I found Rose Whybrew

The fate of Rose Whybrew after 1918 has been one of those brick walls that has been a long time in coming down. But I think I've finally cracked it. And I had the evidence I needed all along, without realising it.

To summarise what I already knew, Rose (born 1877) was the fifth daughter of David and Susan Whybrew (nee Mason). She and her husband, George Henry Anthony, migrated to Chicago in the USA in 1907. Their son, George, was born just before they migrated and died in Chicago at the age of six, leaving them childless. George senior seems to have become a permanent resident of an asylum by 1910. He died in the 1940s. The last trace I had of Rose was her address on George's unanswered military call-up papers in 1918.

After that she disappeared. Ages ago I found this small clipping which listed a Rose Anthony from Chicago applying for a marriage license in Indiana in 1917. At the time, I assumed that it probably wasn't the Rose I was looking for because she was still married to George in 1917.  And I couldn't find a record of the marriage anywhere.

Lake County Times, (Hammond, Indiana)
15 June 1917

This week I went back to the article, and realised for the first time, that the future husband's name was also listed - Robert Reichert. I'd been looking at it as a random list, but it's actually a list of couples. I still couldn't find a marriage record, but I had a new name to look for.

First I found a Robert and Rose Reichert in the 1930 US census in Chicago. Rose Reichert's date of birth (1877) was the same as Rose Whybrew/Anthony, and her year of arrival in the USA matched. She was said to have been born in Australia, which wasn't correct, but Rose Whybrew's mother was born in Australia. 

By the 1940 census, Rose Reichert's birth place had changed to England. Each census asks for different information, and in 1940 one of the questions was 'age at first marriage'. Rose Reichert's age at first marriage was 19, about 1897 (the same year that Rose Whybrew married George Anthony) whereas Robert was first married about 1917. So Rose Anthony had been married before she met and married Robert Reichert.

All of this was suggestive, but not conclusive. I couldn't find the couple in the 1920 census. I did find a marriage record (on familysearch.org) for their marriage in Lake County, Indiana, in 1917, though it gave no details except their names and the date (14 June 1917). Could they have gone to Indiana to marry because Rose was still married to George? Perhaps she couldn't afford a divorce, or perhaps a divorce would have been difficult with George in the asylum. Maybe the reason I couldn't find the Reicherts in 1920 was that they didn't want to be found easily.

I'd begun to feel pretty confident (and excited) that this was probably the Rose I was looking for. But the evidence was still rather circumstantial. From newspapers I discovered that poor Robert Reichert was knocked down by a car in December 1955 and died in January 1956. His death record said that he was a widower. 

From that information I was able to find Rose Reichert's death record (on familysearch.org) which included her father's name; 'David Weybrew'. She died in Chicago on 9 February 1944 at the same address as in the 1940 census. Her date of birth on the death record was 13 November 1877, the same as Rose Whybrew. Her mother's name was listed as Murphy, which was actually Rose Whybrew's maternal grandmother's name, and she was said to have been born in Australia. Given that her husband Robert would have been giving the details, it isn't surprising if some of them are muddled or inaccurate. 

So this, I believe, is Rose Whybew's gravestone, at the Montrose Cemetery in Chicago. She had a hard life, but I'm glad that, even if her second marriage was possibly bigamous, she seems to have had a few good years at the end. 

 

A Rose by any other name won't do

As I've mentioned before, one of the toughest brick walls in my family history research is the fate of Rose Whybrew.

Rose, born in Kent, England, in 1877, married George Henry Anthony in Colchester in 1897. Their first child, Harriet, lived only a few months. Rose gave birth to a son, George William, in 1907, not long before the family migrated to the United States via Canada. They settled in Chicago, where Rose's sister Alice was living.

I've found the family in Chicago in the 1910 US census. Little George died and was buried in Chicago in 1913. In 1918, the older George received call-up papers from the US military, but as far as I can tell, he didn't respond. Rose's name appears as his wife on the papers, but her address, still in Chicago, is different to his, so it seems they had separated.

And then they disappear. I found a man  named George Anthony in the 1920, 1930 and 1940 US census, an inmate of a Chicago asylum, who fitted some of George's details. But Rose completely vanishes. I can't find any evidence that she died in Chicago. Did she remarry? Did she move interstate, or return to England? I've spent hours trying to find her, but without success. I've found lots of women named Rose Anthony, but none that I can identify as her.

I was having yet another look recently, hoping I might find her, when I came across a couple named George and Rosina Anthony in the 1939 England and Wales Register. Other women in my family named Rosina were sometimes called Rose, and vice versa, so the slightly different name didn't put me off. They lived in Hornsey, which is where Rose's sister Ada Metson lived in 1939.

According to the transcript, the husband was born in 1874, the wife in 1878, which matched the couple I was looking for almost exactly. Imagine how excited I was. Maybe George didn't finish up in an asylum after all.

Once I looked at the register image itself, I saw that the wife, Rosina, was born on 13 November 1878. That was Rose Whybrew's birth date, except for the year. Maybe the person recording the date had got the year of her birth wrong by one year. It wouldn't be the first time I'd come across an error like that in the register. I thought my brick wall was finally going to topple.

But then I noticed the couple had a daughter, Elsie Maud Anthony, who was born in 1907. That didn't fit, unless little George had a twin who was left behind when they migrated. I thought I'd better do a bit more research. And soon I found the whole family living in London in the 1911 England census. A bit more digging showed that Elsie Maud's mother's maiden name was Young. Drat!

So I still don't know what happened to Rose Whybrew. But I'm intrigued by the co-incidences between her and Rosina Young. It shows how carefully you have to check before assuming that you've found the person you're looking for in the records.

Image: F Muhammad from Pixabay

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To read more about Rose and her family, see my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.

What happened to Rose?

Rose Whybrew was the fifth daughter of  David and Susan Whybrew (nee Mason) and my father's great aunt, though he never met her. She is another of the unsolved mysteries in my family history research. I've been able to follow her life story as far as Chicago, USA, in 1918, but then she disappears. Despite hours spent searching, I haven't found any trace of her after that. What I do know about her suggests she had a difficult and sad life.

The SS Canada of the Dominion Line. 

Rose was born in 1877 while her father David was stationed in Canterbury in Kent. She married a shoe maker from London, George Henry Anthony, in 1897. Their first child, a daughter named Harriet, was born in Colchester, Essex, in 1900, but died before she was six months old.

In 1907, not long after the birth of their son George William, Rose and George Henry Anthony migrated to Chicago aboard the SS Canada. According to the 1910 US census, George W. was the fifth child born to Rose. I haven't found any record of the other births, so possibly the other three were stillborn.

Like many English migrants to the USA, they sailed to Quebec in Canada, then crossed into the United States through Vermont. Their names appear in the border crossing records in October 1907. Rose is described as being 5 ft 3 3/4 in, with ruddy skin, brown hair and hazel eyes.

State St, Chicago, c1907

The family were destined for 48th Avenue in Chicago, where Rose's sister Alice lived with her husband Herbert Miller and their daughter Alice.

When Alice Miller senior died in 1909, Herbert remarried and moved out with his new wife (also called Alice) and his daughter, leaving Rose and George at the 48th Avenue address. In the 1910 US census the Anthony's were apparently still living at 626, 48th Avenue.  Rose was working as a "janitress".

Rose's young son George died at the age of 6 in 1913, and was buried at Forest Home cemetery in Chicago, where his aunt Alice was also buried. As far as I can discover, there were no other children born to Rose and George in the USA.

In 1918 George senior received call-up papers for the US army. The papers show him as still living on 48th Ave, but although Rose is listed as next of kin, her address is given as 4823 W Congress St, Chicago. That is the last mention I can find for Rose.

The call-up papers were never signed. George may have been resident in the Norward Park psychiatric hospital at the time. A patient named George Anthony, born in England in 1874, and married, was listed there in the 1920 census. He may also have been there in 1910. Although George Anthony is listed at the same address as Rose in the 1910 census, someone of the same name and age is recorded as an inmate of the Norward Park hospital. Perhaps Rose filled out his details in the census with hers and young George's, not realising that only those actually on the premises on the night of the census were to be included.

Kankakee State Hospital

In the 1930 census, what appears to be the same George Anthony was a patient of the Jacksonville State Hospital for the Insane and in the 1940 census the same person was a patient of the Kankakee State Hospital in Manteno. When this man died on 16 May 1941, his previous occupation was recorded as "shoe cobbler", which tallies with George Henry Anthony's occupation when he arrived in the USA.

What happened to Rose? If she remained in the USA, I haven't been able to identify her on any of the censuses after 1910. The George Anthony who was in Jacksonville in 1930 was said to be single, so if he was Rose's husband, it suggests she had either separated from him or died. But I haven't been able to find any record of a divorce, remarriage or death for Rose.

Did she return to England? I discovered a Rose Anthony from Chicago who travelled to England in 1924. But then I found her passport application, which clearly showed that it wasn't the same Rose Anthony.

Did she perhaps migrate to Australia where her mother's family lived, or join her cousins in Canada? Did she revert to using her maiden name? I've looked at all these possibilities, but haven't had any success in finding her. For now she remains a mystery.

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You can find out more about Susan and David Whybrew and their family, in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool, available on Amazon and other online books stores