Saturday, December 17, 2016

Genealogy Story – Sisters and Step-sisters

In a blog from early in 2015 (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/02/genealogy-story-louis-russell.html ) I wrote the story of my great-grandfather, Louis Russell, and what happened after his wife died and he was left with six children. This is a continuation of that story based on new information that I have recently come into possession of.

To recap that story, Louis and his first wife had six children: Erskine (my grandfather), Linus, Loretta, William, Allen (who passed away at a young age), and Martha (who went by her middle name, Pauline). His second wife, Helen, had been married twice before and had a total of five children: Lola, Eva, Iva (twin sister to Eva, passed away at 5 months of age), Marguerite, and an unnamed child who apparently died at birth. Lola, Eva, and Iva were from her first husband, William Pulver, and Marguerite was from her second husband, Lewis Waldron (who was also a 2nd cousin to Louis Russell).

Thus, my grandfather, Erskine, had a total of seven living siblings: two brothers (William and Linus); two sisters (Loretta and Pauline); and three step-sisters (Lola, Eva, and Marguerite – Marguerite being a half-sister to the other two). However, William was raised by a relative in New Milford and only figures marginally into this story, and Linus was affected by mustard gas in WWI and spent the rest of his life in an institution and so is not part of this story either. So this story is about all of Erskine’s various sisters.

When I was growing up, both Loretta and Pauline were part of our life. Aunt Loretta and Uncle George lived about 6-7 miles away in Waterbury and Aunt Pauline and Uncle Harold lived about 5 miles away in Bristol. While we did not visit too often, perhaps once or twice a year, we knew them and their families. I knew about Uncle Bill in New Milford but only remember visiting him once and I had heard about Uncle Linus but he had passed away by then.

However, I never recall ever hearing about Lola, Eva, or Marguerite. And it wasn’t until I started my genealogy research a few years ago that I “discovered” them. My presumption at that time was that since Louis married Helen when they were older that there were few connections between them and Louis’ children.

But this has turned out not to be true. Recently when looking through a newspaper clipping of my mother’s bridal shower I found that Eva and Marguerite were both in attendance at this shower (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2016/10/genealogy-story-bridal-shower.html ).

Also, I recently was able to meet with a great-granddaughter of Eva and she loaned me some inherited daily journals that Eva had written. For more information on these journals, see other entry right next to this one. In these journals are recorded all the interactions between Eva and her sister Lola and family, her half-sister Marguerite and family, and her two step-sisters Loretta and Pauline and their families. So the extended family turned out to be quite connected – even during the years when I was growing up as the journals extend until 1970 when I was in my early 20’s.

However, while my grandmother Vera is mentioned several times in the early years of the journal when she was still living, my grandfather is only mentioned in January of 1970. And even then, it appears that my Aunt Loretta called Eva on 1/24 and passed along the information that he had had a leg amputated on 1/17 and then died six days later on 1/23. So there was apparently no connection between him and his step-sisters. And apparently, this lack of connection extended to both my father and my mother, as there are no recorded calls/visits to Eva and I do not recall ever hearing about them.


It’s hard to know what caused this lack of connection – and none of the parties are alive to answer my questions. But I’m happy to have rectified that to a certain extent by my visit with Eva’s great-granddaughter, Lauren, and her family recently. Family is still family!

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