories and articles about him.

Noting his expertise, his publisher asked him to create a book of quotes from Abraham Lincoln. 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 US presidents for her “Treasure of Presidential Citations,” which became a Literary Guild bonus book. Caroline also managed to meet George Bernard Shaw, the reclusive 92-year-old playwright, at his English country home. After Shaw’s death, Caroline obtained the rights to a book in which she compiled his quotes, “Bernard Shaw: Selections Of His Wit And Wisdom.” In total, she wrote 13 books, including the Mark Twain books (including Mark Twain’s Clara, based on his relationship with his daughter published in 1982) and the Lincoln, Shaw and Taft books, 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 she opened Music in Northfield and sold string instruments and sheet music, repaired violins and guitars, and gave music lessons. She also became a professional musician, playing violin for the Chicago Women’s Symphony. And for 37 years, she performed with the Evanston Symphony, which she helped found. She was also an avid painter and an accomplished golfer.

Audley was a pilot, flying frequently with their two sons, who also became licensed pilots. As Audley got older, her blood pressure was a problem, so at the age of 50, Caroline became one of the first women to earn a pilot’s license so she could fly as a co-pilot. As she studied for her license and flew with him, the anthologist came back to the fore and she compiled the things she needed to know to fly the plane when needed. She published these observations as “A Pilot’s Ready Reference Manual”, which sold over 30,000 copies with 12 editions. Caroline originally published the book under the name CT Harnsberger, as the publisher did not believe that a reference book on piloting 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 considered a homecoming since her father helped establish First Community Church in Grandview and her mother resided in the village. when it is opened. Caroline continued to focus on painting and writing and died in 1991 aged 89.

Portions of this article are taken from the Winnetka Historical Society website and a First Community Village newsletter.