Finding new family information in an unexpected place

 

Some of this section will contradict an earlier statement I posted, but I think finding information that is new to me is part of the excitement to be found in cleaning out old belongings.

In this case, the personal items were owned by my aunts, Alice and Betty, and were stored in a pair of large jewelry boxes. I do not honestly know which box belonged to which aunt, as both boxes ended up in one place, but the contents were similar—some fairly pretty, although inexpensive, costume jewelry.

I also found two other items of interest—a Birth Certificate and Certificate of Baptism for Betty. I clearly remember my mother telling me many years ago that my grandmother, Lottie Emma, had believed since childhood that her name was Charlotte Elizabeth. Because I knew that, in my father's family, this was not an uncommon event—kids were frequently named one thing, yet called something else—it did not seem odd.

With the foregoing knowledge in mind, I formed the idea that my grandmother had married under the name Charlotte Elizabeth, and that her children's Birth Certificates would reflect that name as well. I was wrong—looking at Betty's Birth Certificate surprised me in more than one way. My grandmother, obviously, knew her first name was Lottie, as that was the name listed on the Birth Certificate; the confusion was over her middle name which, in fact, was listed as Elizabeth.

The other point of interest involved my grandfather. The only thing I was ever told about his employment history was that he worked at the Pumping Station on Pitkin Street in East Hartford. Because it involved water, I believed that it operated under the auspices of the MDC (Metropolitan District Commission—better known as the water company). I have since learned that it is part of the Levee System for the Town of East Hartford.

To my current knowledge, East Hartford suffered major flooding in 1936, and that was responsible for the development of the East Hartford Levee System as we now know it, along with its 3 pumping stations—construction began in 1938 and ended in 1943.

In any case, as important a job as that was, it was not my grandfather's only adult employment; it could not have been, considering when the Levee System came into being. I wish I had researched this sooner, rather than blindly accepting the few facts I was given as a child, and never looking into it again when research tools became available to me.

To get this post back on track, according to the Birth Certificate for Betty, my grandfather was employed in 1933 (and for 11 years prior thereto) as a switch board operator at the Trolley Company.

Compared to my chicken hatching paternal grandfather, my maternal grandfather practically qualified as East Hartford gentry at that point in time! Imagine being an office worker at a time when most men made their living on farms and in machine shops. I was duly impressed...I was also left wishing for the umpteenth time that my mother had talked more about her family's history.