Ferman, What Have You Done?

In researching my Selgrath family, I think I might have found yet another troubled loner. (I have been researching Selgraths and their kin in Germany, the Schmelzers, for over a year now. I wrote some blog posts about them in the winter of 2017.)

Ferman Selgrath was born in the early years of the 20th century to one of the Selgraths whose ancestors arrived in Pennsylvania from Germany in the 1830s. Ferman was an only child. When he was five, little Ferman’s father was baptised in the Presbyterian Church. The next month, little Ferman was allowed to be baptised, just like his daddy. Then the family disappeared from all records. The parents never did appear again.

Two decades later Ferman and his wife had two daughters. Then Ferman’s wife married someone else and dropped all reference to ever having been married to Ferman Selgrath.

Ferman married the daughter of Italian immigrants just as the Second World War started. Within very few years she resumed her maiden name and never again married. She lived the rest of her life in her parents’ home, caring for them until they died. When she worked, she made no reference to her once-married name, and when she died, all the records show only her maiden name.

Ferman’s two daughters married when they were teenagers. They named him on their marriage records, but by the time each of them passed away, their respective obituaries named their mother’s subsequent husband as their father.

Ferman should have signed up for the military draft for World War Two, but I can’t find any record of it. Either he must have evaded the draft, or he was dead by then. I cannot find any record of anything more about him. I have not found record of his death or burial anywhere.

I do wonder what happened in his life that made his wives leave him and his daughters disown him one after another. Was he cruel? Did he run away? Was he mentally ill? What was his story?

I won’t call him a villain. People are so complicated, and you never do know about anyone, not really.