Genealogy Story - Louis Russell

I have a photograph of my great-grandfather, Louis Morgan Russell, with three of his children – my grandfather Erskine Harold, his brother Linus Walter, and his sister Loretta May.  On the back of the picture is the date of March 18, 1905, so the three siblings would have been 10, 8, and 7.  But why Louis alone, and why only three of his six children?  The answer to that question took some surprising turns.

Background

Louis Morgan Russell married Anna Pauline Merchant in 1892.  They had six children:

·         Erskine Harold Russell – 1894

·         Linus Walter Russell – 1896

·         Loretta May Russell – 1898

·         William Merchant Russell – 1899

·         Allen Percy Russell – 1901

·         Martha Pauline Russell – 1903

Anna Pauline passed away in November of 1903 when Martha Pauline was only 4 months old.

It appears that Louis was overwhelmed with having to raise six children on his own.  Therefore, he apparently placed the three younger children with others in the New Milford, CT area where he lived. 

William was placed in the home of Samuel and Lillie Waldron.  We find him there in the 1910 census with the notation “adopted son”.  William is still there in 1920, but with the notation “border”.  William eventually became a hired hand on the nearby Osborne farm.  He married the daughter of the family, Mildred.  In 1930 he is found living with Mildred, her parents, and their young son, also named William.

It is almost certain that Allen was also placed with Samuel and Lillie Waldron.  But Allen died in February 1905, three months shy of his fourth birthday.  (It is quite possible that this was the impetus for Louis getting the above picture taken just a few weeks later – since one of his children had just passed away and he did not have a picture of him.)  When William married, besides his son William, he had another son who died as an infant whom he named Allen, likely in memory of his younger brother Allen with whom he had lived until Allen passed away when William was only six.

We have no actual record of where Martha was placed between 1903 and 1910, but the below may help to answer this.

Thus, in early 1905 when the picture was taken, Louis was a widower and taking care of his three older children, the younger ones not living with him at the time.

Further details

In 1910, Louis married again, to a woman named Helen Amelia Waldron.  In the 1910 census Louis can be found with his new wife but with four children, Martha Pauline has now rejoined him.  Two things struck me about this.  First, is it just a coincidence that Louis’ new wife has the same name as the family where William is continuing to live?  And second, why is Martha suddenly back with him?  This is where the investigation takes a bit of time and some interesting facts are uncovered.

In researching the history of Samuel Waldron, I came upon a family tree for him.  But some of the names in that family tree looked rather familiar to me – Caleb Barton and Almira Beecher.  The common thread to the Russell family tree suddenly appears!

Samuel Waldron (b. 1861) is the son of Miles Waldron (b. 1835) and Mary Jane Barton (b. 1841).  Mary Jane is the daughter of Caleb Barton and Almira Beecher.

Caleb and Almira had another daughter, Sally (b. 1835).  Sally married Morgan Lewis Cook (b. 1822).  They had a daughter Lois Cook (b. 1855) who married Walter J. Russell (b. 1852), the father of Louis Morgan Russell (b. 1871).

Thus, when Louis gave custody of his son William to Samuel Waldron and his wife, he was not giving him up to a stranger, or even a neighbor in New Milford, CT.  Samuel was his father’s cousin, but one who was only 10 years older than Louis.  Thus, William was not raised by his father, but by his cousin (2x removed)!

Sometime between 1910 and 1920, Louis, his second wife Helen, and their four children moved from New Milford to Waterbury, about 25 miles away.  I believe this was probably during WWI when many younger men working in factories would have been drafted.  I know that in the years after the war Louis was working for Scovill Manufacturing in the boiler house where he worked a number of years.  His son, Erskine Harold, and Erskine’s son Vernon Harold (my father) also worked for Scovill.

But even in Waterbury there is yet another twist.  In the 1920 and 1930 census, besides their children (who eventually got old enough, married and left), there is another person in the Louis Russell household – a girl Juanita E. Woodcock, who is listed as a “granddaughter”.  In the 1920 census she is 6-1/2 and in the 1930 census she is 16.  Inquiries to my mother before she passed away indicated that Juanita was related to Helen through a prior marriage.  In fact, the 1910 census indicates that Helen had been married twice before and had five children, three of whom were still living.  So, what can we find about Helen and her former families?

The Waldron-Barton Connection

It took a lot of tracing, but I finally uncovered the common thread between all these family connections.  It involved two families, the Bartons and the Waldrons.  Let me try to explain…

Caleb Barton and Almira [Beecher] had a large family.  Likewise, so did Gilbert and Polly Waldron.  Let’s look at four of the Barton children.

(1)   Sally Barton married Morgan Lewis Cook, the grandfather of Louis Russell.

(2)   Mary Jane Barton married Miles Waldron, the father of Samuel Waldron.

(3)   Charles Barton married Lucy Waldron – no interest in the Russell history, but another Barton-Waldron connection

(4)   Fanny Barton married William Waldron.  They had a son Henry Francis Waldron and a grandson Lewis Waldron.

As we saw in the prior section, when (1) Louis Russell’s wife passed away, he gave custody of his son William to his cousin, once removed, (2) Samuel Waldron.

Now let’s go look at Helen Madigan (b. 1868), the daughter of Daniel and Mary Jane Madigan.  In the 1880 census she was still living at home with her parents.  Since the 1890 census was lost in a fire, we jump forward to the 1900 census.  Here she is once again living at home with her mother and three children.  The oldest two, Lola (b. 1886) and Eva (b. 1892) show the name Madigan (her maiden name).  However, based on other records, their real surname is Pulver, but they have been given their mother’s maiden name since the divorce of their parents.  However, the youngest, Margaret (b. 1898) has the name Waldron, as does Helen.

In the interim 20 years, Helen has married a first time (in 1886 – the 1930 census records her first marriage at age 18), had children (3, as the 1900 census shows three living children out of four – the one who died was the twin sister to Eva, Iva); was divorced or widowed; married again, and is now separated from her husband of five years. 

Checking, we find her second husband, Lewis Waldron (b. 1871) living as a servant in Bethlehem (the next town over).  We can verify that this is Helen’s husband as he is also living alone and notes that he has been married for 5 years.  This Lewis Waldron is the one noted in (4) above.  But this gets even more interesting…

In 1889, the first wife of Henry Francis Waldron (4) had passed away, leaving him with eleven children.  In 1894, he married again to [are you ready for this?] Mary Jane Madigan, the widowed mother of Helen Madigan.  A year later, Helen marries Lewis, the oldest son of her new step-father.  Neither marriage lasts, as Henry and Mary Jane have divorced before 1899 and Henry has married for a third time and by 1900 Helen and Lewis have also separated. 

So in 1900 when we find Helen living with her mother and her three children, the youngest, Margaret is not only Mary Jane’s granddaughter, but her step-granddaughter as well! 

Finally, Helen marries for a third time (third one’s the charm?) to Louis Russell who, due to the Barton marriages above, is her ex-husband’s second cousin!  In addition, her new father-in-law is a cousin of her recent step-father!

So, we know for certain that when Louis needed to have other homes for his younger children when his first wife unexpectedly passed away in 1903, that he placed William and Allen in the home of his father’s cousin Samuel Waldron – Samuel and his wife being childless.  But it is also quite probable that he placed his four-month old daughter in the all-female home of Mary Jane Madigan-Waldron (his father’s cousin’s former wife) and Helen Madigan-Waldron (his 2^nd cousin’s former wife).  Then he eventually decides to marry Helen, who has been helping to raise his young daughter.

There is a certain amount of speculation in the above, but with all these families living in close proximity in New Milford, it would have made perfect sense for Louis, a widower with six children.