The Barber & Miss Sealy Part 1 - Marriage & World War I

Frank Farnham Scott (1894-1961)

Gertrude Selma Sealy (1892-1986)

maternal grandparents

 

 

When I started doing genealogy research four decades ago, I never thought to ask my grandmother a question that now has me quite perplexed: how did you and Grandpa meet? While it's not a critical part of their story, it is the beginning of it. Beyond that, I can trace their life together through photos, recollections, and documents. They weren't an extraordinary couple ‒ like most of us they worked, raised children, and handled life's obstacles as best they could.

 

What is noteworthy about their life together, however, is that it was influenced by some of the most significant events of the 20^th century ‒ World War I, the 1918 pandemic, Prohibition, the Great Depression, and World War II. In this post, I'll explore how those events might have shaped their lives.

 

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My grandparents, Frank Scott and Gertrude Sealy, grew up about twenty-three miles apart in Chautauqua County, New York. Grandpa was born and raised in the villages of Silver Creek and Forestville in the northern part of the county near Lake Erie. Grandma hailed from the village of Gerry in the southern part.

Chautauqua County, New York (Google Maps 2020)

Grandpa and Grandma had several things in common. Each of them had an unconventional upbringing due to unfortunate circumstances. Both started working by age 15 because of those circumstances, and they both completed ninth grade. This was an achievement, since education was generally not a priority at that time, particularly when there was farm work to be done. Even as late as 1917, less than ten percent of the population got past eighth grade. (PBS: American Experience)

 

Grandpa’s parents, George Scott and Margaret Kilburn, separated when he was around nine years old. His mother moved the family, which included older sisters Grace and Helen, from Silver Creek to Forestville. Ultimately his parents divorced. At the time of the 1910 Federal Census, Grandpa’s sister, Grace, 21, was married. Grandpa, who was only 15, was living in Forestville with his sister, Helen, 19, because their mother had remarried and moved to a nearby town. The siblings were both working for the Forestville telephone exchange. (Ancestry.com)

 

Left: My great-grandparents, George Scott & Margaret Kilburn, ca. 1920.  Right: Grandpa at home - taken at 55 W. Livingston Avenue, Celoron, New York (undated)

Grandma’s childhood came unraveled when she was only three years old. On April 6, 1896, her mother, Selma Hult Sealy, died from consumption at the young age of 23. This left Grandma’s father, Otis Robert Sealy, to raise three young children by himself – Otis Conrad, almost five, my grandmother, three years, and Katheryn Elizabeth, eighteen months. But in less than nine months, my great-grandfather remarried. Four years later he was living in Jamestown with his new wife and stepson. (1900 Federal Census)  His three children were living with his aging parents, Hiram Nelson Sealy, 63, and Ellen Elizabeth Barmore, 59, on the family farm in Gerry. (1900 Federal Census)

Left: My great-grandfather, Otis R. Sealy and children (L-R) Katheryn, Otis Conrad, and Gertrude, my grandmother, ca. 1908.  Right: My 2nd great-grandparents, Ellen Barmore & Hiram Sealy, with granddaughter, Katheryn, ca. 1899.

When Hiram died in 1907, Ellen was left with the three grandchildren. In the 1910 Federal Census, I found Ellen and the children renting a house at 50 West 11^th Street in the small city of Jamestown. Otis Conrad was a 20-year-old metal worker in a factory, while Grandma, 17, and Katheryn, 15, were working as winders in one of the several woolen mills in Jamestown. (1910 Federal Census). It was a big change from life on the farm and could not have been a pleasant experience for any of them, since factory work could be brutal even for adults. 

 

Globe Cotton Mill, Augusta, Ga. Woman was "with child." According to reports, these women work until the day of childbirth. Location: Augusta, Georgia. Lewis Wickes Hine, photographer. January 1909. (Library of Congress)

 

Conditions in factories were loud and hazardous; employees worked long hours but were paid little. The average pay for men was only $687 annually, the equivalent $17,535 in 2020 dollars. Women’s wages were about half that. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) Work hours could be reduced from one day to the next without warning, resulting in a smaller paycheck that could affect whether bills could be paid. Overtime, workman’s compensation, unemployment insurance, and vacations did not exist.

 

By 1915, the Sealy family’s situation had improved. Grandma, who was nearly 23 and working as a drug store clerk, was living at 53 West 14^th Street in Jamestown with her grandmother, 78, and sister, Katheryn, almost 21, who was working as a clerk in a bakery. (1915 NY State Census) Otis Conrad was married and living elsewhere. 

 

I have not been able to determine where Grandpa was living in 1915, but for whatever reason he was in the Gerry-Jamestown area, as evidenced by photos taken in the summer of that year. I believe that is when my grandparents met; they were married the following summer.

 

Grandpa and Grandma's wedding picture, June 26, 1916.

On their marriage license application, Grandpa stated he was a barber, while Grandma was evidently unemployed at the time. [See the note at the end of this post for details on the barber school.]

Grandpa and Grandma's marriage license application, dated June 26, 1916. (Ancestry.com) 

– A WORLD WAR ON THE HORIZON –

As my grandparents began their life together, there was likely a sense of foreboding from day to day, given that Europe had been deep in the throes of war since June 1914. The U.S. hadn’t yet joined the war because of its isolationist/non-interventionist stance regarding political and military alliances with foreign countries. Public opinion about the policy began to change, however, due to two separate but related events that occurred in 1915. 

Prior to February 1915, non-military ships were given an opportunity to surrender before being destroyed, with passengers and crews being evacuated first. But in February, Germany warned the Allies that any vessel – military, merchant, or passenger – flying an Allied flag was subject to attack without warning.

In May, the British ocean liner, RMS Lusitania, was torpedoed without warning by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland. Nearly 1200 passengers were lost, including 128 Americans. This sparked outrage among the Allied nations, as well as in America. Still, President Woodrow Wilson was reluctant to enter the war. Instead, he sent two letters of protest to Germany which resulted in it abandoning the new policy.

 

RMS Lusitania coming into port, possibly New York c. 1910. (Library of Congress)

 

Despite public opinion moving away from President Wilson’s isolationist stance and moving toward joining the Allies against Germany, Wilson was re-elected in 1916. He ran on slogans such as, “He Kept Us Out of the War” and “America First.” Then, on January 31, 1917, Germany announced it was resuming unrestricted submarine warfare, the very policy it had forgone at President Wilson’s insistence after the sinking of the Lusitania. Merchant and passenger ships, even those from neutral countries, would no longer have an opportunity to surrender before being destroyed – American neutrality was about to come to an end. (History.com, PBS.org)

– world war i REACHES AMERICA –

On April 6, 1917, nine months after my grandparents were married, President Wilson announced that the U.S. had declared war on Germany. By this time, the world was well aware of the horrors of trench warfare in Europe – mud that sucked at soldiers’ boots as they slogged through it toward the next battle, rats running everywhere feasting on whatever was available - which was often the dead, often mutilated bodies of brothers-in-arms or those of the enemy, and gas attacks that burned and blistered skin, destroyed lung tissue, and sometimes killed.

 

After the proclamation of war, a call for volunteers yielded only 73,000 men. As a result of the low numbers, Congress passed the Selective Service Act on May 18, 1917, to raise the millions of men needed to fight in a conflict of such magnitude. (Smithsonian Magazine) Grandpa was in the first group required to register on June 5, 1917 – men between the ages of 21 and 31 – and he was in the first draft lottery of the war. (National Archives)

 

Grandpa's WWI draft registration card contained a lot of information. Physical description: medium height, slender build, blue eyes, light hair.  Occupation: barber. Employer - H. M. Hansen, Jamestown, NY.  He and Grandma were living at 318 Prendergast Avenue in Jamestown, where they had most likely resided since their marriage one year earlier. (Ancestry.com)

 

The first lottery drawing of WWI began at 9:30 a.m. on July 20, 1917. The Secretary of War, Newton Baker, was blindfolded before he drew the first number from a large bowl that contained 10,500 different lottery numbers inside sealed capsules. After sixteen and a half long hours, the lottery drawing in which 1,374,000 men were called to duty was complete. (Library of Congress)

Vice President Thomas R. Marshall drawing a draft capsule ca. 1918. (Library of Congress)

 

Once the draft lottery drawing was finished, A Notice of Call and to Appear for Physical Examination was mailed to draftees. The notice included the date and time a draftee was to report to his local draft board for a physical. The wait between the date of the draft lottery and the receipt of a Notice of Call had to be excruciating. I cannot imagine how my grandparents felt as they waited to see if their lives would be turned upside down by the war. Ultimately, Grandpa was not drafted.

 

– LIFE CHANGES –

Until the draft was instituted, the war probably seemed very distant to most residents of Chautauqua County. Then everything changed. Not only were men being called to serve in the military, but civilians – men, women, and children – were needed to support the war effort in other ways. Factories all over the country were retooled to manufacture military equipment, and civilian men and women were needed to take the place of men who had left to fight in the war. Even a furniture factory in Falconer, only three miles from Jamestown, was converted so airplane propellers could be manufactured there.

 

World War I aircraft propellers being manufactured in retooled Falconer, New York furniture factory. (jamestownretro.com)

In order to help finance the war, the government launched a campaign to raise money. Part of that drive was to display posters such as these in prominent places all over the country. 

Left: The iconic 1917 "I Want You" Uncle Sam, poster. (Library of Congress)  Right: Posters such as this one published in 1917, encouraged American children to purchase war savings stamps. (Library of Congress)  

 

 

– AND THEN THERE WAS THE ISSUE OF FOOD –

 

Once the U.S. declared war on Germany, it became responsible for helping the Allies in whatever way possible. One of the main areas of support was increasing the food supply. Because Europe had been ravaged by war for three years, much of the land had been laid to waste by shell craters and networks of trenches. With hundreds of thousands of European men away from home fighting the war and many of the remaining civilians killed, there were few people left to farm what little farmland hadn’t been destroyed.

 

 

French troops moving through trenches and shell craters into an area formerly held by the German Army. Caption on verso states, "This remarkable photograph was made by a French aviator from a height of 590 feet." (Library of Congress)

The result was a severe food shortage across Europe. This left inadequate food resources for both Allied troops and millions of European civilians. When the U.S. joined the Allies in the war, not only did it provide additional manpower in the form of hundreds of thousands of fresh troops but it also helped feed both Allied soldiers and the starving populations. This massive undertaking was accomplished through the efforts of future president, Herbert Hoover.

In August 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed future president, Herbert Hoover, to head a voluntary program where Americans changed their eating habits by reducing meat, wheat, and sugar consumption. Citizens were encouraged to grow their own fruits and vegetables in Victory Gardens planted in their yards, parks, or on school playgrounds. They learned how to can and preserve the food they grew. Valuable commodities such as meat and wheat were shipped to Europe to help sustain troops and feed famished civilians. This was a food conservation program on a grand scale, feeding not only Americans at home, but millions of others in Europe. (Library of Congress Blogs, History.com)  

Left: A 1917 poster depicting Liberty sowing seeds. People could send for free books on how to grow and preserve food. (Library of Congress)  Right: A 1918 poster showing advertising for a Woman's Land Army training school. Most were not tuition free like this one. (Library of Congress)

   

Because of the overwhelming need for food, the Woman’s Land Army of America was founded. Modeled after a similar organization in England, it connected women with women’s universities that taught agricultural skills so the newly trained women could replace the men who had left their farms to join the military, or had gone to higher paying jobs in factories. The program was a huge boon to the war effort since the farmerettes, as they were known, kept the farms running and food flowing in the U.S. from 1917 to 1919. (Library of Congress Blogs; History.com)

Given that Grandma grew up on a farm, she already had the skills necessary to contribute to this massive undertaking. She would have known how to can and preserve food, as well as how to prepare and maintain a garden. If there wasn’t enough room or adequate sunlight at the home on Prendergast Avenue, she could possibly have gone to the family farm in Gerry, or perhaps family members banded together and planted a large garden at the farm. 

Only a month before the end of the war, Albert John Carpenter, a 19-year-old soldier in the 142nd Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division, U.S. Army, documented his experiences in France in his October 1918 diary, including entries about the lack of food. Europeans continued to suffer even after the war had ended, prompting Herbert Hoover to continue his humanitarian efforts in Europe. Between 1918 and 1919, American civilians reduced their food consumption by an incredible 15% and food shipments to Europe doubled, bringing some relief to millions of starving European civilians. (History.com)

Eighteen months after the U.S. entered the war, and after massive efforts, heavy losses, and great sacrifice, fighting came to an end on November 11, 1918, when an armistice was signed between Germany and the Allies. World War I officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed over seven months later on June 28, 1919. But another world crisis still raged on. 

 

 

NEXT: The Barber & Miss Sealy Part II - The 1918 Pandemic (posted July 2021)

 

 

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– DIG A LITTLE DEEPER –

  

Read Albert Carpenter’s October diary here: Experiencing War: Stories from the Veterans’ History Project. The Library of Congress, American Folklife Center. http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp-stories/story/loc.natlib.afc2001001.00225/.

 

In the May 29, 2009 Smithsonian Magazine article, "Before Rosie the Riveter, Farmerettes Went to Work," author Elaine F. Weiss describes what it was like to be a California farmerette in the highly structured Women's Land Army. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/before-rosie-the-riveter-farmerettes-went-to-work-141638628/.

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Family photos from The Shirley Scott Collection held by Jodell Bradish. 

 

 

 

Bradish-Scott Family History - July 2020