Connecting the Dots

Over the past several years I’ve written a number of posts about my early years in Wolcott. But the release of the 1950 census two weeks ago has given me the opportunity to take a fresh look at things and to fill in a few of the holes and “connect the dots” in some of those stories.

 

The Pieces

Here are the various posts that I’ll be connecting. I’ve given each a number that I will refer to in the story below.

(1)   The Growth of a Wolcott Neighborhood 1935-1955

(2)   My Personal Melting Pot

(3)   My First Grade Teacher

(4)   The Polish Connection

(5)   My Wolcott High School Classmates

 

Houses on Wolcott Road

In (1) I had listed all the homes on the east side of Wolcott Road from north to south. Here is a brief synopsis:

·        1660 – Lewandoski – Polish (see (4))

·        1652 and 1642 – two bars

·        1624 – Pearson, but not built until 1941

·        1618 – Green – I noted that “I seem to recall that the Greens and Pearsons were related”

·        1612 – rented by Pearsons in 1940, but later another family

·        1600 – “Bikulcius?”, but not built until 1940

·        1596 – Levine, built in 1944

·        1590 – Robert Seery, then Carnein

·        1584 – Seery

·        1576 – Boynton family from Maine

·        1570 – Markot

Now, let’s look at these same houses in the 1950 census:

·        1660 – Lewandoski

·        1652 and 1642 – two bars

·        1624 – Pearson – see below for more information

·        1618 – Green – see below for more information

·        1612 – Joesph Lewandoski family, son of the Lewandoski in 1660

·        1600 – Robert Pearson family – see below for more information

·        1596 – Lavigne family from Canada with three children older than myself

·        1590 – Carnein family from Germany, older couple and grown son

·        1584 – Seery – with their four children

·        1576 – Sweet family from Vermont, no children

·        1570 – Markot – and as expected, my classmate Jackie is age 1

Except for the correction in spelling from Levine to Lavigne, everything is pretty much as I projected based on the 1940 census. But the extended Green/Pearson families now have some further information that is the basis for this post.

[My Neighborhood – from top – Pearson, Green, Lewandoski, Robert Green, Lavigne, Russell home under trees at corner of Witham and Seery Roads]

 

 

The Melting Pot

When I wrote (2), I ended by saying:

“… my first-grade class had that same sort of [melting pot] mix:

·       Some, like myself, were from families who had been in American for over 300 years and who had primarily English roots.

·       Some, like Bobby Schrager, were from German families.

·       Some, like Jay Pikiell, were of Polish extraction (4)

·       Some, like the Clement girls, were of French origin, but whose family had been in French-speaking Canada for several generations.

But none of that mattered to our small group of first-graders at Alcott School. We were just a bunch of six-year-olds, all slightly apprehensive, and ready to begin participation in the melting pot of our class.”

 And I’m sure that our teacher, Miss Chandler (3), was not aware of all our backgrounds.

Since then, I’ve done a detailed genealogical origin tree for each of my classmates (5) and can correct a few of my ideas above. Bobby Schrager was a mix of Polish, Irish, and English; Jay Pikiell was a mix of Polish and French-Canadian; and the Clement girls were a mix of French-Canadian and English. So, we were even more a mixed bunch than I had thought. But none of that matched the mix I found in the Green/Pearson extended family.

 

Green/Pearson Families

When I did the genealogical analysis of my high school classmates (5), I had not included my Green/Pearson classmates as they had all moved out of town by then. And I had only briefly noted in (1) that I thought the two families were related somehow. But that turned out to be an understatement!

 

Green Family

My classmate Billy’s paternal grandparents were William and Marie [Tedesco]. But Billy was about as much a melting-pot as one could be. William’s father was English as both his parents had been born there. William’s mother’s maiden name was Neilsen and she had been born in Norway. Marie’s father was an Italian immigrant, and her mother’s maiden name was Mihalowitz and she was an immigrant from Russian-speaking Hungary. Billy must have had a fun time talking to his ancestors as several of them were still living when he was a young boy!

On his mother’s side, Billy was a mix of English (with deep roots in Connecticut), and German. What a motley mix of ancestral roots! And with those deep Connecticut roots, I have confirmed that Billy was a distant cousin of mine.

In 1930, the Green family had been living in Waterbury. The family at that time consisted of William and Marie, four children (Beryl, Shirley, William Jr, and Barbara), and William’s uncle Arthur. The family moved to Wolcott in 1939 after the Waterbury-Bristol Road was completed in 1935 and Tom Seery had built homes on that stretch of the Seery family farm. Two more children had been born in the meantime (Frederick and Daniel, and, in addition to William’s uncle Arthur, there is another relative, Rose Galloway, whose relationship I have been unable to determine. That’s 10 people in a small cape cod style home!

 

Pearson Family

In 1930, the Pearson (spelled as Pierson in the census) were also living in Waterbury. The family consisted of Joseph and his wife Isabelle, together with three sons (Clifford, Robert and Bernard). Like the Green family, they were a multi-generational house, with Isabell’s father, Louis Carpenter, also living with them – in addition to three other borders.

In 1940, the Pearson family had also moved to Wolcott, right next door to the Green family. And, like the Greens, they have added two more children (Agnes and Joseph Jr).

However, unlike the Green family, the ancestors of the Pearsons are all French-Canadian with no outside marriages. With names like Pearson, Picard, Carpentier, Monarque, Millet, and Desmarais, that’s about as French as you can get.

 

Mixing it up

By the 1950 census, the two families have become not only close, but intermarried.

William and Marie Green are still in one home together with their youngest sons, Frederick and Daniel, along with Williams’ uncle Arthur.

Clifford Pearson has married Shirley Green and they have three children (Carol, Christine, and Ronald). The oldest was born when Shirley was only 17 and the youngest would become my classmate a few years later.

Bernard Pearson has married Barbara Green and they have a young daughter, Marilyn, who was born when Barbara was only 19. Marilyn would become the classmate of my sister as they were the same age. With two brothers marrying two sisters, that means that Ronald and Marilyn were double-first-cousins and that Billy Green is a first cousin of both of them!

The census taker has marked these families as living in a single house, but that’s 13 people and one house on the road is unaccounted for, so I believe that they were living in the two consecutive houses but that one person gave the census taker all the information for both houses.

The oldest Pearson son, Robert, is also married and living two houses away with his wife and a young son, John. Also living with him are his parents, Joseph and Isabelle, and his youngest brother, Joseph Jr.

William Green Jr has also married and is living elsewhere with his young son, Billy (although they would move back to Wolcott a few years later). Others not accounted for in the 1950 Wolcott census are Agnes Pearson (who apparently left home at age 16 and is living elsewhere – she never married) and Beryl Green (who married in 1941, at age 19, and is living in the next town).

 

Conclusions

Even though both the Pearson and Green families had moved elsewhere by the time I was in high school and so I had not had the incentive to look closely at them, finding this additional information in the 1950 census has given me a new appreciation into the lives of these two families and into these two elementary school classmates of mine. The term “melting pot” continues to take on additional meaning when you see such a rich family heritage such as these families embodied!