Marshall Smith: Time on the S.S. Mayari

The S. S. Mayari

Marshall at the wheel of the S.S. Mayari

Because Marshall was an alien in the United States he was required to register each time he returned from being out of the country.  His trips in the Merchant Marine were all from Boston to Cuba and Central America and each time he returned he was listed as one of the aliens employed on the vessel as a member of crew.  These lists are now available on Ancestry.com.

His first voyage returned to Boston on 2 July 1939.  The ship was the S.S. Mayari, a ship on which he worked for all of his 18 trips.  He was classed as an “ordinary seaman” .  This is defined by Wikipedia as an unlicensed member of the deck department of a merchant ship.  The position is an apprenticeship to become an able seaman and has been so for centuries. 

Marshall was listed as an ordinary seaman for his first eight trips.  Upon returning from his ninth trip he was listed as an Able Seaman.   He was always recorded as 5 feet 10 inches and 150 pounds. 

The list of crew always began with the Master at the top and proceeded down through the ranks.   These were the chief mate, first mate, second mate, bosun, able bodied seaman, ordinary seaman, radio operator, chief engineer, oiler, fireman, wiper, steward, down to the chief cook and the second cook.  Marshall was 13^th on the list on his first trip and 7^th on his last. 

The dates of his trips and the port from which he returned are as follows:

2 July 1939                   Preston, Cuba

5 Sept 1939                   Banes, Cuba

26 Sept 1939                 Banes, Cuba

16 Nov 1939                 Cristobal, Canal Zone

22 Dec 1939                 Preston, Cuba

8 Feb 1940                    Banes, Cuba

10 April 1940               Cristobal, Canal Zone

10 May 1940                 Banes, Cuba

29 May 1940                 Banes, Cuba

16 June 1940                 Banes, Cuba

4 Sept 1940                    Preston, Cuba

23 Sept 1940                 Banes, Cuba

6 Nov 1940                    Cristobal, Canal Zone

1 Jan 1941                     Havana, Cuba

28 Jan 1941                   Banes, Cuba

13 Feb 1941                   Preston, Cuba

5 April 1941                   Banes, Cuba

Banes is a port city of the northeastern coast of Cuba.  From 1898 until the late 1950’s Banes was a “company town” almost wholly owned and operated by the United Fruit Company.   Preston, Cuba was a sugar cane processing center owned and operated by the United Fruit Company and named in honor of one of the company's founders, Andrew Preston. Following the Cuban Revolution of 1958, United Fruit was forced to withdraw and the Cuban government renamed the town Guatemala to symbolize solidarity with that Caribbean nation.

Able bodied seaman were in high demand for the Merchant Marine after World War II broke out in Europe.  It is interesting to note that Marshall left the sea just as things were hotting up war wise.  I remember his telling me that when he left the ship for the last time he went to a bar.  There he met a man who said he had just left a low level job at the Observatory on Mt. Washington.  He thought that if Marshall got himself up there he could take the job.  So he hitchhiked up  and was there for the next five or six years. 

Robert Leslie Smith - My Grandfather - Newly Discovered Information Part One

Robert Leslie Smith 1885 - ?

I never met my paternal grandfather although I believe that he was alive when I was born in 1947 and probably did not die until the 1950's in England.  When my parents met and married in 1947 my father, Marshall Smith, spoke of his father as deceased.  Some years later one of his relatives told my mother that "Dad Smith died" and she was surprised at that, thinking he had been gone for many years.  Since my mother herself died in 1971, long before I had interest in my ancestral history, I am not able to question her about this.

After I began doing genealogical research in 1992, and particularly after I began going to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City in 1994, I was able to learn about Robert Leslie's siblings, his parents and several generations of grandparents.  About Robert himself, however, I learned little and I do not yet know where or when he died.

I did know that my grandfather had been a soldier, serving in the 4th Regiment of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry.  I also had two pictures of him in military uniform, one of which heads this post,  and one picture of him in India.

Robert Leslie Smith is on the right.  

This is the reverse side of the picture from India.  My father was born on 28 June 1915 in St. Just, England, so was not one of the children addressed on this card.  The children at that time were Violet, Mary, and Robert Leslie Jr.  

Surprisingly, my father had always saved his father's military chest.  Despite being very heavy and cumbersome, it followed him from home to home over many years and was in Northfield when my stepmother, Babs Whitaker, died in 2012.  John and I brought it up to Maine and as it was dirty and basically useless, we eventually decided to pull it apart and display the written side on a bookshelf.   

Until recently we knew little else about Robert Leslie's military career.  World War I broke out in August of 1914 and the card from India is dated December 3, 1914.  We also have a piece of needlepoint done by RLS when he was convalescing on a hospital ship.  The needlepoint is a picture of a ship surrounded by flags of countries in the British Commonwealth and dated 1916.  A late cousin, also named Robert Smith, said that our grandfather was wounded on the western front, thrown into a mass grave and survived only because someone on a burial crew saw that he was moving.    As you will read in the next installment of this blog, the story of war service is a complete fabrication.  Sometime in the 1990's when I was at an NGS Conference, I met a man who was there as an "expert" in British military history.  He told me that unless a soldier died in WWI there was no information available.  Not seeing any room for further research I let that line of genealogy drop.  

In 2004 when I was living in Arlington, Virginia, I was contacted by Robert Walsh, a man who said he was a second cousin of mine.  Rob had recently retired and was very involved researching his Smith ancestry.  He had found information I put on a web site (some of it erroneous) and tracked me down.  Rob's grandfather, Alfred Edward Smith and my grandfather Robert Leslie Smith, were brothers.  Robert was born in 1885, the second eldest of eight children and Alfred, born in  1901, was the youngest.  

In 2004 John and I went to Zurich, where Rob has lived for many years and we visited again in 2013.  It was on this second visit that Rob dropped something of a bombshell, showing me that he had found the complete military file for RLS on Ancestry as well as additional information about his situation after he left Turner's Falls.  

To be continued.

Robert Leslie Smith - Part Two

Robert Leslie Smith (RLS) married Mary (Nicholas) Andrews, a widow on 7 March 1908.  Her age was given as 27 and his as 23 but neither of those ages was correct.  RLS was born on 9 July 1885, making him 22 when they married and Mary Nicholas was born on 30 July 1874, making her 33 years old when they married.  Her birth date is incorrectly given in the family Bible, in their passport and in most other records but I have a copy of the original registration of her birth.

Mary was possibly pregnant when they married, as their first child, Violet Annie, was born on 5 November of that same year, about eight months later.  Slightly less than a year after Violet's birth, on 22 October 1909,  RLS enlisted in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry.  Their second child, Mary May, was born on 30 December 1909.

The short story is that Robert enlisted at a time before the First World War broke out.  He had joined the newly established (1908) Territorial Army, not the regular army.  These soldiers were paid volunteers whose mission was protection of the homeland with no obligation to serve overseas.   Thus, Robert was not away from home other than for training periods and he appears with his family in St. Just in the 1911 U.K. Census.

When WWI broke out in 1914, TF soldiers were given the option of serving in France.  Those not wishing to serve in France were asked to go elsewhere-- mainly Egypt, Indian and othe Empire garrisons and this is how RLS ended up in Bareilly, India in November of 1914. He became ill while there and left India at the end of 1915 after 1 year and 7 days.  It is probably at this  time that he was a patient on the HMHS Aquitania where he completed a piece of needlepoint with the name of the ship and the date.  Having been declared unfit for duty he was transferred to the Labour Corps, but he spent much of the next four years in hospital or convalescing.     In 1919 he was discharged.  In 1920 he emigrated with his family to Turner's Falls, Massachusetts.

His "Military History Sheet" summarizes his service as follows:

22 October 1909    to 8 October 1914        Home*                                4 years 35 days
9 October 1914 to 15 October 1915           India                                   1 year 7 days
16 October 1915  to 22 August 1919          Home                                  3 years 311 days

This totaled 9 years, 305 days of which 4 years 286 days were in the Light Infantry and 5 years and 19 days in the Labour Corps.

*England

Here is the long story, in the form of a timeline.

7 March 1908 -  RLS marries Mary Nicholas

5 November 1908   - Violet Annie Smith born in St. Just

October 1909   -    His enlistment form gives his age as 23 and his occupation as "Engineer, Botallack Mining Company".  His address was given as 10 North Row, St. Just, Cornwall

 From  the medical inspection form completed at that time I learned the  following:  He was 5 ' 11.5 " in height.  His chest measurement when fully  expanded was 34 inches and the range of expansion was 2.5 inches.  Hewas judged to be "fit" for the Territorial Forces."

30 December 1909    -   Mary May Smith born in St. Just.

30 May 1912   -     Robert Leslie Smith (Jr.) born in St. Just

9 October 1914   -     Sent to India

11 Feb 1915  -    An Opinion of the Medical Board described RLS as unfit for service because of indigestion and chronic gastric irritability. This was deemed not the result of  military service and was further deemed to be a permanent condition.

5 May 1915    -   Admitted to Ramsnehi Hospital (India) with a sore throat.  Stayed 8 days

28 June 1915   -  My father, Marshall Kitchener Smith born in St. Just.

31 August 1915   -   Proceedings of a Medical Board on an Invalid Disability described as   Inflammation of the Stomach (Gastritis; catarrhal, chronic).

 The patient cannot give any definite date of origin, he has suffered from symptoms of indigestion for some time, which have been much increased since he arrived in India (November 1914).  The onset of the symptoms was insidious, at first those of indigestion increasing to such an extent lately that he has been unable to take food without immediately vomiting it.  The attacks have also become far more frequent.  A severe condition of oral sepsis and pyorrhea alveolaris* that is present would be sufficient to account for the symptoms of gastritis.  The disability is not attributable to military service.  

The patient is slightly anemic, and of a rather unhealthy appearance.  He complains of great pain after food beneath the scapula and in the right shoulder; at all times he has a "feeling of discomfort" in the upper part of the abdomen.  He is inclined to be hypochondriacal and dull-witted.  Weight at present 157 pounds.   

* Pyorrhea alveolaris is chronic periodontitis and inflammation of the tooth sockets.

Undated and partially torn sheet with narrative:

(illegible) with a history of 6 months (illeg) immediately after meals, pain, (illeg).  Defective teeth (which have since been extracted).  (illeg) paratyphoid A. (illeg)

[Their list of his test results]
13 December 1915          Paratyphoid A.
30 December 1915          B. coli 
1 February 1916              B. coli
12 February 1916            Paratyphoid A.
29 February 1916            Paratyphoid A.
10 March 1916                B. coli and B. Protein(?)

24 February 1916  -    Sharp relapse accompanied by right side pleurisy.

24 March 1916   -      N.C.O. has probably been a carrier of Paratyphoid A. for some time.  He was subject to attacks of severe indigestion.  Attention to his teeth and the regime of  typhoid diet has relieve him.  He may suffer from further relapses but if his present condition continues he should be fit for service as long as the stools are  (illeg)


4 April 1916   -    Admmitted to the Addington Park War Hospital with Paratyphoid A.  Stayed  28 days.

27 March 1916    -   Discharged from Hospital.  "Disease charged to Paratyphoid A.  Now convalescent, to be transferred to Depot for Enteric Convalescents"

2 May 1916   -  Granted a furlough through 12 June 1916.  My father was nearly one year old.

26 March 1917 -    Placed on the Syphilis Registry (The Venereal Diseases Act was passed in 1917.)  He was hospitalized from that date until 10 April 1917.  

7 July 1917  -Posted to the Labour Corps "Discharged surplus for military requirments having  suffered impairment while in military service.   It is also noted that he received the Kings Certificate and Silver Badge. This certificate accompanied the Silver War Badge, a small silver badge the size of a   quarter that was issued to service men who had been discharged as a result of  their service.  It was designed to be worn with civilian clothes so as to show a   man had done his bit.

30 August 1917 -   RLS in the Agricultural Company, Labour Corps.  "Could you please furnish me with a copy of A.F. B103 for this N.C.O.  He is wearing medals and decorations to which he does not appear to be entitled".

28 March 1918 - RLS admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of pleurisy.  He stayed in hospital for 56 days, released on 22 May 1918.  

22 May 1918 - "Fit to rejoin unit.  Recovered, no disability".  

25 July 1919 - Given his Protection Certificate and Certificate of Identity

9 September 1919              Given a 15 pound bounty.

July 1920                             Sailed from Southhampton England to New York

To be continued.

Martha Bennett Mystery Finally Solved

Last night I cut through my own tangle of confusion and carelessness and finally discovered the birth of my ancestor, Martha Bennett White O'Brien. I have had pieces of the answer, and in fact, the answer itself, for years but never saw it clearly until I decided to hack away at the thicket of information one more time and suddenly things clicked.

Martha Bennett's first husband was Ebenezer White. He was a mason who worked in the black granite quarries on Isle La Motte. Their children were born between 1818 and 1824 and Ebenezer died in February or March 1827.

The first problem was that my grandfather's genealogical record "Ancestors and Descendants of Orville C. Baker" stated Martha's father to be John Bennett of Augusta, Maine. The second problem was that Martha's gravestone giving age at death, extrapolated to a birthdate of 18 November 1804. Compounding the error was the fact that her age was never accurately stated for a census. In 1820 when she was with her first husband in Vineyard, now Isle La Motte, Grand Isle, Vermont, she was in the age range to have been born between 1794 and 1804. In 1850 she was reported as 40 years old (i.e. born about 1810) and in 1860 she was recorded as being 54 years old (i.e. born about 1806). She was not found in 1830, 1840 or 1870 despite the fact that she died in 1872.

The next problem was that her first child was born in June of 1818. Believing that Martha was born in 1804 led to the erroneous conclusion that she became pregnant at the age of 12 and gave birth at the age of 13, a troubling idea even by the standards of an earlier age. The details of how I looked high and low for her birth in all the wrong places is no longer interesting. Suffice it to say that because I knew she had a family connection to a woman named Rachel Bennett Woodard Carron; a Bennett who also came to Grand Isle from Maine, I looked once again at Rachel's parents and family. There for the first time I saw that she had a sister named Patty, a well established nickname for Martha, and that sister was born on 18 November, not 1804 but 1797. This is proof enough to me that my Martha was Rachel's sister Patty, daughter of Nathaniel and Dorcas (Wharff) Bennett, born in New Gloucester, Maine. It is also worth noting that Ebenezer and Martha named their first daughter Martha after her mother and their first son Ebenezer, presumably after his father. They named their second son Nathaniel Bennett White.

Ancestry of Lois Baker - Lydia Agard

I have written about David Baker (b. NY 1775) in a previous post. His wife, Lydia Agard, was born 17 June 1787 and died 18 August 1817. She married David Baker on 12 December 1806. The dates were provided by Clarence Baker and as Lydia Agard was his great-grandmother, it is expected that the information was readily available from family sources. In years of research I have never found a single corroborating reference to Lydia Agard. Over those same years, however, I have developed a hypothesis about her parents and believe them to be James and Lydia (Soule) Agard.
David Baker was living in the Nine Partners section of the Beekman Patent (NY) at the time of his first and second marriages. In this same area lived James and Lydia Agard, who were married on 18 February 1786. There are records of only two children born to them; Mary in 1789 and Lucy in 1797. The 1797 date is considered questionable as the original records are unclear. Might Lydia, born sixteen months after the marriage, be their unrecorded child?
Stephen Agard has undertaken the revision of his father's book "Agards of America" (by Frederick B. Agard) and is interested in solving the mystery of Lydia. Perhaps increased attention and new information will someday provide an an answer. Whether or not my theory is correct, it is a certainty that Lydia was descended from John Agard. John died on the voyage to Massachusetts and his widow, Esther, remarried to Samuel Storrs. If I have the line correctly, it descends through James Agard and his wife Abigail Leach to Amos Agard and his wife Alice Smith to the James Agard who married Lydia Soule.

Ancestry of Lois Baker Smith: Moses Clark and E. Elizabeth Woodbury

In 1935 Lucille Clark Hoskins wrote to her half sister, Madge Clark Baker, recalling her memories of her grandparents; E. Elizabeth Woodbury and Moses Hobart Clark. She wrote"Grandfather and grandmother were childhood sweethearts, he used to bring apples to her when they went to school. Grandmother rode horseback and fell and broke her arm. She was considered quite a woman with the horse, she drove a four horse team down Woodbury Mountain. I remember when a little girl, probably frightened, sitting in the seat beside her. We had got to the R.R. crossing, the train coming very near, the horse rose up on his hind feet, she drew that whip across his back and he dropped down and took us across..."

Writing about E. Elizabeth's four brothers Lucille said; "The boys were very ungodly. When the boys were young the father left home and was to come home a certain day. So the boys thought that they would have a dance, he came unexpected, opened the door and said "Where am I, in HELL!"

E. Elizabeth was born 25 September 1832 in Greensboro, Vermont and died 28 June 1906 in Barnet. Moses Hobart Clark was born 14 october 1831 at Washington, Vermont and died 15 April 1919 in Burlington. On 2 June 1832 they married. They moved to Barnet about 1900 where Moses and his son Charles Edward Clark operated a wagon making business. Four of their five children are discussed in the post immediately previous to this one. The youngest child, Nellie, never married. I have in my possession a newspaper clipping about her death but cannot find it at the moment. The story made us Smith kids laugh when we read the clipping as teenagers and from the distance of a century more or less it has a comical quality. In August of 1937 she was riding in the back seat of a car carrying her niece Lucille Hoskins and driven by Lucille's husband, Frank. They had a small collision at a crossroads but the car was driveable and no-one seemed hurt so they continued their trip. When they arrived at their destination, Nellie was dead in the back seat. The death certificate, which I do have, says "Hemorrhage into tissues of neck and lacerations of soft parts". Nellie was born in 1864 and was 73 years old at the time of her death.

I have seen the Clark and Woodbury gravestones in Wolcott. E. Elizabeth's epitaph is:

She hath done what she could

Beautiful hands, beckoning hands

Calling the dear ones to heavenly lands

Ancestry of Lois Baker Smith: Charles Clark

Charles E. Clark, the son of Moses Hobart Clark and Elnira Elizabeth Woodbury, was born 10 May 1860 in Craftsbury, Vermont. He died 19 April 1903 in Barnet, Vermont and is buried in Wolcott, Vermont. Charles married Anna Solomon in July 1886 and had one child, Lucile, before Anna died in June 1895. He married Flora M. Thompson in November 1897 in Wolcott. Their son George was born in 1901 and Madge, a posthumous child, was born in August of 1903.

Charles was the fourth child of his parents with two older brothers and one older and one younger sister. The first four children died in the order they were born and all before their parents. Helen Langford, a niece of "Charlie" Clark's prepared a typescript on the Clark Family and I will quote from her work several times. Frank died of pneumonia. "He got up too soon to help his father, caught cold, had a relapse, went into a quick consumption and died at the age of 19...for years Lucile A. Clark had a ball in the front room. All one could see were the cloves as this was a apple that he held in his hand but was unable to eat it. His last words were, 'Lord, I'm coming". (HL)

George Clark was reputed to be one of the most brilliant men that ever came out of Morrisville Academy. He taught Latin and planned to go to college. In June 1877 while helping his father in the woods he was killed by a falling tree. "His mother walked from the house to the barn so much that the path could be seen late in the fall. They were afraid for her mind. The Rev. John Langford held morning prayers one day when she finally broke down and cried" (HL)

In August 1891 Lizzie Clark Langford went to visit her parents in Wolcott and while there was taken ill with typhoid fever. She died on 10 September of that year, leaving motherless her two young sons.

The story of Charlie Clark's death is preserved in a letter from Lucille Clark Hoskins to her half sister, Madge. Lucille was 14 when her father died.

I should have written you about your-- our-- father's death, perhaps Mamma told you but if not here it is. If he could have died as God meant to and if death could be called beautiful, he had or would have had a beautiful death. He asked first where George was-- he was at Grandpa's across the road-- he wanted to bid him goodbye. Mamma said something like "you think you are going to die". Yes, he was going to die that day. He bid us all goodbye-- said it was a beautiful day--- but it was a dreary April day. He was happy, said "tell Mother goodbye". She had had a shock the January before. Somehow a nurse arrived and commenced to give "hypos". Mamma said "is it necessary to do this" and she said "we always do". Papa got so he would draw away when she came to give them, he went out of his head and said things he never would have said in his right mind, and finally died the 19th, not the day he bid us goodbye. Mamma said no one would ever do that to any of her loved ones again, but of course that's what doctors and nurses do. I have myself*. They looked at as long as there is life there is hope".

*Lucille trained and worked as a nurse.

Here is the link to the web album for Charles Clark and Flora Thompson:

http://picasaweb.google.com/smith.dereka/CharlesEClarkAndFloraThompson