Ben Worsley and an Oddly Sad Ending

Benjamin Squier Worsley was born in October 1851 near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the second son of John and Barbara Worsley, mill workers who had emigrated from England in 1848 as soon as they were married. Ben’s older brother, William, had just turned 2 when Ben was born. Their next younger brother, Alfred James, was born in November 1853 in Massachusetts, but he died the next August. A sister was born back in Philadelphia in November 1855, Sarah Jane, and then in November 1857 when the family was in Maryland, a brother, Joseph Henry, was born. Their youngest sibling, Laura Emma, was born in January 1863 in Trenton, New Jersey, where their father had joined the Union Army as a 1st Lieutenant, serving in Company D, New Jersey 1st Cavalry Regiment in 1861 through 1862.

In 1863 John and Barbara decided to move their family to the Oregon Territory. William was 13, Ben 11, Sarah Jane 7, Joe 5, and Laura was 6 months old. John went overland and established a mill in Brownsville, Linn County, Oregon.

In the early summer, Barbara packed up the children and with a few mill workers intending to work for her husband, set out by ship to go to Oregon by way of the Isthmus of Panama. They crossed the Isthmus using a mule train, with the children and Barbara riding the mules, and then took another ship heading up the coast to Seattle. The ship let the Worsley party off at Marshfield (now Coos Bay), Oregon, and sadly, Barbara became sicker and sicker from malaria that she had caught in Panama. She died six weeks after arriving in Brownsville, a month before Ben’s 12th birthday.

John held the family together and the children grew up, but John did not continue with his mill very long. Before 1870 the family had moved to The Dalles, on the Columbia River, where John opened a photography studio. He probably took this photograph of Ben and Joe at about that time.

When Ben turned 18, he quit school and was working as a foreman on a steamboat on the Columbia River out of The Dalles. William was a carder in the woolen mill; younger sister Sarah and younger brother, Joseph, were attending school; and little sister Laura was not in school yet. 

Ben’s father died in 1874 at the age of 49, and William and Ben managed to keep their siblings together and helped the younger ones finish school. Sarah Jane met and married a man named DuVall two years later.

Ben met Felicia Harlow some time in the next few years and they were married May 19, 1878 in Portland, Oregon. Ben was a steamboat engineer on the Columbia River. His and Felicia’s first son, Ralph Harlow Worsley, was born on June 26, 1880 in Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River.

Ben’s little sister, Laura, age 17 that year, had been living with Felicia’s father’s family in Portland—she was enumerated there on June 16th—but two days before the baby came, she was enumerated again in Ben’s household in Astoria with Ben and Felicia. She probably came to help take care of the household while Felicia was recovering. However, since Laura was living in Astoria when she married Ferdinand J. Boedefeld in June 1885, she may have stayed for five years in Ben’s household.

Ben’s and Felicia’s second son, Paul Yates Worsley, was born in 1886 in Astoria and died there when he was only four years old.

Ben’s profession, steamboat engineering, was a dangerous one. The engineer was responsible for the steam pressure that kept the vessel going and regulated her speed. The boilers were touchy and often exploded, and practices concerning them were often unsafe due to economic pressure to achieve the highest speeds possible. Steamboats were subject to shipwreck by being rammed by the huge ocean-going vessels, by running into or onto logs or rocks or pilings in the river, or by catching fire. In addition, steamboat operations at the mouth of the Columbia River had to contend with extremely dangerous physical conditions. The tides, winds, rocks, and channels at the mouth of the Columbia combine to make it one of the most dangerous river mouths in the world for navigation. The photograph shows a sternwheeler steamboat having taken an ocean-going vessel through the mouth of the river to the harbor at Astoria.

The Columbia River was divided into three sections for steamboats up until the mid-1890s: the lower river was the section from the mouth at Astoria up to the Cascades Rapids (now where the Cascades Locks are). There was a portage there to the middle river, which ran from the top of the Cascades Rapids to the Celilo Falls just at The Dalles. Another portage connected with Celilo Village above the Falls. The upper river ran to near the mouth of the Snake River. Ben would have started on the middle river.

The cargo on the middle river was mostly lumber, agricultural products, fish, and livestock, with gold while the rush lasted. There was also a limited passenger trade, but most people did not use the steamboats in the middle river because of the cost, though passenger service on the lower river could be very heavy. On the lower river was where the money was to be made. From about 1860 through the 1880s, steamboat operations on the Columbia River were controlled by a monopoly, the Oregon Steam Navigation Company (OCN), which is likely the company for which Ben Worsley worked.

But something odd happened to Ben around 1900. On June 8, 1900, Ben is enumerated in the Census for Clatsop County in the community of Svenson, just east of Astoria. He is listed as a farmer, and Felicia is keeping house, while 19-year-old Ralph is a teacher. That all sounds normal, but then Ben appears again a week later in the Census, this time in Astoria City, but his occupation is listed as “Auctioneer” and all details of his birth and parentage are listed as “unknown.” Felicia’s and son Ralph’s births are sketchy, but they are there; but Ralph’s occupation is listed as “At school.” Why are there apparently two households for Ben’s family? And why is the one in Astoria so full of contradiction and inaccuracies? Let’s go on to 1910.

In April 1910 Ben is enumerated in the Svenson Village again. He owns a fruit farm, and with him are his wife, Felicia, and his older brother, William, who is listed as a fruit grower who is “working out.” Interesting, but the strange part comes next. On May 2, 1910 in Santa Clara County, California, Felicia H. Worsley is enumerated as the head of a household that consists of herself and her son Ralph! Her profession is “House Mother” of a “Club House,” and the details are off—she is 52 but it says 50; she has been married 31 years but it says 30; and she bore 2 children, 1 of whom is living, but it says she bore only one. Ralph’s age is off by two years, but his parents’ birth places are accurate as is his work—he is a “Professor” at Mayfield’s High School. Why is Felicia listed as Ben’s wife in Svenson, Oregon, if she lives apart from him in California? Why does she list herself as a married woman? Perhaps they are separated and not divorced. Could there be an economic reason for the separation? Could she be living in Mayfield (soon to be annexed by Palo Alto) just as a favor to her son?

In 1911 Felicia Harlow Worsley went to Hong Kong on a pleasure trip. On her travel documents, she lists “Portland, Oregon” as her home. This is curious, considering her seeming estrangement from her Northwest family!

In the spring of 1914 Ralph Worsley traveled to England, and on his return to New York aboard the S. S. George Washington in April, his travel documents report that his home is in Astoria, Oregon. Again, curious!

On November 5, 1916, Ben’s older brother, William Samuel Worsley, died in Astoria. William was 66 years old. Their younger brother, Joseph, bought graves for them all in The Dalles in the Odd Fellows Cemetery, and they buried William there.

The bigger blow falls soon after that. Felicia Harlow Worsley must have filed for divorce, because she married a man named Elmer A. Coe in Astoria on January 15, 1919.

1920 sees sad changes in Ben Worsley’s life. He is enumerated in the Astoria Census on January 17, 1920. He reports that he is single. He is the head of a very large household—it seems that Ben is renting a sort of boarding house, and his profession is now listed as Secretary of Astoria Land Home—and he is its employee. Poor Ben! His wife has divorced him, his brother has died, and he is 68 years old, so maybe he felt too old to continue the fruit farm, and too discouraged too.

His son Ralph is not enumerated in the 1920 Census, but the reason appears on a document dated July 16, 1920—Ralph has finally married. He is 40 years old, and his bride, Clara Meeks Worsley, is 25. They are returning to the United States from Yokohama, Japan. They were married in the Philippines. Ralph says his home is Svenson, Oregon though. Did Ben give his son the fruit farm?

Ralph and Clara had two sons, and those boys had children themselves. I remember Clara Worsley. We called her “Aunt Clara.” She lived across the Golden Gate Bridge from us, and we would drive up there to her house every October when our great aunt, Ruth Boedefeld, came to visit. Ruth and Ralph were first cousins, and Ruth and Clara became good friends, even though they didn’t see each other often. Ralph died somewhat young in December 1938, age 58. Clara was a schoolteacher in the Menlo Park District in the 40s and 50s and lived in Marin, California in a lovely house with a beautiful garden. Sadly, both her sons seem to have inherited the Worsley trait of dying young—they were only 50 and 55 years old when they died. Clara died at the age of 90. Here is a photograph of my parents, my sister and me with Aunt Clara.

Benjamin Squier Worsley died in January 1927 at the age of 75—an old age for a Worsley up to that time. He is buried in The Dalles, Oregon.

Many questions remain. Was his life a turbulent one? It would seem so—with his mother dying so young, followed by his father, I have to wonder what his home life was like. Was it unsettled? Was his life on the Columbia River indicative of his temperament? It was a stressful career—I am not surprised that he left it rather early and acquired a fruit farm. Fruit farming seems like a much calmer pursuit. But then his family split up right about the same time! What was going on? That final census document seems so sad—a lonely old man living in a home as an employee and listing himself as a single man—everyone he had loved is gone from him.

I wonder if at the end of my life I will be as alone as he is. I won’t be divorced, but my husband will surely be gone long before I will. My son will probably not leave me—but I will surely have to make other arrangements when I can no longer take care of the two of us. Will it be sad—or will it be a situation to which I am reconciled?