Walt’s parents, Elias and Flora were married on New Year’s Day in 1988. They added three sons to their family in the next five years—Herbert in 1888, Raymond in 1890, and Roy in 1893. About eight years later, Flora became pregnant again. By then, the couple was living in Chicago, and Elias was a carpenter and builder. On December 5, 1901, Walter Elias Disney was born. He was named after the family’s pastor, who in turn named his son Elias, after Walt’s father. Two years later, the family’s last child, a daughter, named Ruth, was born, on December 6. Elias and Flora did not like the saloon centered nature of the neighborhood, and after two boys in the neighborhood were arrested after killing a police officer, they decided it was time to leave. Elias’s brother owned some property in Marceline Missouri, which was a small community of about 5,000. In April 1906, the Disney family settled on a 45 acre farm there.
The family lived there, in a small square house that was built by a recently deceased Civil War veteran. It was shaded by weeping willows, maples, and cedar trees, and there was a small orchard behind the house. Walt remembers the smell of the apple blossoms, and the huge crispy apples that hung from the trees in the fall, so big that “people came from miles around to see them.” For the rest of his life he remembered that community spirit, especially at harvest time, when friends and neighbors all worked together like a big family. Walt and Ruth were young, so they had few tasks around the farm, but Walt’s older brothers labored to help Elias squeeze a decent living from the farm. Herbert and Raymond, in 1908 departed for Chicago, and in 1909, Walt started at the brand new school in Marceline. In the fall of 1910 though, Elias caught typhoid and nearly died. He recovered, but knew he couldn’t keep the farm afloat, so they sold it for $5175 and they moved to Kansas City in the summer of 1911.