A Fortunate Discovery

Sometimes, despite our intent to be methodical, we jump ahead of ourselves. So it was with my search for the parentage of the Faller children. While researching marriages recorded in association with another Rote, I made use of the New Castle Public Library's Marriage/Obituary Database, and in the process I found Mabel Rote's marriage to a Faller. This library database, which is basically an index to individuals named as principles in marriage and obituary announcements, has proven to be invaluable for researching marriages and obituaries for individuals with connections to New Castle and Lawrence County.

The record for Mabel returns this information:

id	Last Name	First Name	Spouse	Parent	Newspaper	Page	Date of Marriage Announcement
327878	Rote	Mabel	Jenry J. Faller		NCN	3	05-14-1912

While the name of the spouse, "Jenry J. Faller" isn't quite what we're looking for, it seems likely to be a transcription error.

Having found the record for Mabel Rote and a Faller, I ran a search for Faller and the year 1912, ignoring the unusual first name for the time being. Here's what I got:

id	Last Name	First Name	Spouse	Parent	Newspaper	Page	Date of Marriage Announcement
309934	Faller	Henry J	Mabel Rote		NCN	3	5-14-1912

Ahah! As I suspected. We now have information tying Mabel Rote to Henry J. Faller, with a marriage announcement date of May 14, 1912. With this information in hand, it was time to see if I could find the actual text of the announcement in the New Castle News. For this, I returned to Ancestry.com, which I know from frequent encounters has records from this newspaper. To get to the records for New Castle News, I start with the Card Catalog.

To access the Card Catalog on Ancestry.com, click Search, then Card Catalog.

To access a specific set of records, type the name of the desired resource  in the  Title box.

Note

You don't have to know the name of the resource. For example, if you want marriage records from North Dakota sources, you might put "North Dakota" in the Title box (hoping that ND newspapers and other record collections included the state name in the title), and "marriage" in the Keyword(s) box.

My search for New Castle News had the following result:

A match for New Castle News.

Clicking the link for New Castle News presents me with a couple of options for searching the newspaper. The first is a search form, while the second is a browse option that allows me to select a specific date. I chose to use the advanced version of the search form. (My default on Ancestry.com is to use advanced search forms, as I prefer the enhanced accuracy such forms provide.)

Search form for New Castle News. Mabel Rote has been entered in the name fields, as has the publication year.

Searching for Mabel Rote and the year of publication results in a number of hits, with those in 1912 at the top of the list. The first is for March 8, 1912 and turns out to be unrelated to the marriage (although of interest in learning a bit more about Mable Rote), and the second is for Tuesday, May 14, 1912 and is for the Society page, on which the marriage announcement can be found under the heading "Quiet Marriage."

"Quiet Wedding" for Mabel Rote and Henry J. Faller, both of New Castle, Pennsylvania.

Transcription

Quiet Wedding

Friends of Miss Mabel Rote, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. M. Rote of Patterson avenue, and Mr. Henry J. Faller of Fern avenue, will be interested to learn of their marriage which was a quiet even of Monday evening at 7 o'clock in the home of Rev. J. M. Farrell on Carson street. The bride was prettily attired and the witnesses were his sister Miss Emma Rote, and Miss Mary Jenkins. The young couple will go to house-keeping on the Westside.

Aside from the claim that Miss Emma Rote was Faller's sister (most likely an error, as Mabel had a sister named Emma), the announcement is quite informative, confirming as it does that this Mabel Rote is the child of A. M. Rote (almost certainly Alpheus McClelland Rote), the addresses of the respective parties, the name of the minister who officiated over the marriage, and the names of the two witnesses.

While the evidence I've found, as reported in this and previous posts, is not comprehensive proof that Mable Rote and Henry J. Faller are the parents of Henry John and Ella L. Faller, at this point I'm fairly confident that this is, in fact, the case. While I will, of course, continue to collect any documents I find on the members of this family, at this point I consider that particular mystery solved. Perhaps the one less than satisfactory aspect of this is the question of what happened to the parents of these children, that resulted in their living with their grandparents.

ETA: Another piece of the puzzle has fallen into place since I first posted this. Mabel died in 1919. Although I have not yet found a direct record of her death, I found a notice of her burial on January 10, 1919, published in the January 13, 1919 edition of New Castle News. This goes a long way toward explaining why the children were living with their grandparents, although it does not completely explain why their father chose or was unable to care for them.

Searching RootsWeb for Henry John Faller

Today, I'm searching for Henry John and Ella L Faller, grandchilren of Alpheus M. Rote, in multiple one online database, RootsWeb*; as noted in previous entries, I've found evidence indicating that Henry John Faller and his sister are the children of Alpheus' daughter, Mabel Rote, and her husband Henry J Faller. While I've already done some searching on Ancestry.com and checked out Geni.com to see if my connections to Geni's World Tree can shed any light, my intention today is to check out other databases and to record the various results I've found on each site.

Note: I've updated my first entry about my search for the children's lineage, Fallers, The Mystery of John H (Henry J) and Ella L Fuller or Faller, to acknowledge that my documentation of my research efforts in this blog was inspired by certified genealogist Judy Kellar Fox' blog, Pinpointing Dennis Buggy's Irish Origins. I also want to acknowledge here that I am borrowing much of the organization of her blog, using the steps she's taken in her search as a template for my own search.

RootsWeb

My search from the main page on RootsWeb for Henry John Faller results in 19 matches in 1 database, the Rootsweb Surname List.

Surname	From	To	Migration
Faller	1700	1850	Germany>Phila>Western PA
Faller	1767	1833	Hanner,BAD,DEU
Faller	1800	1900	DEU
Faller	1800	1920	PRU,DEU>SD
Faller	1803	1881	BAD,DEU>Scioto Co,OH
Faller	1803	1946	DEU>PA
Faller	1811	1909	FRA>IL>IN>MO>KS,USA
Faller	1811	now	FRA>IN>IL,USA
Faller	1822	now	ELS,FRA>IN>IL,USA
Faller	1823	----	DEU>OH,USA
Faller	1823	1961	DEU>ARG>ENG
Faller	1824	now	DEU
Faller	1842	now	Germany, Scotland, Lancashire, Australia.
Faller	1846	now	Baden-Baden,DEU>OH>WA>CA,USA
Faller	1850	1900	DEU>SCT
Faller	1885	1977	BAY,DEU>NY,USA
Faller	1900	c1950	DEU>NYC&PA>AtlanticCity,NJ,USA
Faller	1950	present	US>MLA,PHILS
Carolino Faller (Pampanga,Phils)
Faller	c1850	1900	DEU>PA,USA

As you can see, only the surname is listed for all but a single entry, but for the moment, none of these appears a likely match, based on the dates and migration information. However, there are a few links preceding the results table, one to information on alternate surnames (important, given that my starting point in the 1920 census was for the surname Fuller) and a "resource page" on the Faller surname.

The alternate surnames suggested are Faller, Toller, Fulle, Fowler, and Fuller. Just glancing at the results for Fuller, I see that there are many more individuals listed on Rootsweb with this surname. But, for the moment, I'm going to set that trail aside and focus more directly on the Faller surname. The link to the resource page takes me to a set of searches, with the Faller surname already completed; possible databases I can search include WorldConnect Family Trees, the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), the RootsWeb Surname List, and Primary Records at RootsWeb (identified as the USGenWeb Archives).

WorldConnect Family Trees

I'm starting with an Exact search on the surname Faller, with the first name Henry John, and birth place Pennsylvania, which returns no results, followed by a Soundex search. The Soundex returns 15 results, none of which look likely. I repeat my search, this time with the Metaphone option; there are 14 results, this time, many of them apparently duplicates of my prior search, but once more none appear to be the individual I'm trying to find.

Social Security Death Index

The SSDI, as it turns out, is only available through Ancestry.com, but has the advantage of allowing me to connect the search to the Henry John Faller in my tree. Of the 2,397 records returned (most of which have nothing to do with this individual, Ancestry identifies 7 as the most likely matches:

Name	Birth Date	Death Date	Last Residence (City,County,State)
Henry C. Faller	13 Feb 1914	21 Aug 1993	Lake Mary, Seminole, Florida
John H. Faller	30 May 1914	15 Nov 1995	Bridgeville, Allegheny, Pennsylvania
Henry E. Faller	8 Aug 1918	24 Jul 2004	Kansas City, Jackson, Missouri
John E. Faller	10 Apr 1916	11 Aug 1988	Beaver, Beaver, Pennsylvania
John A. Faller	13 Dec 1916	30 May 2001	Toledo, Lucas, Ohio
Henry D. Faller	19 Sep 1920	11 Jun 2006	Flint, Genesee, Michigan
John E. Faller	23 Jun 1911	18 Feb 1993	Marinette, Marinette, Wisconsin
John Faller	24 Sep 1910	Nov 1981	Newport, Campbell, Kentucky

Since the birth place is not included in any of these records I can't directly rule any of these men in or out of my search on that basis. The most likely, based on this information is the second in the list, John H. Faller, who died in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, but there's no real reason to feel that this man is truly the one I'm looking for; I've saved this to my shoebox, but I'm not ready to attach it to Henry John Faller in my tree. I could request a copy of his original social security application, but this would require an expenditure that I'm not willing to make at this time. I'll put this information aside, for inclusion in my formal searches on Ancestry.com.

Primary Records/USGenWeb Archives

Since I've already obtained a list of Fallers in the Rootsweb Surname List, it's time for a primary record search. There are only two results for an exact search for Faller; neither is useful.

So, for now, I seem to have exhausted the resources available on RootsWeb, and my search is over for the moment.

---

* One individual at a time! And, one database. Taking the time to give a full description of the steps I'm taking is proving to be exceedingly time-consuming.

New Data on Rote and Faller

The New Castle Public Library maintains a database of marriages and obituaries. Checking this source, I've learned the following information:

A. M. Rote  (probably my great-grandfather Alpheus, but I'll need confirmation from another source with his full name), married to Ella E. Rote, most probably died in late September 1936, as the announcement of his death was published in the New Castle News on 30 September 1936.

Plus, the announcement for the wedding of Mabel Rote to Henry J Faller was published on 14 May, 1912, which makes sense considering the information from the 1920 and -30 US Censuses, as described in my previous post.

The Mystery of John H (Henry J) and Ella L Fuller or Faller

At the time of the 1920 US Census, January 8, 1920, my great-grandparents, Alpheus McClelland and Ella (née Ward) Rote were living on Patterson Avenue in "New Castle City," Lawrence, Pennsylvania. My great-grandfather’s first name was misspelled as Alphus, but other information from the census, the location, his middle initial and age, Ella's name and age, and the names and ages of the two adult children living with them, John and Emma, are strong indications that this is actually my great-grandfather.

Figure 1: Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920—Population
State: Pennsylvania; County: Lawrence; Name of Incorporated Place: New Castle City; Sheet 9A

Living with Alpheus and Ella in 1920 were two children listed as their grandchildren, as can be seen in Figure 2. When I attach the census record to Alpheus on Ancestry.com, they are identified as Emma's children, but I have reason to doubt this.

Figure 2: 1920 US Census, Detail of Alphus [Alpheus] M Rote and Household

The grandchildren’s names are given here as John H. Fuller and Ella L. Fuller, ages 5 and 4 9/12, giving them estimated birth dates of 1915 and September 1916, respectively. The two were born in Pennsylvania, as was their father, and their mother was born in Ohio.

When this census was attached to Alpheus, Ancestry.com interpreted the children as Emma’s children. However, Emma was born in Pennsylvania. The only one of Alpheus’ children to be born outside of Pennsylvania was Mabel, who was born in Ohio, and it is she who I believe must be the children’s mother.

Ten years later, on April 6, 1930, Alpheus and his family were living on Crease Street, and the children turn up again in the census, where the household is split between two pages:

Figure 3: Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930—Population
State: Pennsylvania; County: Lawrence;  Incorporated Place: New Castle; Sheet 16A

Figure 4: Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930—Population
State: Pennsylvania; County: Lawrence;  Incorporated Place: New Castle; Sheet 16B

Here are close-ups of the names in the household:

Figure 5: 1930 US Census, Detail 1 of Alpheus M Rote and Household

Figure 6: 1930 US Census, Detail 2 of Alpheus M Rote and Household

Over the past decade the family composition has changed slightly. John Rote has moved out and his sister Emma, now using the name Cavender, is still (or once more) living in the household, now with a daughter of her own, Anna G. Cavender. Once again, there are two additional grandchildren, now identified as Henry J. and Ella L. Faller The remaining details about the children are consistent with the 1920 census and it seems most likely that the child identified as John H in 1920 goes by Henry J in 1930.

Based on this, I have the following individuals:

First Name	Last Name	DOB	Place Born	Mother	Father
John H[enry] or Henry J[ohn]	Fuller or Faller	abt 1915	Pennsylvania	Mabel M Rote	Fuller or Faller
Ella L	Fuller or Faller	abt July 1916	Pennsylvania	Mabel M Rote	Fuller or Faller

I have not yet been able to locate any information about Alpheus after 1930; I do not know when or where he died. There are a number of individuals who may correspond to other members of the household, but I have not yet been able to discover any more information about the Fuller or Faller children, and they, with their mysterious origins and presence in their grandfather's house, is a mystery that appeals to me.

So, among my many other genealogical goals, I hope to uncover the mystery these children present. To that end, I shall attempt to:

1. Discover the full names of each of the children, along with their exact birth dates and birthplaces,
2. Confirm or disprove that Mabel M Rote is the children’s mother,
3. Identify their father (full name, birth date, date of death, and parents' name, if at all possible),
4. Demonstrate a “reasonably exhaustive search” and explain the research process as I go, and
5. Record my research and findings.

As I research these individuals, I will post updates regarding the progress of my search and its results, positive or negative.

ETA: This post, with it's approach to documenting my researches on a specific individual, was inspired by the blog Pinpointing Dennis Buggy's Irish Origins.

Researching Your Welsh Roots

Unrelated to my genealogy researches, I also enjoy writing stories. My husband shares my interests in these subjects and we sometimes collaborate on stories. (One of our collaborations has been published in the anthology Space Pirates, edited by David Lee Summers.) In association with a story we're working on, my husband was researching Welsh immigration to Ireland and came across the website Data Wales. Although the site's apparent focus is Wales, itself, it also provides a number of articles on emigration from Wales and, in particular, on American immigrants of Welsh ancestry. If your tree includes ancestors from Wales, you are almost certain to find the site of interest.

Genealogists Making a Difference

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My Paternal Grandparents

Inez Minerva "Sissy" Herrington
b. July 20, 1890, Pensacola, FL, USA
d. January 24, 1986, Pensacola, FL, USA     

My Granny Sissy, as we called her, was the only daughter of Isaac Newton Herrington I (b. 20 Dec 1846 in Laurel, Jones, Mississippi, USA, d. 8 Jan 1913 in Pensacola, Escambia, Florida, USA) and Ezella F. Boykin (b. 26 Aug 1866 in Quincy, Gadsden, Florida, USA, d. 14 Jan 1959 in Mobile, Mobile, Alabama, USA). She had two brothers, Eugene (b. 27 Sep 1886 in Florida, USA, d. 4 Jul 1905 in Brent, Escambia, Florida, USA), and Isaac Newton Herrington II (b. 20 August 1894 in Pensacola, Escambia, Florida USA, d. 20 June 1979 in Mobile, Mobile, Alabama, USA). According to the record of Eugene's death submitted to Ancestry.com by one of my cousins, Eugene's death, which occurred when he was 18, was as a result of drowning in the Perdido River; I do not know the circumstances which led to his drowning, but note that it occurred on Independence Day.

My grandmother was born in Pensacola and lived there her whole life, except for going away for college. During World War I, she served as a Yomanette at the School of Aviation affiliated with the Pensacola Naval Air Station. She was a religious woman and  a charter member of the East Brent Baptist Church. My father has spoken of how she enjoyed inviting visiting preachers to her home for dinner. While in college, she studied education, and subsequent to her graduation she taught for a time in a one-room schoolhouse.

Elmer Bruce Lloyd
b.  May 2, 1886, MI, USA
d. January 19, 1948, Pensacola, FL, USA

My grandfather was the son of Samuel Hughes Lloyd (b. 20 Mar 1849 in Schomberg, Ontario, Canada, d. May 1938 in Saulte Ste Marie, Chippewa, Michigan, USA) and Jane Ellen Higgins (b. 15 Jul 1859 in Canada, d. 1917 in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, Canada). He grew up in Upper Michigan, in the Saulte Ste Marie area with family on both sides of the border. As a boy, Lloyd, as my grandmother was to eventually refer to him, attended a one-room schoolhouse for a short while, leaving school after either the third or eighth grade, depending upon whose memory is being called upon. However, he was what we now call a life-long learner who enjoyed reading widely, becoming a self-educated man. Lloyd submitted his draft registration card in Chippewa, Michigan in 1917 and joined the navy in January of 1918. According to my dad:

At the end of his first year he was promoted to Chief Petty Officer. After his initial enlistment in Michigan he was transferred to Pensacola and it was my mother who was a secretary on the naval base at the time that handled the paperwork. That was how they met. I know that he served on the Idaho, a battleship that carried three planes on the aft deck and got them in the air with a catapult. Then later he was on the Ranger, an aircraft carrier. When, at the start of WWII, he heard the other old timers complain about the "90 day wonders" it amused him that he had once been in that category himself.

Lloyd's strength, humor, and mechanical know-how were the subject of many of the stories my dad told about his father, and I hope to share some of these in future posts.