Grains Of Sand - Grains Of Salt, Part 1

Sometimes when I'm researching family history, information sources just start clicking into place in quick succession, one clue right after the other. It can be exciting (yes, you're right, I've gotta' get a life!) but it's more the exception than the rule in genealogy.  Nevertheless, it does happen and when it does, it brings to mind an hourglass. For me, anyway. An hourglass that for a few brief moments almost brings my ancestors back to life. When the hourglass is stood upright the sand begins to fall, one grain right after the other. Grains of sand descending from the top bulb into the bottom in a smooth uninterrupted flow.  I'm not the first to view life events this way.  Hourglass imagery has been around for centuries and at times has even found its way onto tombstone engraving to symbolize the swiftness of time in our lives.  Even our ancestors knew life is short!



And when the research clues are clicking, when the sources and the evidence from years ago seem to fall into place on their own, I try to remember to be patient and not get carried away with accepting material as fact the first time I see it (there's that excitement issue again).  Documentation, after all, is generated by people. Just because a record is typed or printed or written in good penmanship doesn't mean it's irrefutable. What is irrefutable is that people make documents. And people make mistakes. People contribute information to be recorded, sometimes about themselves and sometimes about others.  And people have different motivations that can affect the accuracy of those contributions. People lie, people brag, people cheat, and lots of people take short cuts. Some people are dumb, some people are not as smart as they think they are, and some people, believe it or not, have something to hide. Maybe even our own ancestors!  So taking this all into consideration,  I try to be cautious about information I see when I first see it. And take any information with a grain of salt.

My maternal grandmother's youngest brother's life has commandeered my interest strongly but I don't really know why. My research of  my grand uncle, Rollin Farquhar Webber,  has been an on-again-off-again process of investigation with stops and starts and roadblocks and surprises for quite some time. I think I've compiled a fairly accurate picture of his life but it hasn't been easy.  Photographs are what stirred my interest in Rollin initially, probably because some of them were noted on the reverse side with names of those pictured. (That makes research so much simpler...it should be a law!)  I may have met him but I don't know for sure. My memories are of "Uncle Rollin and Aunt Lois in Allentown" and my sister recalls visiting them when she was younger. Whether or not I was included in any visits or if I ever saw my grand aunt and uncle at my grandmother's home in New Hampshire, I don't recall and will never know.  The photograph below is the first one I came across that captured Rollin and his wife, Lois, but there were no identities noted on the back. All I knew at first was that I recognized my grandmother, Florence (Webber) Currier standing on the far right of the photo.





No id's noted on back but recognized my grandmother on right.

 Somewhere along the line I found  photos with the identities noted on the back of the pictures and then was able to identify Uncle Rollin and Aunt Lois as second and third from left in the photo above.







Rollin identified in center



Lois identified in center

Once I knew what they looked like I had the start of building this branch of my family tree and commenced researching Rollin. I knew he was my grandmother's brother, one of nine mentioned in a letter my grandmother had written to her daughter, Alice (my mother's sister) in 1957. On another page of the same letter, Florence (Webber) Currier recalled that for she and her siblings, "childhood was over," when their father died. She was 11 years old when he died and she was born in 1869 so her father had to have died around 1880.  Thus, it was probable that Rollin was born sometime between 1869 and 1880.  He was the last one listed in her letter's list of brothers and sisters so I guessed she might have listed them in chronological age order, making Rollin the youngest of the nine children. Just a guess at this point. What made things frustrating at this stage of research, guessing or not, was that I couldn't find any Federal Census Records for Oxford, Maine for the Webbers in 1880 on Ancestry.com. I had some census records listing their father in 1870 in Oxford, Maine but nadda for 1880.







Florence Currier's 1958 letter



Florence mentioned that when her father passed away her mother was not in good health and unable to take care of nine children. So Florence and two siblings were taken in by an aunt in Boston. Unfortunately, she did not mention what happened to Rollin. We know Rollin exists, we just don't know much about him. Not yet.

GRAINS OF SAND FROM ANCESTRY.COM

Ancestry.com's website gave me some clues on Rollin.  I had added him to my tree on the website with what little I knew about him; name, birth state, and entered birth year as 1880 + / - ten years. The website generates little vibrating leaves (as in family tree leaves blowing in the wind) that flag attention to possible sources of information related to any people in your tree. For Rollin, the first clues shaking the leaves were Federal Census records for 1900 and 1910. The 1900 record listed a Rollin F Webber residing as a lodger in a home in Fitchburg, Ma, a single male born in Jan 1880 in Maine with both parents listed as born in Maine. Rollin F Webber worked as a machinist and reported 0 months of unemployment. I thought this information was credible because the parental birth data matched, his reported birth date was logical, and Florence had once lived with a half sister in Fitchburg. I checked driving distance between the half sister's census address and Rollin's and they were less than a mile apart. If this is Rollin, we've got birth month & year as well as an occupation. This looks like a good grain of sand falling into place.



Fitchburg Census - 1900



The 1910 Federal Census listed a Rollin F Webber lodging in Washington, DC, still single, still a machinist (working at the Washington Navy Yard), with age and parental birth info still in line with what we already had. So again this is looking like good information. Washington DC not too surprising considering we know that years later "Uncle Rollin" lived in Allentown, Pa about 200 miles North of there. We'll take this clue with a grain of salt until we find more information.



Washington DC Census - 1910



GRAINS OF SAND WITH JUST A DASH OF SALT

 Having no census records for 1880 was still bugging me but every search I did on Ancestry.com came up with nothing. There could be any number of reasons why I couldn't find any of my grandmother's family recorded for that year. I know the website has gazillions of records all transcribed from written records like census records so I thought perhaps there was a spelling transcription error involved. The computer programs try to overcome this possibility by ranking clues in a descending order of relevance. The 1870 Oxford census records had been recorded in handwriting (and transcribed to the computer accordingly) as surname, "Wilber" instead of "Webber" so I thought maybe a similar problem was making the 1880 records illusive. I figured the town of Oxford, Maine in 1880, although a thriving farming community, might not be too hard to scroll through all of the Federal Census pages to see if I could find something. I don't know how to do that on Ancestry.com so I got access through HeritageQuest via my local (Florida) library card. I only had to go to page 4 of the Oxford census pages to find it.  My great grandfather, Samuel Webber was listed on page 4 on line 13 with his wife and seven children listed in descending order by age. There was Rollin at the bottom of the family's listing with his age posted as "4/12."  The enumerator who compiled and presented the record dated it "on the 3rd day of June, 1880."  BUT (and that's a big but), Samuel Webber's name and the entire information on line 13 was lined through. Crossed off. No wonder the computer couldn't find it! Due to the line-out the information was never transcribed into the data base. Same for the family members listed, including Rollin and my grandmother who, for some reason, was listed as "Hulda F" instead of her given name, Florence. Huldah was her middle name according to all other records I've seen. But not even counting blatant errors by enumerators I've seen numerous name changes like that, especially swap arounds between given and middle names. (My father was born and named George Charles but he changed it to Charles George). So now I'm feeling better that another grain of sand has made its way to the bottom of my research hourglass.



Oxford, Maine Census - 1880

I found the "missing" 1880 census in June 2010. In August 2010 I visited the Webber Cemetery in Oxford, Maine and noted Samuel Webber's headstone engraved with date of death:  May 24, 1880.  Perhaps, and this is just my guess, the enumerator for the 1880 census, wanting to submit up to date and correct data on his record dated June 3rd 1880, lined through Samuel Webber's name because, after all, one doesn't count the dead on the census! And it's probably a safe bet that said enumerator didn't anticipate transcription for computer records would be thrown off by his attempt to ensure accuracy.  (He probably didn't foresee those quivering family tree leaves either).  With three Federal Census records as sources I believed information on Rollin was beginning to fall into place. Subsequent census records, however, were not so easily forthcoming.

I already had a photograph of Rollin's house in Allentown.

I also had a newspaper clipping reporting my grandmother's silver wedding anniversary in 1930. Rollin was listed as a guest (name misspelled as, "Wilber") indicating he lived in Philadelphia with his wife (was this Aunt Lois)? and a son. Nobody in my family ever heard of Uncle Rollin having a son.  If we had it would mean we had a cousin floating around out there somewhere. Not a terribly unusual phenomenon in genealogy...I've already come across a couple of "cousins" in family history research but, nevertheless, this was a new one on me.




Ancestry.com provided more data on Rollin but not census records.



1917 - World War I Draft Registration



1942 - World War II Draft Registration

 The middle name, Farquhar raises its interesting head. But previous research had come across an aunt of Rollin who had married someone whose surname was Farquhar. He must have impressed somebody to warrant awarding Rollin with such an unusual middle name.

1916 - Patent issued



Draft registrations confirmed Rollin lived in Washington DC in 1917.  A patent issued in his name for a motor vehicle starting device was also confirmation of his residence in DC. The 1942 draft registration shows he moved to Allentown, Pa while still working for the US Navy in ordinance. His career with the government and his success in designing a patented machinery device indicate he was a highly skilled machinist. But family questions abound while he hook slides from Maine to Massachusetts,  down to DC and back up to Allentown via Philadelphia...who is Gertrude in 1917 and who is Faye in 1942 and who is the son mentioned in 1930?  Where is Aunt Lois in all of this? Just how many wives did Uncle Rollin have? I've heard that sailors have a girl in every port but does that apply to employees of the Navy too? Lots of questions brewing in my research so obviously, I've got some more digging to do to come up with some answers. I've done that but this is starting to turn into a novel so I'm going to stop here and continue on in another post.  Stay tuned...



...to be continued...my search will go on in Part 2