Genealogy Chat

I have recently discovered that someone I have been researching travelled throughout America with various Carnivals and Circuses, he was last heard of in Ada, Oklahoma in 1935 aged at that time about 44, his name was Charles Russell Hetherington but he also used the aliases of Russell Charles Hetherington & Carl Hetherington, he was born in Norwood, Canada so could potentially have returned to Canada too.

Does anyone have any tips as to how I can trace him?

George

have you tried Google

Hi. I let George know that he had replies and have received the following pm from him:


Thanks, I have seen the responses, and will at some point make a response,

Thanks though




Cx

Hello George :)

I don't know if this is much use to you but perhaps the local newspapers mentioned the circus or the carnivals. I don't know whether there are a lot of American/Canadian newspapers on line for that period or not.

Have you checked the 1930 American census?

Or the WW1 draft registration records?

You may find other help from:

Social Security Records?

Voter's Registers?

Obituaries?

Good luck with your search :)

sheeeez

I think that is the strangest response I have ever seen!


Hope the information is still here when George deigns to return.



sylvia

My response will still be here although I don't think it will be much help :)

I don't think he was impolite, just truthful. He may be waiting for more responses before replying. He may not like to be rushed into replying on the boards, he may not have had the time or the energy to make the considered reply he wants. Who is to say what's happening in people's lives at a given time?

I would find it bizarre that people who want to help people with this great hobby of ours would consider deleting their responses to make a point. Only yesterday I came across an old thread of mine where I missed a final post with some useful info on it. If that poster had deleted it out of frustration I would have lost out and wouldn't have been able to thank them.

Also someone thanked me the other day for some advice I gave months ago, I was even more pleased that they took the trouble after all of this time to do so but it would not have harmed me if they hadn't. I also noticed thanks from someone today who had thanked the posters from 2007. Life gets in the way sometimes :)

SRS


I don't agree with deleting information either

BUT a number of others do delete ..... that is all that I meant.


George did take the time to return to the thread and read the responses


wouldn't have taken much more time to have the courtesy to post "Thanks for the help. I will be back when I have more time"


or some such


Granted, he hadn't received the information on a silver platter, but two people had thought about WHERE one might find such information.



s
xx

I've probably sympathetic as I'm a terrible procrastinator lol I always want to leave a considered reply to something that is meaningful to me but end up leaving it too late and end up rushing the answers anyway lol

I have to agree Sylvia. If the poster had time to send me a message, then they also had time to pop a quick 'thank you' on here. Just good manners really.

I see there has been a deletion of information!


Cx.

I think the info was just to check roots chat which has a dedicated part on travellers. Uk based probably.

I quite like researching my ancestors but I think it would be fun to find a distant relative who was a traveller or someone who worked in a circus.

Firstly thank you to all of you who took the trouble to reply with various suggestions and especially Cynthia who kindly went out of her way to send me an email letting me know that I had been sent these suggestions.

I am also grateful to ‘secret red squirrel’ for not being so judgmental as to why I hadn’t immediately responded. I do have my reasons but it seems a shame that I should even have to explain them to anyone. I thought we were all here to help one another not criticise. As a matter of fact my weekend has been somewhat eventful and when I’m not working full time, one of the things I spend most of my time doing is researching child migrants and helping reunite people with their child migrant ancestors (for free), which is why I am rarely the one asking for assistance as I don’t normally have the time for my own research.

I had already tried all those suggestions before I posted the query, (apart from the newspapers as that one is a bit more tricky but definitely worth looking into) which is why I decided to ask in the event that someone may have travelling folk in their ancestry.

I found a forwarding address in his military records of where he worked, which happened to be a really good lead. I wrote to the Bosque museum in Texas hoping they might have information on the history of the business. I received the address of the owner’s son who, although in his 80s, was interested in passing on information about Charles as he had many memories of his time there. I just received his letter last week, which was wonderfully informative and I have just sent him a reply as he too seems interested in finding out what happened to Charles after he left his family. However the ‘old brick wall’ appeared again when Charles went to Ada, Oklahoma in 1935 and his mail was returned to sender and no trace has been found of him since.

It seemed that Charles was a bit of a ‘free spirit’ and took to travelling around with his ‘act’ of a small collection of domestic and farm animals. He tagged along with circuses, carnivals, magicians, medicine shows and such but was never very successful and it appears his animals caused more of a sensation because Charles wasn’t a natural trainer and they never did as they were told and often ran off.

My problem is I think that Charles frequently reinvented himself and worked for food and shelter not necessarily money but yes I will definitely follow the suggestion of newspapers.

Thank you once again to all of you who offered me suggestions. I will let you know if I get anywhere with this but it’s not looking hopeful now.

George (is not a guy)

Sorry George, I went along with calling you "he" :(

With a name like Lesley, I should have known better ;)

Please do let us know if you happen to find anything, I'm even more interested now. I found a good newspaper site yesterday but alas it was Australian.

Good luck :)

Good to hear from you George (is not a guy). One reason why it is good to keep a thread going with replies is that each time someone posts on it, it moves back to the top of the board to be seen again, and you never know who may spot it and have something to contribute.


I can't now remember what the deleted posting said, but have you tried the Rootschat site which is free to join and has a section on travelling people etc?


Cx

I have put a message on rootschat though I am not confident about getting from there as their forum on that topic seems mainly aimed at UK carnivals and circuses but you never know

Thanks

George