Foster Families

While there are an increasing number of alternative situations these days, most children grow up living in a home with their two biological parents. That was even more true for our ancestors. There are, of course, instances where the parents may divorce or where one parent may pass away while their child(ren) is still young. And in many of those cases the remaining parent re-marries – leading to the child living with only one biological parent or one biological parent and one stepparent. But it’s not usual for a child to be living in a household with neither of their biological parents.

Nonetheless, I do have a few of these in my family tree. I’ve written about many of them before, but thought it might be helpful to write about all of them together, concentrating on the reasons for the situation and examining any relationships between the foster parents and the biological parents. Only one of these is on my mother’s side of the family, the rest are in my father’s family.

 

My mother’s father – Harold Pierpont

My grandfather was born on March 3, 1898, to Wilson and Annie [Merrill] Pierpont. (I’ve written about him before here.) Just two weeks later, on March 17, his mother passed away due to complications from childbirth. Harold was the eighth child of his parents. One had passed away at a young age, but there were still six older children in the home – one girl, Edith, then 16, and five boys ages 18, 13, 9, 7, and 5. Education in those days most typically ended after 8^th grade (about age 14), so the oldest two children were already out of school and working. In particular, Edith was already out of school and was helping to manage the household, so she could take over that role. But it appears that Wilson did not feel that taking care of a young baby without a mother was feasible. So he made the painful decision to give Harold away to another family, Sam and Hattie Nichols (I’ve written about them before here).

It’s quite likely that Wilson knew the Nichols family though church connections. The Pierpont family church was Mill Plain Church – about 1.5 miles away. That was also the family church for Sam’s parents as they lived in the southern part of Wolcott and it would have been the closest one to them. So even though Sam and Hattie were living in Prospect, Wilson would have known them.

In the 1900 census, Wilson is listed as the head of his family with five children at home. The oldest boy had since gotten married and moved out. Edith, then 18, is continuing to take care of the family. The next boy, at age 15, is now working on a nearby farm during the day, and the three youngest are still in school. Harold is living with the Nichols family in the next town with a status of “border”.

Wilson remarried in 1902. But as he was then 47 and his new wife was 49 (with several grown children), they decided to leave the young Harold with the Nichols family. Edith remained in the home to help care for her younger brothers until 1907, the year that the last brother still at home finished his schooling. She then felt that her job was done, and she finally married at the age of 25.

Since he had lived with them from the age of just a few weeks, Harold grew up only really knowing his foster family. They had never officially adopted him, nor changed his name, so he knew who his biological father was and knew his stepmother as well. But he spent his entire years growing up in Prospect and later married a girl he went to school with there.

 

My father’s great-grandmother – Ellen Lois Rogers (Mary Lois Drake)

The situation with my great-great-grandmother was quite different than the situation with my grandfather. Benjamin and Lois Irene [Chaffee] Rogers had married in 1834. Over the next two decades they had a total of eight children – five boys and three girls. (You can read about the family here). However, none of the boys lived to reach their third birthday. Benjamin desperately wanted a son! In 1853, Lois passed away, leaving Benjamin with three daughters – Martha (16), Mary (10), and Ellen Lois (21 months). Benjamin not only wanted to remarry (and have a son), but he did not want to be encumbered in his pursuits by the three daughters – reminders of the failure of his wife to give him the son and heir he wanted.

Fortunately(?), his wife had other relatives in town, so he arranged for his wife’s first cousin and her husband, Mary and James Drake who had no children of their own, to take on the three girls (Mary Drake’s mother was Hannah Chaffee, the sister of Lois [Chaffee] Roger’s father, Caleb]. Benjamin, free of the three girls, re-married within three months and moved 10 miles away to another town.

The oldest daughter, Martha, being 16, also shortly married, but then died childless a few years later from typhus. The middle daughter, Mary, remained with her mother’s cousin, where she was listed in the census as a servant, until she married at age 25. The youngest daughter, Ellen Lois, was adopted by the family who changed her name from Ellen Lois Rogers to Mary Lois Drake (Mary after her adoptive mother, Lois after her biological mother, and Drake after her adoptive parents).

 

Children of my great-grandfather – Louis Russell

Louis (see his story here) and his wife Anna married in 1892. They had six children over the next eleven years. Then in late 1903, Anna died. Like the situation with my great-grandfather above, Wilson Pierpont, Louis decided to keep his school-age children with him and find homes for the younger children. But like the situation with Benjamin Rogers, he placed the younger children with relatives. Thus, he kept Erskine (9), Linus (7), and Loretta (5).

William (almost 4) went to live with Samuel and Lillie Waldron – they were in their early 40s, childless, and Samuel was the first cousin of Louis’ mother. Allen (2) was sickly and went to live with friends, Eugene and Mary Potter. The Potters were about 50, had had four children, but all had grown and the youngest had recently left home, so Mary was well qualified to spend her time taking care of Allen. Martha Pauline (4 months) went to live in the all-female household of Helen [Madigan] [Pulver] Waldron, Helen’s widowed mother, Mary Jane Madigan, and Helen’s three daughters – Lola Pulver (19), Eva Pulver (11), and Margaret Waldron (5). Helen was still married to Lewis Waldron, a second cousin of Louis, but they were separated.

The situation remained like this for the next several years with only the following changes. Despite the nursing/mothering of Mrs. Potter, Allen died in 1905 when he was just three. Lola Pulver got married and moved to MA, Helen got divorced from Lewis Waldron and he remarried. In 1910, with the three children living with him getting older (now being 15, almost 14, and 12), Louis re-married, to Helen, thus now reuniting Martha Pauline with her older siblings and having four of his five remaining children under the same roof. William remained living with Samuel and Lillie Waldron in the same town (see his story here). Around the same time Eva (18) moved to MA to live with her older sister Lola and family, and Margaret (12) also moved out [I have not been able to determine where].

 

Other complication in the Louis Russell family

As noted above, two of Louis’ children went to live with Waldron family members, Helen Waldron being the wife of Louis’ second cousin, Lewis, and Samuel Waldron being the uncle of Lewis and a first cousin of Louis’ father. But Gilbert Waldron, the grandfather of Samuel and great-grandfather of Lewis, was also the great-grandfather of Lewis Waldron’s mother – meaning that Lewis Waldron’s parents were first cousins, once removed.

In 1910 when Eva Pulver went to live with her sister, Kate, and family in MA, also living with that family was a border named Luther Peet. Eva and Luther were both 18 and then eventually married. When Eva’s half-sister, Margaret Waldron, married, she married Alton Peet Lewis who was a first cousin of Luther Peet (Alton’s mother was Ella [Peet] Lewis, a sister of Luther’s father, Charles Peet). So not only did half-sisters marry first cousins, but this introduced some name complications.

I had noted when reading Eva’s journals (see here), that I initially was confused as Eva referred to her husband, Luther, as “Louie”, but that was also the nickname of her stepfather, Louis Russell. But for her half-sister, it was also complicated as her biological father was Lewis [Waldron], her stepfather, who was very much a part of her life, was Louis Russell, and her husband’s last name was also Lewis. I hope that she called him “Alton” or perhaps “Al” to avoid further complications!

But besides the relationship complications and naming complications, this family also continued the tradition of taking in or fostering other family members when needed. In particular, Louis and Helen seemed to have a couple of spare rooms in their house in Waterbury that were often occupied by extended family members. In 1913, apparently due to complications from childbirth, Lola died and her children (ages 6, 5, 3, newborn) went to live with others. Lola (the daughter) was adopted by the Megin family. Ethel and Ruby were adopted by the Schofield family (who changed their last name – but when the girls left home they changed them back). And the youngest daughter, just a baby, Juanita, went to live with her grandparents (actually her grandmother and step-grandfather) in Waterbury. She remained there until she turned 18 (around 1931) and went out to live on her own.

In addition, in 1936 when my father and his older sister were 16 and 20 respectively, they left their mother and stepfather in New Milford and moved to Waterbury to live with their grandfather and step-grandmother. My aunt married in 1938, but my father remained there until he went into the Navy in 1944.