What does this say

[John Winn]

Attached is the Canadian equivalent to our death certificates. I desire to know what this person's occupation was. I can see it starts with R and ends in "cle" but can't determine what it is. I've attached the entire document so those of you better able to do these readings have all the handwriting. I've also attached a zoomed image of just the word in question. Thanks in advance for any willing to give this a go.

 

[Bob Velke]

Rancher
Retired

 

[lupaglupa]

Rancher is what I see also. I looked him up on Ancestry and none of his Census forms confirm that. But who knows what family tells the intake people at the hospital.

 

[RobertP]

Rancher
Retired

That's what I thought too.

 

[John Winn]

Rancher is what I see also. I looked him up on Ancestry and none of his Census forms confirm that. But who knows what family tells the intake people at the hospital.

Do you have the membership that allows seeing foreign records ? I don't so can't see any Canadian censuses. What do the census records you found say was his profession ?

 

[lupaglupa]

Do you have the membership that allows seeing foreign records ? I don't so can't see any Canadian censuses. What do the census records you found say was his profession ?

I do have the worldwide access. But I didn't need it here. All his records are in the US. I don't know why he died in Canada.

 

[John Winn]

Rancher
Retired

Thanks. The final three letters looked like cle to me from which I couldn't see anything that made sense.

I do have the worldwide access. But I didn't need it here. All his records are in the US. I don't know why he died in Canada.

Thanks. I was a bit confused about his last US census as I thought maybe that was a different man with the same name. That's because his wife and all but one child also lived in Canada and are all buried in the same cemetery. Her DC says she was married.

Now I think what happened is they separated and she and the children moved to Canada (why they moved to such a remote village is a real mystery). In his last years I think Eugene moved to Canada to live with his son (who was the witness on his DC) who I guess cared for him in his later days. Thus Eugene died in Canada but wasn't a long-time resident (as I thought his DC seemed to imply).

 

[lupaglupa]

You really get a picture of people's lives when you dig in to their records, don't you?

 

[John Winn]

You really get a picture of people's lives when you dig in to their records, don't you?

Absolutely. That's mostly why I research such folk. I'm also documenting for local historical reasons but I really do it because I want to know the story of those whose markers I repair.

In this case I'm working with a nearby city that acquired a very old cemetery two years ago and is trying to get things in order, among those things filling in missing data in the records (it was owned since the 1860s by four different groups and persons, none of whom really kept very good records if any). I found an obit for Eugene's youngest son who was buried in the cemetery and so I tried to find his parents, in part to see if they were also in the cemetery and not recorded. That search eventually led me to an Ancestry tree that had them and copies of the Canadian DCs (a rare lucky find). And all of that made me wonder why Eugene would have left Oregon with his family and moved to a little outpost in BC and I thought maybe his occupation would provide a clue.

Now its a bigger mystery why his wife would have chosen such a place. I do wonder how she supported herself. Her DC says she was a housewife (which is why I thought Eugene was there with her). If she remarried I'd think that would be reflected on her DC but she's recorded as a Stowell. Who knows.

 

[lupaglupa]

I did a search for obituaries. Sarah, the wife, had a brief mention. Nothing for Eugene. Most of the family trees I found were incomplete, which tells me they have no descendants who are doing genealogy (at least at Ancestry).

 

[John Winn]

I did a search for obituaries. Sarah, the wife, had a brief mention. Nothing for Eugene. Most of the family trees I found were incomplete, which tells me they have no descendants who are doing genealogy (at least at Ancestry).

Thanks. The plot has thickened as I looked to see if their only son who remained in Oregon had an obit and he did (died in 1935). It mentions his parents and says they're living in Medford (i.e. locally). His siblings are listed as living in Canada. I also found a Canadian border crossing for Eugene in 1929. His wife's DC says she'd lived in Canada for 24 years so she'd have to have moved there in 1912.

So ... I now think they separated, she moved with the children to Canada, then, years later, he went to Canada and convinced her to return with him, then she left him again and soon thereafter died in Canada. Then just a few years before he died Eugene, then a widower, left to live with his son when he got too old to take care of himself.

 

[donna]

thought was rancher and retired. So much great research. I always have to keep at it with people. You want to know what happened in their lives.

 

[Fairfield]

Do you have the membership that allows seeing foreign records ? I don't so can't see any Canadian censuses. What do the census records you found say was his profession ?

You don't have to go through Ancestry to see the Canadian census. Libraries & Archives of Canada: https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/census/Pages/census.aspx

 

[Fairfield]

If I am tracking the right person, he was a mail carrier in 1910. As the expression goes "close enough for government work".

 

[John Winn]

If I am tracking the right person, he was a mail carrier in 1910. As the expression goes "close enough for government work".

Right guy. He was a "common laborer" and then a mail carrier, and then a laborer at a theater, and in his last years apparently was not employed; never a farmer or a rancher as claimed in Canada.

And they named their second-born son Jesse James.

One does wonder. I'd bet there were some interesting stories in that family.

 

[Fairfield]

Right guy. He was a "common laborer" and then a mail carrier, and then a laborer at a theater, and in his last years apparently was not employed; never a farmer or a rancher as claimed in Canada.

And they named their second-born son Jesse James.

One does wonder. I'd bet there were some interesting stories in that family.

He may have been an agricultural laborer which was glorified by someone at the time of his death (obviously, he wasn't the informant). Looking at the differences in occupations in Maine between what they told the gov. at time of enlistment vs. what local records state, I find lumberman (enlistment) vs laborer in the woods (local records) and farmer (enlistment) vs farm hand (local records).