I. LIFE
LEROY Ellsworth Harris's birth is given in most sources as having occurred 2/12/1898 in a log cabin on land the family had settled outside presentday Chandler, Oklahoma in one of the Cimarron runs of the 1890s. However, documentation on his earliest years (and family background) is scarce, and, consequently, one has had to rely for many details on the composer's recollections, which proved increasingly unreliable as time passed.
Harris's ancestry was Scottish, Irish, and (on his mother's side) Welsh. The father, Elmer Ellsworth Harris, was born 9/1867 in Iowa (died 6/11/37 in Covina, CA), the mother, Laura Broddle, 1/1870 in England (died 10/15/58, also in Covina). They met at Lake Arrowhead, California, where Laura was waiting tables at one of the Fred Harvey establishments, Elmer working as a fry cook either there or nearby. By 1891 they were married and at some undetermined point between then and 1895, they left for Oklahoma. Five children were born to them: Carl, Stanley, LeRoy, Glenn, and Irene. All but LeRoy and Irene died in infancy, two of the brothers from malaria, which attacked the infant LeRoy as well. It was Laura's own lingering battle with respiratory problems, coupled with the harsh frontier living conditions, that prompted Elmer, bolstered by a gambling win, to sell the already mortgaged Oklahoma property and return to southern California in 1903, where the family settled in the San Gabriel Valley on land that was part of the Lucky Baldwin Estate. There Elmer built a small house and began to farm (this structure was to undergo at least one remodeling, then a rebuilding to an enlarged design). When LeRoy became old enough, he assisted with the farm chores, receiving his own acreage at age eighteen as a high school graduation present.
The boy went through conventional public schooling, attending Lark Ellen School and Covina Union High School, from which he graduated in 1916. It was during his teens that he shortened his name from LeRoy to Roy.
