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.

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.