Genealogy Story – The Nomadic Life of Vernon Russell

In my autobiography, I noted that my father, Vernon Russell, had a somewhat nomadic life when growing up.  This story attempts to piece together that part of his life, using census records, city directories, and school report cards.

My father’s parents, Erskine Russell and Vera [Levvy] Russell married in 1914.  It is not known how they met, as he was from Sherman, CT, a town to the NE of New Milford, CT, and she was from New York City.  They were only 20 and 19 respectively when they married.  They had a daughter, Dorothy, in 1916, and a son, my father, in 1920.  When my father was born they lived at 754 Norman St. in Bridgeport, CT, but that was their third address on Norman St in the past few years (they evidently rented and moved frequently). 

While my father was still a preschooler, his parents separated.  Erskine went to live with his parents in Waterbury where his father had moved a few years earlier.  Vera remained in Bridgeport.

After a few years of separation, and possibly for the benefit of their children, they decided to get back together and for two years (mid-1926 to mid-1928) they rented a home at 521 Wolcott Rd. in Waterbury.  During this time my father started school, so his first two years of school were in Waterbury.  That trial period did not work out, and in May they separated again and eventually divorced.  Erskine moved back in with his parents (actually his father and step-mother) and Vera went back to Bridgeport.  The last two months of 2nd grade my father attended school in Bridgeport.  My father did not see his father again for the next 9+ years.

The next two years were ones of constantly moving.  During 3^rd and 4^th grade, while staying in the same school in Bridgeport (Maplewood School) for two years, the family had six different addresses.  Finally in early June 1930, Vera married again, to Charles Rogers, a man 30 years her senior.  The family moved to Danbury which is where Charles lived.  When they moved on June 6^th that meant that starting a new school for just the last few weeks of the school year – a bit traumatic for a nine-year-old.

The family remained in Danbury for only a year, then during the summer of 1931 they moved to New Milford.  This was the time of greatest stability in my father’s life as he was able to stay in the New Milford school system from the beginning of 6^th grade until midway through 11^th grade.  During these years in New Milford my father often worked on farms in the area on the weekend for extra income.  In addition, he spent his summers with his Uncle Joe and Aunt Irene (Vera's sister) on their farm in Roxbury, CT.

Meanwhile, Erskine also remarried in 1933, to Elizabeth Evans, an English immigrant who was 10 years his senior.  Thus, at the age of 39, he was finally able to move out from his parents’ home for the last time.

By 11^th grade, Vernon’s step-father was 70 years old (even though his mother was only 40).  For reasons unknown, he (and his sister) left that home and moved to Waterbury to live with his grandparents, Louis and Helen Russell.  Since Vera and Charles were still living together in New Milford and my father barely knew his grandfather (not having seen him since he moved back to Bridgeport toward the end of 2nd grade), one can only speculate why the change in families.  His sister, Dorothy, had just finished high school and got a job in Waterbury, so perhaps that was the best place to look for employment in the depression and she just brought her brother along with her?  

He finished the 11^th grade and also his senior year at Leavenworth High School (the technical high school in Waterbury) where he received training as a draftsman.  After graduation, he remained living with his grandparents.  He had also started working in March of that year (probably as an intern) and upon graduation went to work in the same company that Louis and Erskine were working at – Scovill Manufacturing Company.  Meanwhile, his sister married a man who lived right around the corner from her grandparents.

(Louis worked for Scovill from August 1918 until his retirement in August 1945 – at age 74 and just a few months before his passing.  Erskine worked there from 1924 until 1945.  My father worked there from March 1939 for 42 years until he took early retirement at the age of 60 and went to work elsewhere for several years.)

Things remained that way, even as the US became involved in WWII a few years later.  My father was initially exempt from the draft because he was working for a defense contractor – their brass manufacturing being utilized for making military equipment and artillery shells.  But in 1944 he was drafted into the US Navy.  He left for training in May 1944.

After training, my father served in the South Pacific.  During that time he was corresponding with my mother, although they were not officially dating or engaged.  When his ship was finally decommissioned in April, 1946, he came home on leave and within a few days asked my mother to marry him.  But meanwhile his home situation had changed.  His step-grandmother, Helen, had passed away in January, 1945 at the age of 76, and his grandfather, Louis, had passed away in January 1946, just a few months before my father came on leave. 

It is not known where my father made his home for that short period of time in 1946 while he was finishing his military service in Brooklyn and visiting my mother in Waterbury.  He had many relatives in Waterbury (his father and step-mother, his sister and her family, and other friends from his years of living on Radcliffe Ave.)  He was finally released from the service at the end of May.  That summer he bought a home and land and when they married in September of that year that’s where they began their married life.  After all those years of a nomadic existence, and never knowing where “home” was going to be next, my parents lived in the same home for the next 60 years together!  They both passed away in the house in Wolcott – he in 2006 and she in 2012.