I Love a Good Scandal; Or, the Strange Tale of Winifred V. Carpenter

     Still working on the unanswered questions in my tree, while waiting for those Irish records. Today, I researched this handsome fellow-

          

     Meet Charles Samuel Price Jr., the son of Charles Sr. and Martha McCallum. Charles Jr. is my second cousin twice removed.  A while ago, I found Charles in the 1930 census living in the village of Shortsville, New York!  That caught my attention as Charles had been born many miles away in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. What was he doing in Shortsville, New York?  Which just happened to be right next to the village of Manchester, where I grew up.  Then I noticed his profession, railroad detective.  That explained a lot.  Further research showed Charles' employer was the Lehigh Valley RR, founded in Pennsylvania.  At that time, and for many years after, it was the largest employer in the town of Manchester of which the villages of Manchester and Shortsville are a part.  My father, grandfather, and many other relatives all worked for the Lehigh.

     Returning to Charles' story today, I found his marriage in 1915 to Winifred V. Carpenter, the twenty-year -old daughter of Sanford L. Carpenter and Mary Slaght.  Charles was living in Rochester, New York then, working for Kodak.  He registered for the draft in 1917, was drafted, then was sent overseas from May of 1918 to April of 1919.  That may have been when his marriage to Winifred began to fail, for fail it did.  They were still together in 1920, but in October of 1922, it appeared Winifred married George O'Brien.

     That wasn't such an uncommon thing, wars and separations change people, they grow apart.  Charles and Winifred were far from the only couple who lost their way that year.  However, things weren't adding up.  Take a look at Winifred and George O'Brien's marriage record below.

     The first thing I noticed was Winifred's declaration that this was her first marriage.  The second was the name of her father, not Sanford Carpenter, but Sanford Joseph Price.  Her mother? Still Mary, but with the maiden name McConnell.  Sounds a bit like McCallum, the maiden name of Charles' mother, don't you think?  Another thing, the marriage was performed by a Catholic priest, Rev. T. Bernard Kelly.  Winifred's first marriage was performed by a Methodist pastor, she wasn't Catholic.  But George O'Brien was, as were his parents.  And had Father Kelly known of her earlier marriage to Charles Price, he would not have been sanctioning this one.  Mixed marriages were one thing, marrying a divorcee was quite another.  I'm sure his parents too would have been less than thrilled.  Did that account for Winifred's fibs about her first marriage and her parent's names; and for the fact their marriage took place forty miles from Rochester in Batavia?  Or could this have been a different Winifred?  

     I tried for a long time to find anyone named Sanford Joseph Price with no luck.  None of the few I did find were the right age or in the right place.  I also searched for another Winifred but no luck there either.  Then  I came across an obituary for Winifred's mother which settled the question- 

     It was the ex-wife of Charles Price who married George O'Brien alright.

     About ready to call it quits with Winifred, who after all wasn't even related to me, I came across this gem in the Elmira Star-Gazette dated March 16, 1927- "In Court chambers Monday a decree of divorce was granted in the following case: Charles S. Price of Wellsboro against Winifred V. Price".  What the what?  Charles divorced Winifred in 1927?  But she married George in 1922!  Was this part of the reason for the subterfuge in their marriage record?  The divorcee wasn't even divorced?  I suppose Winifred could have divorced Charles in Rochester without his being aware, but it seems like a stretch.

     Winifred was still in Rochester with George O'Brien in 1930, but I had trouble locating her in the 1940 census.  I was beginning to think I should be looking for a divorce, believing George had finally discovered her deceptions and left.  Then I found George, and there was Winifred, both of them living with their employer, J. L. Rosenthal, a Russian immigrant real estate agent, in the Rochester suburb of Brighton, as his housekeeper and butler!  According to that census, the couple were residents of Miami, Florida in 1935.  

     George passed away in 1947 and Winifred in 1974.  Both are buried in Holy Sepulchre in the city though not together.  George is in his family's plot with five others, perhaps they only owned the six graves?  But what an incredible story.  I wondered, did she fool George all those years, or was he in on it?  I'd love to know.

 

     

.

It Was Meant To Be; Or How Rockwell and Matilda Found Their Groove

 

     Another year has gone, and I can't say I'm going to miss it.  Between numerous cases of Covid in my family, which I somehow managed to avoid, and my emergency surgery for a strangulated hernia last month, I'm not sorry to bid adieu to 2023.  It was also a disappointing year for genealogy with few new Irish databases appearing online.  The much-promised final group of early Irish death certificates never materialized, and I've all but given up on the Valuation Office posting their digitized records.  Since I'm spending a good deal of time resting while I recover, it seemed like a good time to look into some genealogical mysteries on the non-Irish side of my tree.

     One result was my last blog about what was said to be a  photo of Jeremiah Garner.  Another mystery was the marriage between my 3rd great-grandmother Matilda Taylor and Rockwell Rood.  My line descends from Matilda and her first husband Thomas Vincent.  Thomas and Matilda married in Saratoga County, New York around 1822 and made their home in Halfmoon.  They eventually migrated westward, first to Richmond in Ontario County, NY, then to Victory in Cayuga County where they had relatives living.  Thomas died there in 1842 at the age of thirty-nine, leaving Matilda with six children and a mortgage.  What became of her after that was unknown for quite a while.  All I knew was the mortgage fell into arrears and the land was auctioned.

     Complicating matters was a headstone back in Halfmoon bearing the inscription, "Matilda Vincent wife of Thomas", and one next to it inscribed, "Thomas Vincent"; no dates appear on either stone.  Many, including a published genealogy, attributed these graves to the Thomas and Matilda who moved to Victory, but it didn't make much sense that their burials had been almost 200 miles from that place.

     In 2019 I was able to prove Matilda had not been buried in Halfmoon but had remarried after Thomas' untimely death.  He's not there either by the way, Thomas actually rests in French Cemetery in Victory.  Matilda's new husband, Rockwell Rood, was born in Vermont and by 1820 was living in Reading, NY some eighty miles from Victory.  After that he moved on to Dix, about the same distance away.  How on earth did these two meet and conduct a courtship?  I never would have connected Matilda to the far distant Rockwell, but for the 1850 census of Dix enumerating her daughters, Mary, and Amelia Vincent, living in the same household with Matilda and Rockwell Rood and their two young sons.

1850 Census of Dix, NY

     It seemed the best way to answer this question was to dig deeper into Rockwell's family since I'd found no clues while researching him or Matilda.  I found Rockwell had been born in Sandgate, Vermont to Simeon Rood and Darmarius Munger in 1789.  His father Simeon was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, so he left some military records.  One of them was a document indicating Simeon's pension was transferred from Reading to Cato in Cayuga County in 1820, two years before his death.  That was very interesting, Cato is right next to the town of Victory!  However, 1820 was decades before Thomas and Matilda Vincent arrived there and I had found no indication Rockwell was ever a resident of that area.  Then again, perhaps some of Simeon's other children had been?

     I hit paydirt with Rockwell's younger sister Damaris Rood.  Damaris married William Hagar, and their first child, Esther, was born in 1816.  Two New York state censuses, the 1855 and 1875, gave Esther's birthplace as Cayuga County.  The 1820 through 1860 censuses place Damaris Rood Hagar in the town of Victory, meaning she was living there at the very same time as Matilda and Thomas.  It's entirely conceivable Damaris was occasionally visited by her brother Rockwell who was widowed around the same time as Matilda.

     I think my question is now answered, proving once again, it's not a waste of time to research individuals you're not even related to.