Great Uncle Waldo Emerson Cooper

This is a very deteriorated carte de viste photo of my great uncle Waldo Emerson Cooper, son of James R. Cooper and Ada Steves Oram.  He was born 21 January 1890 in Somerville, Massachusetts and died in 1918 during the Spanish influenza epidemic.  He married my great aunt Leonore Carrie Allen on 29 December 1912 in Essex, Massachusetts.  His early death at age 27 left his wife a widow with three babies.  My grandfather was only in the 8th grade, but he had to leave school to go to work  in a leather factor in Westborough, Massachusetts to help support his sister and her babies.   Aunt Lena played the player piano in a movie theater as a part time job. Eventually these young children were raised by their paternal grandparents in Westborough.   Aunt Lena remarried to Thomas J. McCormack some years later and adopted another son.  

Waldo Emerson Cooper, born 31 October 1913 in Westborough, Massachusetts.

I was lucky, this photo was marked with his name and the date July 31, 1914 (he was 9 months old). 

Carolyn Alma Cooper, born 24 November 1915 in Westborough.

Charles Cooper, born ???

-------------------------------

Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Great Uncle Waldo Emerson Cooper", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 6, 2016, (  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/05/great-uncle-waldo-emerson-cooper.html:  accessed [access date]).

The Civilian Conservation Corps Museum

This weekend we wandered up to Allenstown, New Hampshire to visit Bear Brook State Park. There is a small museum complex there with a CCC museum, a Snow Mobile Museum, and a currently closed Family Camping Museum.  The entire complex used to be a Civilian Conservation Corps Camp between 1935 and 1942.  It is one of the most perfectly preserved CCC camps in the USA, with most of the buildings still standing and in very nice shape. There is also a modern Ameri Corps camp on the other side of Bear Brook State Park, where today's college students performs some of the same duties as their forebears did in the CCC during the Great Depression.

The CCC was developed as a temporary agency to provide work relief.  Over 3 million young men participated in the CCC during the nine years it operated, building roads, state and national parks, reforestation efforts and forest fire fighting in 48 states, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.  The young men received $30 a month, of which $25 was sent home to their families. By 1942 these same young men were being drafted into service for World War II, and work relief was no longer needed, so Congress permanently closed the program.

If you have ancestors or family members who served in the CCC, the records of their service are kept in St. Louis at the National Archives annex.  The Richard Diehl CCC Museum in Allenstown has hundreds of photographs, lists of names of men, artifacts and a small library of books with information on the CCC, the Bear Brook Camp, other camps in New Hampshire and across New England.  The building was once the mess hall, and you can wander around to look at the other buildings, which were mostly barracks. 

BEAR BROOK CCC CAMP

1935- 1942

The Bear Brook Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

Camp was one of 28 work camps established in 

N.H. between 1933 and 1942. President Franklin D. 

Roosevelt started the program after the Depression 

to put young unemployed men to work in

conservation.  From 1925 to 1938 the 1123rd Co. CCC

was here; later this was one of four CCC camps in

the state to employ World War I veterans.  bear

Brook was the last active CCC camp in N. H. and was

given to the state in 1943.  It was listed in the 

National Register of Historic Places in 1992 as

one of the country's most intact CCC camps.

A typical bed from a CCC barrack, with a footlocker

owned by CCC alumni, Robert Ellis, of company 2130

Actual dishes and items from the CCC mess hall

This collage of fading photographs was propped in a window of the CCC Museum.

These photos are curling at the edges, fragile and yet the faces of the young men are still visible.

This museum, and others like it, need some help with archival preservation techniques. 

One of the large fieldstone fireplaces in one of the barrack buildings, 

now being used as the Snow Mobile Museum.  

This was the only heat for the young men during the cold New Hampshire winters. 

At the beach nearby the museum is a statue to the CCC workers

Across from the CCC worker statue is a pavillion overlooking the swimming pond.

In the 1930s the CCC workers dug out a three foot brook,

 built a dam, and developed the pond for recreation.

The fieldstone pavillion is a testament to their workmanship eighty years later! 

My mother's cousin, Waldo Emerson Cooper (1913 - 1976) served in the CCC starting in 1935.  He was born in Westborough, Massachusetts, and died in Los Angeles, California.  I don't know where he served in the CCC, but it might have been in New Hampshire where there were many forestry programs and state parks being built.   He enlisted in the US Army Air Corps in 1944, like so many other young men of his age. The family lost track of him over the years, but I was able to find his death listed in the California Death Index at Ancestry.com   It would be quite a genealogy adventure to write to the National Archives to read more about his service in the CCC.

** This post is the first in a series I think I will call "20th Century Americana".  These are things I find around New England from the recent past, but they are now history since we are now in the 21st century.  Not many of these things are currently being preserved or saved, but they are part of history and family history.  I thought the Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Allenstown was a good place to start.

For more information:

Bear Brook State Park:  http://www.nhstateparks.com/bearbrook.html

A listing of CCC Museums across the USA:   http://ccclegacy.org/CCC_Museums.html

--------------------------
Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

The Spanish Flu of 1918 and Family History

US. Naval History and Heritage Command Photo #: NH 41731-A

The Spanish Flu of 1918

Years ago I heard the story of a family member who died during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. It was interesting to me at the time, but even more interesting now with the Bird Flu epidemic.  It is well worth revisiting and re-investigating the story.

Between 1918 and 1919, an estimated 21.5 million people died of the “Spanish Flu” worldwide. However, the exact numbers are unknown. It is thought that about 675,000 Americans died, more than the total number of Americans who died in World War I. The dead were mostly young people, since survivors of an 1890 flu pandemic seemed to have immunity. This is surprisingly similar to what seems to be happening today, with people under 25 having a higher mortality rate than those who survived another flu epidemic in the 1970’s.

Frozen tissue samples show that the 1918 Spanish Flu was a variant on the influenza A virus, subtype H1N1. Sound familiar? However, remember that this was before penicillin could cure the ensuing pneumonia infections, and this 1918 strain had some nasty hemorrhagic side effects.

I was also surprised to read that the first American cases of the 1918 outbreak were in Boston. Several sailors came down with it on August 27th, followed by 8 more on the 28th, and 58 cases on the 29th. Two weeks later over 2,000 military men had the flu, because the sick soldiers were taken to the Chelsea Old Soldiers Home. By September the flu had reached Fort Devens. By January 16, 1919 about 45,000 people had died from the Spanish Flu in Massachusetts alone.

I now live in New Hampshire. It is interesting to note that since it was a rural state, New Hampshire had the least deaths in New England. The city of Manchester had set up some rather severe quarantines and restrictions on closing all soda fountains, and requiring restaurants to boil dishes. These strict regulations may have saved some lives.

In our family tree the flu victim was Waldo Emerson Cooper. He had married my great Aunt Lenora “Lena” Carrie Allen in 1912. On his World War I draft registration card, dated June 5, 1917, Waldo listed that he was a leather worker and bookkeeper, employed by James R. Cooper, his father, in Westborough, Massachusetts. He also listed a wife and two children as dependents, residing at 11 Beach Street. That fall, during the influenza outbreak, he died.

Aunt Lena was left widowed at age 24, with three babies. My grandfather, her brother, stepped in to become the man of the family, and left high school at age 14. He filled in for Waldo’s job at the family tannery, and Lena worked evenings playing the piano at silent movie theaters. To ease her burden, the smallest boy was adopted by the Cooper family, and possibly the other children was adopted, too.

Later, Aunt Lena remarried and lived a new life in Connecticut. Her first children remained in Westborough, but she adopted a new son. However, this story is not just about her first husband dying of the influenza. The death set up a chain of events in the family that could never be reversed. My grandfather never returned to school, and led a life of hard labor, including 40 years as a glazier at a large factory in Beverly. One of the little orphaned boys went to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, and the family rarely heard from his afterwards. Aunt Lena’s children were raised by her relatives. Even though she was able to set up a new life in Connecticut with her new husband and child, I’m sure that the memories of her first marriage were hard ones. And this is the just the story of one death due to the pandemic that took over a half million Americans.
----------

Family Group Information:

Joseph Elmer Allen and Carrie Maud Batchelder, resided in Essex, Massachusetts, had five children, including their oldest child….

Leonore Carrie Allen, born 20 March 1894, Boston, Massachusetts, died January 1973 in Stamford, Connecticut; married first on 29 December 1912 in Essex, Massachusetts to Waldo Emerson Cooper, born 21 March 1890 in Somerville, Massachusetts, died 1918 during the influenza pandemic. He was the son of James R. Cooper and Ada Steves Oram; married second to Thomas J. McCormack.

Three children with Waldo Emerson Cooper

1. Charles
2. Waldo, born about 1913
3. Carolyn, born about 1915

----------
Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

http://1918pandemicflu.gov/

America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918, by Crosby, Alfred. (Cambridge University Press). Available online for a limited preview on Google Books

---------------

Copyright 2009, Heather Wilkinson Rojo