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?

The Curious Last Letter of Zephaniah Platt Palmer

High up my family tree is a Palmer branch with my great-great-great-great grandfather Zephaniah Platt Palmer. He was born during the first part of the Revolutionary War in upstate New York at a place not far from Vermont called Nine Partners. When he was around 19 years old, he married Judith Manley in Addison, Vermont, southeast of Lake Champlain. They lived there a year or two and then moved across the lake to Jay, Essex County, New York, and then soon after that settled near a little town called Peru in Clinton County.

Two census records, a geographical dictionary, and an entry in a biographical dictionary say that Zephaniah and Judith reared a large family, engaging in agriculture and later in shares of the various mills and factories that came to be located on the Ausable River near their town. Zephaniah and Judith seemed to have taken in grandchildren and other young people from time to time. Judith died long before Zephaniah.

There are no other known official records showing Zephaniah Platt Palmer. However, several of his letters to his granddaughter Julia Esalina Palmer (younger daughter of his son Henry) have been handed down to us. They show a delightful, if slightly irascible man. Here is a transcript of the last letter he wrote, just five days before he passed away:

            Jay  August 28 1854

Dear Julia,                  

I received your favor dated April 30^th with the greatest parantal satisfaction and thanks for kind affectionate feelings for a Grandpa eavin in a Granddaughter altho I can only reward you with greatful heart feeling yet my hearts desire is that a heavenly parent may reward you far beyond what my feable  power could bestow ~ ~  and not feeling myself worthy of such Kind Children I at times feal to desire the pinions of an Eagle to pass with spead to my distant Children Yet there is one at times visits this part his name is Winter by his reckless Conduct destresses his Connections here Greatly believe him not should he visit you pleas be ware of him furthermore ~ ~ my own health is much improved since last spring as have ben quite out for two years past all your Connections and old acquaintances are injoying middling health except Chapin Flanders whose health is now poor ~ ~ our present season has ben remarkably bad we have ben visited wit the greatest droth eaver Known in our land destruction by fires has ben teribel and not the half the Common Crop will be realisid ~ ~ I have greate anxity to visit you would gladly this winter shall if any consistent with my engagements in my affairs on the receipt of this please write me a full history of what you know of all our Connections in that part must close by subscribing myself your Granpa in the bonds of love

Z: Palmer

            J:E: Palmer

Give my best Respects to Mr Barns as I hope to se him in Ohio

**********************

This letter raises some interesting questions. If I were of a serene and unsuspicious nature, I might have thought his reference to Winter was a pun on the season and a complaint about the climate. But I am much too cynical for that idea. What had Winter Palmer done to deserve his father’s wrath?

Another letter Julia passed down to us was from her sister Jane in 1847 or 1848, who wrote to Julia when Julia was visiting all the relatives in New York, and desired Julia to give their uncle Winter and aunt Emily her love. Jane remembered them from her childhood in the early 1830s.

The 1840 Census shows Winter and a wife living in Peru. But in 1850 the only Winter Palmer I can find is in Milwaukie, Wisconsin with a woman named Betsey, age 26, and a baby girl named Rosella (which is a name that occurs over and over again in this branch of the family). Did Winter leave Emily for a woman named Betsey and is that why his father was angry with him? Or did Emily die right after Jane wrote that letter, did Winter remarry before 1850 and have a child, and in 1854 did he then abandon Betsey and Rosella? I can’t find any of them in any later census records. I can’t find a grave for any of them. I wonder what other records are out there that I could try.

Why was Zephaniah so set against Winter Palmer?

Yellowstone Magic

The summer of 1916 in Yellowstone Park was a very strange time in history—the whole of Europe and half the rest of the world had become involved in a desperate war, but the staff of the Wylie Camping Company seemed oblivious of it. The young men and women cleaning the tents and cabins and the drivers of horse-drawn wagons who took tourists around the Park spent their free time hiking, picnicking, dancing, entertaining, and all the while flirting with one another, and on the part of the young women at least, looking for potential marriage partners.

I read a diary kept by a newspaper reporter who was on a leave of absence from the paper and working as one of the “Wylie Savages” that summer. She was my grandmother, bent on adventure and romance and finding both in bucketsful.

Their parties consisted of food, lots of sweets, singing, joking, talking, much laughter and staying up late, but everybody stayed in the same room and couples did not indulge in public displays of affection. There were lots of fudge parties at which fudge was cooked in a scoured-out washing basin over the pot-bellied stove in one or another tent occupied by the young women, using sugar filched from the kitchen and cocoa that one young lady had brought from home—someone with remarkable foresight. Their favored young men were invited over to wait for the fudge to be done while everyone would sing, joke, talk, and laugh together. Then they would feast, and invariably someone would have filched more snacks from the kitchen to eke out the feast.

Every evening the staff members were expected to participate in a campfire program followed by dancing in the pavilion. Several were singers, some were known for readings, and some performed skits. After the campfire was over, dancing began, and the staff members were expected to dance with the tourists. They also danced a lot with each other and made dates for that and for other things.

The young men and women did go off alone in pairs—it was called “rotten logging” after the practice of finding a place in the woods to sit together.

The double standard was in full force in 1916. The young women were expected to control the physical side of their relationships, and the young men were expected to take whatever liberties they were allowed. Everybody knew that a woman’s reputation could be irrevocably ruined if she allowed too much. The men could gain a reputation too, but they would not be treated the same way women would. The women would let it be known among themselves that this or that man was one whom they shouldn’t go out with alone. They developed a telegraphic system for advising each other, and they took turns acting as an unofficial chaperone for various activities.

Drunkenness among the men was strongly disapproved and barely tolerated. When a woman found out her companion was drunk, she made every excuse to rejoin others in order to better control her situation, and she’d ditch him if she could.

All the elements were in line for romance to bloom: plenty of moonlight, geysers erupting, paths through the woods, conveniently large rocks in the river to sit upon, beauty spot after beauty spot to visit, and plenty of time after chores were finished in which to indulge in cultivating friendships.

It was a magical summer, and seen against that backdrop of world history, something very like magic kept the tragedy of war—which would deeply affect their lives in only a few months—from intruding on those brief, shining months in Yellowstone.

Riddles, part 2

Here are the answers to my riddles, along with my thoughts.

1. I don’t know why things hide when you want them. Probably it has to do with patience.

2. A blossoming cherry tree is the usual answer, but when I carefully remove the stones so that someone without dexterity can eat the cherries, I think there’s another valid instance.

3. An egg, or the chicken I buy at the store, because I no longer like to save a penny by deboning the chicken myself. Somehow after doing that, I lose my appetite for the meat.

4. I love you (and you know who you are!) has no end!

5. A sleeping baby is the answer, but there are babies I know of who rarely cried: one was me. My mother tells the tale that when I was a newborn, I never cried to be fed. I would just wait, looking around, even in the middle of the night when she didn’t wake up on time. Apparently I had full confidence that it was coming and was justified.

6. A bookworm is what I have always been. I’ve been reading since I was five; books, magazines, cereal boxes, notes, letters, everything online, and on and on. I never can stop reading, unless I’m writing. I love that the OE word for the bug can be moth or worm, and wyrm can also be a dragon. I love that!

7. Like my meals, tomorrow has always come and for now I expect it will continue. However, I know that there will come a time when tomorrow will no longer be coming.

8. In the early evening sitting outside watching the stars start appearing is a miracle to me that I never tire of seeing. Then in the early morning watching the growing light blot them from the sky is another miracle.

9. Jane Austen’s Emma is one of my favorite novels, and this riddle is one of my favorite riddles, when Emma mistakes Mr. Elton’s clever courtship for the wrong target.

10. In Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, class divisions are undercut by Nutkin’s cheeky attitude toward Old Brown. And we really are back to the cherry here.

What are your favorite riddles?

The Limelighters and Other Riddles

This evening we were looking for a CD that has been missing for several weeks, The Limelighters: Through Children’s Eyes. My husband walked over to the CD case, plucked it right out, and handed it to us. “Why do things hide whenever they find out you’re looking for them?”

It’s true. When you want a book or a CD or something like that, you can’t find it. They know they are wanted and they disappear.

I loved that CD—or rather, album—my parents gave me the LP record album for my birthday when I was a child, and I played it and played it. I had all the songs memorized. When I found it in a CD a few months ago, I found that I could still sing along on all the tracks.

Tonight somebody remarked what a beautiful song “I Gave My Love a Cherry” is. Something clicked and I started to think about my master’s degree, and how, when I was researching the Old English charms, I ended up reading an awful lot about Old English riddles.

How can there be a cherry that has no stone?
How can there be a chicken that has no bone?
How can there be a story that has no end?
How can there be a baby with no crying?

Those aren’t very hard to answer, but I love some of the harder ones. Here are some of my favorites. The first really is Old English:

Moððe word fræt—me þæt þuhte wrætlicu wyrd þa ic þæt wundor gefrægn, þæt se wyrm forswealg wera gied sumes, þeof in þystro, þrymfæstne cwide ond þæs strangan staþol. Stælgiest ne wæs wihte þy gleawra þe he þam wordum swealg.

Moth gobbled songs—it seemed to me marvelous when I learned that wonder, the worm swallowing songs of men, a thief in darkness with glorious cud and that base of strength. The stealthy guest was none the wiser for his word-feast.

I never was, am always to be,
No one ever saw me, nor ever will
And yet I am the confidence of all
To live and breathe on this terrestrial ball.


At night they come without being fetched,
And by day they are lost without being stolen.


My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease.
Another view of man, my second brings,
Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!
But ah! united what reverse we have!
Man's boasted power and freedom, all are flown:
Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave,
And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.
Thy ready wit the word will soon supply,
May its approval beam in that soft eye!
—Jane Austen


Riddle me, riddle me, rot-tot-tote!
A little wee man, in a red red coat!
A staff in his hand, and a stone in his throat;
If you’ll tell me this riddle, I’ll give you a groat.
—Beatrix Potter

And we are now back to the cherry and the riddles posed in the Limelighters CD. There is an answer to all the riddles in this posting except the first one. Do you have an answer?

The Unattached Aunt

I have been sleuthing around to figure out where Fannie Ginders fits in the family picture. She sparked my curiosity when I was studying this photograph of a family group in Rockford, Illinois in 1931 with her in it. The others are some of the descendants of three Andrews brothers: Charles, Harry, and Ernest. Harry and Ernest are in the center row with their wives; Charles had already died but his widow, Cordelia, sits at the right side. Mamie Ginders is married to Harry, and to the left of him sits Fannie. Mamie must be my link to Fannie.

I look them up in the 1930 US Census. There is Harry, the head of the household. His wife is listed as Mary S. Mamie must be a nickname. Their daughter, Mae, a librarian, lives with them (in the picture, Mae is sitting on the grass second from right). Their son, Charles F., lives there too; although he is 24, he has no profession, but the education column has a tick mark in it. I assume he is attending the university, because 11 years later he is a partner in his father’s law firm (in the photograph he is standing in back, third from right).

And there is Fannie. She is a secretary at the knitting factory. She is the sister-in-law of the head of the household. She is the younger sister of Mamie. The sisters report that their father was born in Illinois; their mother in Canada.

I look back through the same family in 1920, 1910, and 1900. In 1920 Fannie was a bookkeeper in the knitting company. In 1910 she was a stenographer there. Same for 1900. Their father’s birth place changes to England in all the earlier censuses. Their mother’s birth place remains Canada.

I see that Fannie must have come to live with Mamie and Harry early on in their marriage—she might even have lived with them from the outset—and she lived there apparently until her death, but I cannot find any record of her death. Even with all that employment, she is not in the Social Security Death Index. Did she die before getting a Social Security number? Most working people in those years did not get one until after 1940 and many not until after 1950, although they were available from the mid-1930s. I have no death date for Mamie either. I know they both were living when Harry died of a heart attack in 1941.

Their mother, Julia Ginders, lives with them in Harry’s household in 1900, eight years after the marriage of Harry and Mamie. Julia reported that she had been married 29 years and was widowed, but after going through the censuses thoroughly, I realize she meant that she had been married 29 years before the census was taken—because her husband was dead by 1880, when the girls were still small.

She says she immigrated to the U.S. from Canada in 1878, 22 years previously. How can that be? She had two little girls by 1878, both of whom always reported that they were born in Illinois. I see from comparing all the census records that nobody in the Ginders family bothers much about getting their dates and ages consistent from census to census. It makes a genealogist’s life a little tougher! I’m going to assume that Julia came from Canada to Illinois in 1870 or before.

In 1880 Julia lives with her father-in-law, Henry Ginders, and her two little girls. I now have a grandpa, but I do not know Julia’s husband’s name. I find Henry in 1870 with his wife, Sophia, and a 30-year-old son, Joseph. Maybe this is the missing husband and father!

I look for Henry Ginders’s immigration record (he reported he was born in England). I find him and Sophia arriving in New York on April 19, 1851, aboard the Blue England. (I think that is the name—it was hard to read.) In addition to young Joseph, they have a son two years older, George, and a daughter two years younger, Fanny.

Then I find them in the 1841 England Census in Billingborough, Lincolnshire, minus Fanny. Little Joseph is age 1, George is 3. The census that year was taken on the night of June 6, 1841 (unlike the U.S. censuses which go on for months and months).

I look for them in the 1851 England Census because it was taken on the night of March 30, 1851, 20 days before they left England for America, but they were missed. I know they left from England—the port of departure was Liverpool—but where did they stay before they left? Hm.

Now I have two possibilities for the missing Ginders husband and father: George and Joseph. I search for George in later U.S. censuses, and there he is with his own wife, Mary, on a farm a few miles from his father’s in 1880. They have four children of their own. So our man must be Joseph. He disappears after 1870, completely. He must have married Julia about 1871, had Mamie in early 1872 and Fannie in late 1873, and then he must have died within the next six years. His mother, Sophia, must have died in that same time too. I wonder if there was a plague or something in that part of Illinois in the 1870s.

The early life of Mamie and Fannie Ginders becomes a little clearer. Their father dies when they are quite young, and they live with their mother and their grandfather. Perhaps Mamie becomes used to taking care of her little sister Fannie from very early on; maybe their mother is busy nursing a sick and dying husband. Maybe she also nurses her mother-in-law, who dies in the same time period. In any case, it all makes the Ginders sisters inseparable.

Otherwise, this is another chapter in a long story of the unattached woman who needs to be given a home by kind relatives because she is not in the position of gaining her own. Fannie is probably a role model for her niece, Mae, who never marries either and who becomes the city librarian in Rockford.

Here’s to the unattached aunt. She is often the one whose life forms those puzzle pieces that go missing all too soon, but I will not give up. I will rescue the Unattached Aunts from obscurity! May they regain their rightful importance and may we never ignore them.