Alpheus McClelland Rote and Ella E. Ward, and their Children

Alpheus McClelland Rote, my great grandfather, was born March 1865 in Pennsylvania. He was the son of William Rote (b. October 1814 in Pennsylvania, d. 11 Dec 1880 in Pennsylvania) and Magdalena, also called Martha, (b. July 25, 1823 in Pennsylvania, d. June 8, 1891).

Ella E. Ward, my great grandmother, was born March 28, 1861 in Mount Holly (or Mount Holly Springs), Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of John E. Ward (b. about 1840, d. ?) and Elizabeth (b. about 1840, d. ?) .

Alpheus Rote and Ella Ward married in 1883. In 1884, Alpheus was listed in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania City Directory, as was his mother, then a widow, at a separate address. Alpheus also appears in the Harrisburg city directories for 1890 through 1896. In 1884, Alpheus was listed as working as a laborer; in later directories, as a brakeman.

Most of the 1890 US Census records were destroyed in a fire, including those most likely to list Alpheus and Ella.

Alpheus and Ella are listed in the 1900 US Census for New Castle, Pennsylvania. Alpheus' occupation is given as "Heater Tin Mill." Ella is reported as having given birth to 7 children, of whom 6 had survived. There were six children living in the home: 

Mabel, daughter, b. April 1886 (14)

Galen, son, b. March 1888 (12)

John, son, b. February 1893 (7)

Emma, daughter, b. April 1895 (5)

Howard, son, b. June 1897 (2)

Minnie, daughter, b. August 1899 (9 months)

In 1908, the Rote home was struck by lightning. My blog post, linked, includes a transcript of the newspaper report.

In the 1910 census, Alpheus and Ella are shown as still living in New Castle. Alpheus is working Odd Jobs, and Ella is listed as having 5 children, with 5 surviving. The children in the home are: Mabel, Gail [sic] W., John, Emma, and Howard. Minnie, the youngest, had died sometime since the previous census.

In the 1920 census, Alpheus and Ella are still living in New Castle. Alpheus is now reported to be a Storekeeper working at a Confectionary Store*. Living with Alpheus and Ella are their children, John, who works as a  (probably Sales) in the Phonograph industry**, and two grandchildren, John H. and Ella L. Faller. It took some doing, but I eventually confirmed that these were Mabel's children***.

In the 1930 census, Alpheus and Ella are still living in New Castle. Alpheus is now listed as the Proprietor of a Confectionary Store, which he owns. Living with them are their daughter, Emma O. Cavander (I think this is a misspelling of Cavender), and three grandchildren, Anna G. Cavender, Henry J. Faller, and Ella L. Faller.

Alpheus died September 29, 1936 and Ella died November 14, 1936. Their obituaries report that Ella Faller was still living with them at the times of their deaths.

*   *   *

Mabel Rote married John Henry (or Henry John) Faller May 13, 1912. The couple had two children: Henry John Faller and Ella L. Faller. Mabel died in early January, 1919; her funeral was held January 10, and she was buried in Greenwood Cemetery on the 13th. Her husband died March 23, 1963. 

Galen Weiker Rote married Lulu P. Craun, of Toledo, Ohio, August 29, 1911. The couple had two children: Marian Virginia Rote, who died as a child, and Luella Jean Rote. (Luella was my mother.) Galen died August 10, 1941. Lulu died February 21, 1966.

John Charles Rote, Sr. married Alice Mae Wimer, 18 Nov 1924 in New Castle. The couple had three children, Janet Louise Rote, John Charles Rote, Jr., and Arthur Lyle Rote. John, Sr. died June 22, 1982. Alice died February 24, 1978.

Emma O. Rote married a Cavender, about whom nothing more is known. The couple had a daughter, Anna Grace Cavender. Emma's date of death is unknown, but sometime after 17 Jun 1944, when a visit to New Castle (she was then living in Detroit) was reported in the New Castle News.

Howard J. Rote married Ruby Mae Brooks June 5, 1919 in Youngstown, Pennsylvania. The couple had two sons, James Russel Rote and Fredrick C. Rote. Howard died January 1974; Ruby died February 1983.

Minnie Rote never married, having died as a child sometime between June 13, 1900 and June 13, 1910.

I have no further information about the seventh child noted by the 1900 census, although I speculate, given the gap between Galen's birth, and John's, that this child might have been born between them.

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* The census reports Alpheus as an employee, rather than the owner of the store, but this may be erroneous. Will probably need to research business licenses to get full information.

** This may have bearing on my speculations in Was Granddad in Show Biz?, about my grandfather, Galen.

*** See the following posts to read about how I unraveled this small mystery (most recent, first):

• A Fortunate Discovery 
• Searching RootsWeb for Henry John Faller
• New Data on Rote and Faller
• The Mystery of John H (Henry J) and Ella L Fuller or Faller

Alpheus, the Name

Today, while searching for records about my great-grandfather Alpheus McClelland Rote, I realized that I didn't know the meaning or origin of his first name.

The name Alpheus, it turns out, has both biblical and classical origins.

The Biblical Alphaeus

Alpheus is a variant spelling of the name Alphaeus. Alphaeus is given as that of the father of two of Jesus' Twelve Apostles, Matthew (sometimes known as Levi) and James, although it's not clear whether this means that Matthew and James were brothers, or simply that the two apostles each separately had a father with this name.

The Classical Alpheus

Alpheus is also a latinized form of the Greek name Ἀλφειός (Alpheios). According to Behind the Name, Ἀλφειός derives either from "from Greek ἀλφή (alphē) meaning 'produce, gain, profit,' or from Greek ἀλφός (alphos), which can mean 'whiteness'" as well as 'white leprosy.'"

In Greek myth, Alpheus was the son of Oceanus and Tethys. He was a river deity (river-god), and also a hunter. Alpheus was the father of King Orsilochus, whose mother Telegone was also a child of the gods.

As a river deity, Alpheus was also the Alfeios River. He fell in love with the Neirad Arethusa (Ἀρέθουσα) when she bathed in the Alfeios River. She, as a follower of Artemis, was sworn to chastity. Praying for help from Artemis, Arethusa fled, with Alpheus in pursuit. Her journey included a number of transformations, as she was hidden in a cloud, became a stream, and, eventually, a fountain on the island of Ortygia near Syracuse. But, even in this final form and having crossed an ocean, her waters mingled with those of Alpheus, who had managed to cross the ocean by flowing under the sea from Peloponnesus to Ortygia.

There are also stories about how Alpheus fell in love with and pursued Artemis. The Artemis Alphaea and Alphaea temples in Letrini and Ortygia, as well as a joint altar at Olympia reflect the close ties between Alpheus and Artemis.

"Famous" People Named Alpheus

Here are just a few of the people named Alpheus that can be found on Wikipedia:

• Alpheus Mytilenaeus was the author of a number of epigrams in the Greek Anthology, a collection of poems that span the classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature.
• Alpheus Cutler (February 29, 1784 – June 10, 1864) was an early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement who founded the Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite) in 1853.
•  Alpheus Felch (September 28, 1804 – June 13, 1896) was the fifth Governor of Michigan and U.S. Senator from Michigan.
• Alpheus Hyatt (April 5, 1838 – January 15, 1902) was an American zoologist and palaeontologist. 
• Sir Alpheus Cleophas Morton (1840 – 26 April 1923) was a British architect and surveyor, and a Liberal Party politician.
• Alpheus Spring Packard Jr., LL.D. (February 19, 1839 – February 14, 1905) was an American entomologist and palaeontologist.
• Alpheus Starkey Williams (September 29, 1810 – December 21, 1878) was a lawyer, judge, journalist, U.S.

Other Contexts for Alpheus

There is a genus of shrimp called Alpheus.

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.

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.

Rote Home Struck by Lightning on 24 June 1908

I just found a newspaper article that mentions one of my great-grandfathers, Alpheus Rote. According to this story from the June 26, 1908 issue of the New Castle News (the newspaper of New Castle, PA), lightning struck his home and a nearby tree.

Here's a transcript of the information:

Struck by Bolt of Lightening; Yet are Unhurt

Electrical Storm Plays Queer Tricks With City Engineers, a Young Woman and a Horse

To be rendered unconscious and then knocked out of carriage by a lightning bolt and still escape unhurt, is the remarkable experience of three of the members of the city’s engineering corps while engaged in city survey work on Willard street Wednesday afternoon.

The three men, Assistant Engineer C. E. Kimbrough and Assistants Stanley Tresser and Leslie Wilson, were sitting in the two-seated crackey which stood under a tree near the home of Alpheus Rote at No. 55 Willard street. There had been practically no violent electrical demonstration near them, when suddenly the corner of the Rote home was struck by a bolt of lightning.

For several seconds a bluish-green flame played all about the house and the tree under which the horse and carriage with the three men in it stood. Kimbrough and Wilson were knocked out of the carriage and fell to the ground. The horse was knocked senseless and did not recover for several minutes.

Neither men nor beast were hurt in the slightest that they could notice, save that the two who had been knocked out of the carriage were slightly bruised. The Rote home was badly wrecked, portions of the timbers being hurled many feet away.

Sitting near the window of the room at the corner of the house which was struck by the lightning, was one of the daughters of the Rotes. She was engaged in putting on a shoe when the bolt struck, and flying debris, consisting of lath, plaster and pieces of studding flew all about her. She escaped without a mark, not even a piece of plaster having struck her.

Isn't this a great story? I wish the article had mentioned the name of the daughter.