Military Memories: Uncle Jimmy Whetstone and WWI

James Franklin Whetstone (1889-1960)

I knew that Mom's Uncle Jimmy, who was James Franklin Whetstone (1889-1960), had served in the First World War but not much more, so I asked her recently. He was, as she remembered, the only one of the family to have served in that war. We mused about that for a while and thought that it was due to the way the generations broke out, more or less, and that the men were either too young or too old and supporting families. But Uncle Jimmy went. And Uncle Jimmy got "gassed." But we'll get to that in a while.

I found Uncle Jimmy's draft registration card and gave it a cursory glance. Mom, who is 95 and an avid genealogist, was on the phone with me when I was doing this and we chatted about the times and the place. Jimmy was born in the little Western Maryland mountain town of Frostburg, Allegany, in 1889, and that's where he died. Some of his brothers moved to Akron to work in the rubber plants and Jimmy went there from time to time as well. In the 1910 census he and two of his brothers, Charlie and Tuck, were working in one of the numerous coal mines that dot the hills around Frostburg. The times were prosperous and in 1912 the population of the villages around Frostburg ballooned to over 15,000 and everyone came to Frostburg to shop. The price of coal was rising and the mines were hiring. But after WWI the demand for coal dropped as did employment. The local tire and rubber plant hired as demand for cars and the tires they ran on increased. It made a lot of sense for the men to seek employment in Akron where there were a number of tire and rubber plants.

Here's a look at Uncle Jimmy's draft card, below. So what are we looking at? I checked the source info on Ancestry.com just below the overview box and clicked through to see this about the First Registration cards:

First Registration. The registration on 5 June 1917, was for men aged twenty-one to thirty-one—men born between 6 June 1886 and 5 June 1896.

It was called the 12 question card and there is a graphic view of the card's questions which was a big help because the image I saw for Uncle Jimmy's card was pretty rough and I couldn't make out the questions.

As we chatted, Mom asked me to check the 1910 census and see if Jimmy was married and he wasn't, and then she quickly asked about the 1920 census and he was single there too. Now this jogged Mom's memory a bit and she mentioned that she thought Uncle Jimmy had been married twice, first to a woman who might be named Verona, and then to the wife they all knew, Madge Cornu. But the records weren't yielding anything about a first marriage. We looked in all the usual places and the mysterious "Verona" was not to be found. And just for fun I looked at other trees on Ancestry.com and there was no first wife for Uncle Jimmy there. Maybe he wasn't married before he married Madge Cornu.

Back to Jimmy's military service. I also found a record of his service in this index:
Ancestry.com. Maryland Military Men, 1917-18 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000.

Original data: Maryland in the World War, 1917-1919; Military and Naval Service Records. Vol. I-II. Baltimore, MD, USA: Twentieth Century Press, 1933.

 

The box below the source info has this to say:
Considered by many as the first "modern" war, World War One involved United States military units from 1917 to 1918. This database is a massive collection of military records for men who served in the war from Maryland. Originally compiled in 1933, it provides the names for men who served in the army, navy, and marines. In addition to providing the individual's name, it reveals city of residence, unit of service, birth date or age, and other helpful facts. It also contains the location and date of enlistment and discharge information. The names of over 67,900 men are included in the collection. For researchers of Maryland ancestors who may have served in the "Great War," this can be an informative database.

And here's the listing for Uncle Jimmy:
Name: James Franklin Whetstone
Race: white
Address: Frostburg, Allegany Co.
Birth Place: Frostburg, Md.
Birth Date: 17 Sep 1889
Comment: Ind 8/6/18 pvt, Co K 4 Pion Inf; 9 Evac Hosp 8/21/18, Hon disch 7/8/19, Overseas 9/15/18 to 6/27/19, Meuse-Argonne

OK, that's some good info right there but I had to break it down and do a bit of searching. He was inducted into service on August 6th, 1918 and was a private. Look, it says that he served in Company K of the 4th "Pion Inf." What's that? Found out that it's short for Pioneer Infantry. What's that? The pioneers go ahead of each battalion to clear the way and assure smooth passage. They were recruited from men who were described by the Personnel Bureau of the War Department as:
"Men experienced in life in the open, skilled in woodcraft and simple carpentry — substitute
occupations, rancher, prospector, hunter, scout."

The Whetstones were that. They were skilled in life in the open and were handy as hunters and knew their way around the woods. It was Jimmy's brother Tuck who showed Mom how to find edible and safe mushrooms in the woods, and you can read about that here. Jimmy's father was a stone mason so he had intimate knowledge of that craft and building in general. He had worked as a coal miner and needed to be physically strong. I'm thinking that Jimmy would fit right in.

I won't even try to explain the battle of the Argonne and if you want to read about it visit the listing on Wikipedia here. War history buffs will know right away that it was the 47-day battle that helped bring the war to an end and that it was the largest battle in US military history because it employed 1.2 million troops.

He was gassed and I heard it from Mom. Mustard gas, and all the relatives knew about it. If it was mustard gas he would have had scarred air passages and difficulty breathing and Mom confirmed that he had difficulty the rest of his life. He was taken to the 9th Evac Hospital on August 8, 1918 and then received his Honorable Discharge on July 8, 1919. It was probably the great adventure of his life.

Uncle Jimmy was in Frostburg for the 1920 census, and probably real glad to be home. On September 19th, 1921, Jimmy married Madge Cornu in Summit County, Ohio. He was 32 and she was 21 and worked as a rubber worker in one of the Akron plants. He lived and worked in Frostburg, the record shows.

And that brings me to an interesting point here.  Let's go back to the idea of Jimmy being married twice. Look at his draft card, above. It says that he's married but gives no wife's name as so many other draft cards in this record set do. Then take a look at Jimmy and Madge's marriage record below. It says they are both single.

Now what's up with that? Was he actually married to this mystery woman Mom remembered as Verona? Or was it just a romance that never worked out? Was it a secret marriage that just ended without going public, and they both just walked away? Or did she die? Mom thinks she might have.

Why are there always more mysteries and questions than we have time to explore? I'll leave the two marriages issue to his descendants, if they care to go looking. A person only has so may hours in the day, sad to say.

Uncle Jimmy and Madge lived in Frostburg the rest of their lives in a nice little brick house on Midlothian Road, later renamed Braddock Road. They had three sons, Joseph James who everyone called JJ, John Robert, and Raymond. Mom seems to remember something about one of the boys accidentally shooting the other, not seriously or anything, just boys being boys in the country, she said.

I'm glad that I got to know Mom's Uncle Jimmy like this. I've looked at that photo, up top, of him in his WWI uniform and wondered about him. I knew from Mom that he'd been gassed in the war and that he was different when he came back home. Now I know more about that. In some way, he's become my Uncle Jimmy too.

Uncle Jimmy seated with two of his sons.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/05/military-memories-uncle-jimmy-whetstone.html

Stories Mom Told Me: Aunt Marg and her fashion sense

Mom loved Aunt Marg, I can tell from the way she talks about her. You see, Aunt Marg was Mom's mother's sister, Margaret Ann (Whetstone) Wilson Brown (1902-1996). She was born in that little mountain town I write about all the time where our ancestors lived for so many generations, in Allegany County, Maryland. It must have been quite a change of environment for her when she moved from Western Maryland to Akron.

Mom says that Aunt Marg moved there and lived with her sister Aunt Grace, Grace Elizabeth (Whetstone) Knowles (1893-1959) near her brother and Mom's Uncle Tad. (The last post was about Uncle Tad and Aunt Rena.) Even Mom went to stay for a while with Aunt Grace, just before she met Dad, but that's another story for another time. Aunt Grace and Uncle Frank had two children, Charles and Jean.

Aunt Marg got a job at O'Neils's department store in women's fashions in downtown Akron. It was the start of the great age of downtown department stores and the ladies fashion department must have seemed almost heaven for Aunt Marg who dearly love high style.

Mom doesn't know exactly what happened but at some point, Aunt Marg split from her first husband, who she met and married in Akron, Frank Brown (1898-1996). They had two children, David and Doris. Mom said that David died young but Doris grew up, got married (perhaps to someone named Clarence and that's yet to investigate), and moved to California and worked in a candy store. It was after that Aunt Marg married "Uncle Cec" (pronounced like cease, and I really don't know how else to spell it), Cecil Wilson.

Looking at the 1920 US Census for Marg and Frank Brown is fascinating. They are living at 40 S. 14th Street in a house with two other couples, aged 49, 49, 28, and 28. Marg is 18 and Frank is 20 and it says that he was born in Scotland to a Scottish father and Irish mother. When I review the others living at this residence (and none are listed as borders) the only other person who has the Scottish/Irish parents is Amelia Craig, 49, listed as "mother-in-law. It's a jumble to me, and if I had infinite time I might try to unravel this ball of yarn. Maybe sometime, but not today. By the way, Frank is working at the rubber plant as are the two other men in the residence, and you might remember that Uncle Tad moved to Akron to work in the rubber plant.

Well, whatever happened between Aunt Marg and Frank happened, and they split.  She then married Uncle Cecil Wilson and they resided in Akron. Mom remembers that he sold sewing machines. His hands were meticulously kept and that interested Mom because she could see that he didn't work with them as other of her male relatives did. He was a classy man, Mom said.

Eventually Marg and Cecil moved to Indianapolis to take better advantage of his work.  Marg worked in a big department store there too. Aunt Marg was by then a "city lady", very sophisticated, and knew about the latest fashions and dressed in them, always in the best of taste.

During her high school years, Mom received the benefits of boxes of clothing sent by Aunt Marg to her sister and Mom's mother, Emma Susan (Whetstone) Williams (1897-1956). People did that then, and still do. A bunch of our neighbors who have small and growing children exchange boxes and bags of clothing regularly. By the time of Mom's high school years which happened during the Great Depression, those boxes of clothing gained enormous value. Mom and her sister Dot looked forward to the mysterious treasures that might arrive by parcel post!

Emma taught Mom and Dot how to sew, as all the mothers of all the town's girls did. If you wanted a new outfit you were most likely going to sew it yourself. And if you got a hand-me-down from an older relative or close friend, it probably needed altering to your own measurements. Sewing was a "must have" skill for young girls in Frostburg where Mom and her family lived.

In one of those boxes from Aunt Marg was a fabulous pair of brown suede high heeled shoes. Mom loved those shoes and thought of them as the height of sophistication. She wore those shoes in sun, rain and snow. Probably dried them out in the open oven as people did then. Wore them right out and through the sole. No worries! Mom cut up the cardboard that came in the shredded wheat box that  separated the biscuits... and wore them some more.

When Mom graduated high school in 1936, she rode on the bus to spend two weeks with Aunt Marg and Uncle Cec in Indianapolis. Maybe it was more than two weeks as Mom is 95 and can't quite remember. It was quite an adventure. I'm thinking that the time spent with Aunt Marg was a sort of finishing school for Mom and was instrumental in developing her fashion sense. Even to this day, Mom remarks how stylish Aunt Marg was and how well she knew clothes and hair and how to wear them!

Aunt Marg came to visit when Mom and her sister Dot were young women, wearing a fur coat. It was a total sensation! Aunt Marg kindly let the girls borrow it so that they could walk up and down Main Street in Frostburg, taking turns in it. All the boys, Mom said, asked and asked where they got such a treasure. They shrugged and walked on.

Aunt Marg died in Indianapolis at the age of 91. I almost feel that I knew her because of Mom sharing memories. I think that I would have liked her very, very much.

Back says, "October 23, 1939, Lafayette, Indiana.

Daddy Cec, David Leroy Mathew, Mumie Wilson."

Maybe it was written by daughter Doris?

This photo is confusing!

Aunt Marg and Uncle Brownie with new baby, probably David. No date.

Just found this one: Aunt Grace, Uncle Tad and Mom's Grandmother Whetstone.

Grace Elizabeth (Whetstone) Knowles (1893-1959), "Tad", Clarence Hampton Whetstone (1891-1976), and their mother "Kate" Catherine Elizabeth (House) Whetstone (1865 - 1947).

 

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/12/stories-mom-told-me-aunt-marg-and-her.html

Stories Mom Told Me: Part 5, Aunt Rena and Uncle Tad

Mom and I were chatting the other morning and I mentioned how much I liked going to see Aunt Rena and Uncle Tad when I was a kid. We lived in various suburbs of Cleveland and they lived in Akron so a Sunday drive to see them was a reasonable thing to do and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Uncle Tad was Mom's mother's brother, and his proper name was Clarence Hampton Whetstone (1891-1976). Seems like all the boys in that family had given names along with the names they were always called... just to make genealogists crazy. Uncle Tad had married Tessie Hall, Mom said, who was born in Scotland. They had Alex, or Red, and Thelma before Tessie died in 1925 in Akron. It was then that he married Aunt Rena.  The 1930 US Census shows Uncle Tad and Red and Thelma living on Harrison Street with his then housekeeper, Rena Gralion, if I read that surname correctly. He's 38 and she's 25. He married her some time after that. I don't think Mom or I have ever looked into Rena's heritage and suspect that she's been overlooked because they had no children, or maybe because she was born in Scotland? That goes on the list of stuff to do.

Marring the housekeeper is kind of a pattern in our families, and maybe other families too. He did it and so did his father: first wife dies, hire a housekeeper and then marry her. Sometimes the kids don't fit in with the new family so well and get moved off, usually to grandparents who smother them in affection. Did your ancestors ever do that?

While checking records for this post, his WWI draft record was found online and he was already living in Akron in 1917 and working at a rubber plant. Interestingly, at least for me, in the 1920 US Census, he and Tessie are living with his in laws, Tessie's parents, James and Janet Hall who are 68 and 64. He's listed as "Clint", but we never heard him called that. Their first child, Alex, is listed as Alexander. I can not find this family in the 1940 US Census, but now I have Tad, Clint, and Clarence to search so maybe I didn't do a very thorough job of it.

You see, Tad had moved his family from Frostburg, Allegany, in Western Maryland to Akron to work in one of the rubber plants. He started work in that industry at the Kelly Springfield rubber and tire plant near Cumberland, Maryland. He was one of many young men who made the move north and slightly west to Cleveland or Akron. That was a northern migration pattern for many families in this area as industry dried up or simply expanded to other regions. Other families associated with the Celanese company, also near Cumberland, moved to the Carolinas when the big plant was built there. Knowing these two facts can help a wayward genealogist trying to track ancestors from this region.

I remember the house Aunt Rena and Uncle Tad lived in. It was a solid looking two story white and brick structure, sort of in the Craftsman style, with a screened in front porch. It was built on the corner of a double lot and there was a somewhat lavish garden in back with vegetables and flowers, and plantings on the side of the house. It looked very well-kept and prosperous in the middle-class neighborhood in which it was situated. We often played croquet in the ample yard on a warm summer day, and ate meals picnic style there too.

Mom and I both have a very distinct memory of Aunt Rena frying up mushrooms in a big cast iron skillet... in the basement. Yes, in the basement. I have no recollection of ever eating in any other place except the basement or the yard. Hmmm. Mom thought for a minute and then speculated: maybe Aunt Rena was a neat freak? A sweet and totally lovable neat freak. I do remember one time when I wandered into her dining room where the window was full of magical and tiny African violets, and she quickly came to supervise and warn me against touching. And I don't once remember her cooking in the actual kitchen or us eating inside, especially in the dining room. That said, I might have this all wrong! But Mom thinks Aunt Rena might have been a very, very fastidious housekeeper. We love her memory just the same and she's still family, even though the rest of us are tidy but certainly not freakishly neat:) And both Mom and I can still to this very day remember the smell of those delicious mushrooms being fried up by Aunt Rena. Yum!

Not a very good picture at all of Mom's mother, Emma Susan (Whetstone) Williams, her brother Tad, Clarence Hampton Whetstone (1891-1976), and his second wife, our sweet Aunt Rena.

 

 

 

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2013/12/stories-mom-told-me-part-5-aunt-rena.html