Step: Dad's Step-Siblings ~ 52 Ancestors #16

My grandmother, Elizabeth Adsit, known as Libby to everyone including her grandchildren, married Edgar Carter Rust on August 12, 1933, after divorcing my grandfather. 

They had been married for 29 years when this photo was taken.

Elizabeth (Adsit) Rust and Edgar Carter Rust
Summer 1962

Three years after they married, they traveled to Europe with my dad and Edgar's youngest son, Kenneth. I have a couple of photographs from this trip. This one has been enhanced and colorized by MyHeritage.

Stories From the Census ~ Libby in 1950

My paternal grandmother (born Elizabeth Adsit) was called by her nickname, Libby, even by her grandchildren. I found her under the name Elizabeth A. Rust relatively easily in the 1950 census using the National Archives index.

She and her (second) husband, Edgar C. Rust, lived in Newton, Massachusetts.

Not all their information in the census is accurate, making me wonder who provided the details to the census enumerator. Perhaps Libby provided the information and didn't want to be truthful because she was about 15 years younger than her husband. The census reported that they were five years apart in age.

1950 U.S. census, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Newton, ED 26-89, sheet 8, lines 1-5, household 51 (Edgar C Rust & family); U.S. National Archives, 1950 Census (https://1950census.archives.gov/search/).

Edgar C. Rust, age 65 [actually 67], and Elizabeth A. Rust, age 60 [actually 52], both born in Massachusetts [actually Libby was born in Illinois], lived at 22 Gatehouse Rd. in Newton. (Not quite the right address - more about that below.)

Edgar worked 45 hours the previous week as an Executor in a Banking Firm. Libby is listed as "H" (keeping house). Three maids lived with them: 65-year-old Katherine M. Fannon, a widow, born in Ireland; 50-year-old Theresa Walsh, never married, born in Ireland; and 45-year-old Susan H. MacWhister, never married, born in Scotland. These women worked 60 (!) hours during the previous week as maids for a private family. (Libby's "keeping house" was likely telling the maids what needed to be done.)

The 1950 census included space either at the top or the bottom of each page for the enumerator to write additional notes about the households on that page. Be sure to take a look at any notes on the page.

Witness to History 79 Years Ago ~ 52 Ancestors

This week's theme is Witness to History.

Sunday, December 7, 1941, 79 years ago, was the "date which will live in infamy," a phrase President Roosevelt used in the speech he gave to Congress on December 8, 1941.

The New York Times front page had a large headline and was full of stories about what had happened in Pearl Harbor the prior morning.

 

Page 27 of that newspaper was the social page with several wedding and engagement announcements. At the bottom of the page are listings of additional "social activities," including the notation that:

"Mr. and Mrs. Edgar C. Rust of Boston are expected today at the St. Regis."

"Social Activities in New York and Elsewhere," The New York Times (New York, New York, 8 December 1941), p. 27, cols. 3-6; digital images, New York Times TimesMachine (https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1941/12/08/issue.html: accessed 24 November 2020).

It's interesting to discover that the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, my grandmother (Elizabeth Adsit) and her husband were traveling to New York City. It makes me wonder where they were when they heard the news and what they thought of that news.

(Just for fun, search for the St. Regis Hotel; it's quite luxurious and has quite a history!) 

As I've written before, FDR was a Harvard classmate of my step-grandfather and hosted his class of 1904 classmates at the White House in 1934.

More on Roosevelt and Rust - Harvard Class of 1904

Almost two years ago, I shared the 1934 invitation to the White House that my step-grandfather, Edgar C. Rust, and grandmother received, as well as a newspaper clipping that was in my grandmother's collection. (Saturday is the 119th anniversary of my grandmother's birth: Elizabeth Adsit was born on June 18, 1897.)

Classmates Meet Again, Unknown newspaper.

In trying to find the original of this newspaper clipping (not yet successful), I also found the following newspaper articles about this college reunion at GenealogyBank which does indicate that family members were in attendance.

Grandmother Elizabeth Adsit - Same - 52 Ancestors #12

For this week's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from blogger Amy Crow Johnson of No Story Too Small, the theme is "Same." Not only do I share the same first name as my paternal grandmother, we do have quite a bit in common.

This blog post is an opportunity for me to link to most of the posts I have made about my grandmother.

Elizabeth Adsit was born on June 18, 1897, in Chicago, Illinois, to Charles Chapin Adsit, a Chicago banker, and Mary Bowman Ashby. She had one older brother, Charles, Jr., who was five years old when she was born. (See a photo of the two of them here.)

Her family lived at 73 Bellevue Place in Chicago and then at 24 Ritchie Court. I couldn't find the family in the 1900 U.S. Census because they were traveling.

All of the official records that I have found show the name of Elizabeth, but she was known to friends and family (including her grandchildren) as Libby. (We never called her grandmother, or granny or gramma.) At left is one of the several photographs I have of Libby as a girl.

Libby was a talented tennis player in her youth. She is mentioned in a couple of newspaper articles in 1912 and 1916.

As befitted a young society lady, she attended what was known at the time as a finishing school: Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, between 1913 and 1916. After World War II, the school changed its focus to become a well-respected college preparatory school, which I attended almost 70 years after she did. (Although she was not able to be there to see me graduate, she was thrilled that I attended and enjoyed talking with me about her fond memories and about the changes that had taken place over the decades.)

After completing her studies in the spring of 1916, that fall, Libby made her society debut. I shared a couple of photos here.

Roosevelt and Rust - Harvard Class of 1904

Watching Ken Burns' The Roosevelts - An Intimate History on PBS this week reminds me of the connection my dad's step-father, Edgar C. Rust, had with FDR: they both graduated from Harvard in 1904.

The following newspaper clipping is in one of the scrapbooks in my paternal grandmother's collection.

Classmates Meet Again, Unknown newspaper.

The caption reads:

Edgar C. Rust              Governor Roosevelt             Carl B. Marshall
Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York enjoying a bite with two classmates of Harvard '04, in the college yard at Cambridge during reunion of commencement. Rust
is a resident of Boston, while Marshall hails from Providence, R. I. (Associated Press
[cut off]).

1929 would have been their 25th college reunion, and before Edgar Rust's first wife died.

Five years later was their 30th college reunion and my grandmother's scrapbook also has the following invitation:

The President and Mrs. Roosevelt

At Home

Saturday afternoon

April the twenty-first

at four o'clock

The White House

Admit at East Gate

NOT TRANSFERABLE

April 21, 1934

Thank you to my husband who found FDR: Day by Day website at the FDR Presidential Library website.

I searched for April 21 on the FDR: Day by Day page, and I found his calendar for that day, which included:

4:30pm –   Received 754 in Harvard 1904 Class Reunion in Blue Parlor         White House STE, USH
    6:10pm      Note: Stenographer's Diary indicates a Lawn Party for Law Class

STE: Stenographer's Diary; USH - White House Usher's Diary (see below for images).

From FDR's Stenographer's Diary - April 21, 1934

From FDR's Usher's Diary - April 21, 1934

Although many of Roosevelt's Harvard classmates may not have agreed with some of his policies, I'm sure they weren't going to turn down an invitation to visit him in the White House for their 30th college reunion! I'm sure my step-grandfather and my grandmother, Libby, attended.

172 Beacon Street, Boston

My paternal grandmother, Elizabeth (Adsit) (Pyle) Rust, lived in an apartment on Beacon Street in Boston for several decades before she died in 1983. (See her death notice here.)

I wasn't sure exactly when Libby and Pop (my step-grandfather, Edgar Rust) moved from their house in Chestnut Hill to Boston, so I explored the City Directories at Ancestry.com. The 1954 and 1955 Boston City Directories don't have alphabetical listings that get to Rust (their images may be of volume 1 and not volume 2), but they do have the street listing that includes Beacon Street, which is more fun because in one place, a researcher can see who else is living in the same building.

The 1954 Directory shows that the apartment at the 8th floor was not occupied:

1954 Boston City Directory
p. 1506: 172 Beacon Street

In 1955, Edgar Rust is now residing in the apartment on the 8th floor:

1955 Boston City Directory
p. 1406: 172 Beacon Street

So it looks like they moved in 1954. They had previously lived at 22 Reservoir Road in Chestnut Hill, where they were enumerated with many errors in the 1940 U.S. Census.)

172 Beacon (2013),
courtesy of Backbayhouses.org

I was prompted to write this post after reading a recent post at the New England Historic Genealogical Society's blog, Vita Brevis, called A Genealogical Jigsaw Puzzle, which mentions a website called Back Bay Houses. This is a great and well-organized website that has information about the "genealogical history" of homes in Boston's Back Bay. I could click on Beacon Street at the top of the page, and scroll down to the numbers between Berkeley and Clarendon to find number 172. Visit Back Bay Houses/172 Beacon for more information about the history of this lot and the building that was on the site before this one was built in 1928.

Libby lived on the 8th floor of 172 Beacon Street (the floor with the railings outside some of the windows) and we visited her apartment a few times a year, usually at Thanksgiving, Easter, and one day during our December school vacation. (She came to our house in Dedham on Christmas Day.)

Just looking at this picture of the front of 172 Beacon Street reminds me of going to visit Libby and going up the old fashioned elevator (with a doorman to work the sliding metal cage-style door) which opened directly into her front hall.

According to Back Bay Houses, the building was converted into condominiums in 1977, so she went from renting the 8th floor to owning it.

Wedding Wednesday ~ Edgar Carter Rust and Elizabeth Adsit Pyle

On Valentine's Day, I shared a 1937 love note to my grandmother, Elizabeth Adsit, from her second husband, Edgar Carter Rust.

I recently obtained their marriage record from the Family History Library photo duplication services.

Edgar Carter Rust and Elizabeth Adsit Pyle married at the "Fifth Ave. Pres. Ch." on 12 August 1933. He was 50; she was 36. The one error I see in this record is that Edgar was widowed; his first wife, Rosamond Pierce Weeks, died on 19 December 1931, leaving Edgar with four children.

I love the second page, where I can recognize my step-grandfather's signature (same as the love note) and my grandmother's handwriting, and the only place I have ever seen her signature as Elizabeth Adsit Pyle!

The witnesses were George W. Kuehn, a son-in-law of Rust, and Charles C. Adsit, Libby's brother.

This was a very happy marriage. Edgar C. Rust died in July 1963, about a month before they would have celebrated 30 years of marriage. This picture is from the summer of 1962, with Libby having just turned 65 and Dad Rust (as we refer to him) almost 80 years old.

True Love ~ Teddy and Libby

My grandmother, Elizabeth Adsit, first married my grandfather, Charles McAlpin Pyle, in 1919. Their only child was my father.

This was not a happy marriage.

In the early '30s, Elizabeth (known as Libby, even to her grandchildren), divorced her first husband. Within days after the divorce was finalized in August 1933, she married a widower, Edgar Carter Rust, whom she had met on a trans-Atlantic cruise, according to the family story. (I have not yet found a passenger record to prove this.)

Libby and Teddy (as he signed another letter to her) had a very happy marriage and in honor of Valentine's Day, I share the following letter Teddy wrote to Libby. It appears that in December 1937, Libby had gone to Chicago, (perhaps to see her mother before she moved to New York City?) and was away for about a week. She was staying at the Hotel Ambassador East in Chicago.

To An Absent Bunny.
O sad is me since you has went
So here I will my sorrows vent
The day is gloomy. There is no cheer.
Everything's nothing when you ain't here
Love and laughter went out west
We're left without a bit of zest
There's no desire to cut out loose
Even the King looks like the Deuce
Mary and Sarah and Mike and Joe
All want me to tell you so.
But through the clouds a bright light shows
Because of course one really knows
That bright sunshine and skies so blue
Will very soon be breaking through
When back to me come Charles and You.
From the Bunny's Mate.

Also in the envelope were the following drawings:

Libby Died 30 Years Ago Today

My paternal grandmother died 30 years ago today, on Tuesday, December 6, 1983. She had broken a hip about a year beforehand, and not been well for several months.

I was in college, well before the era of cellphones, and received a call on the dorm hall phone (remember those?) early in the morning of December 7 from my mother letting me know that Libby had died. (We children had always called her Libby.)

GenealogyBank.com has digitized images of The Boston Herald from 1848 to 1992. The following death notice ran on December 8 and December 9.

Edgar Carter Rust, a widower, was Libby's second husband, whom she married in 1933, after divorcing her first husband. They are both buried in Rosedale Cemetery, Manchester, Mass.

I have written about Libby several times:
See a photo of her and her brother in an early 20th century car.
She played tennis very well as a young woman.
See photos of her at her 1916 debut tea.
Read about her high society 1919 wedding.

Another 1940 Census Find - Edgar Rust in California

As noted in my previous post, indexes for the 1940 census are being made available at both Ancestry.com and at FamilySearch.org. When I noticed last week that Massachusetts was available at Ancestry.com, I made a point to search for Edgar Rust, born about 1882 in Massachusetts, in order to provide corrections in the index for just about everyone in the household due to the errors, not in the indexing, but in the enumeration. See here for my analysis of that household.

In recreating the search today, this is what I see:

I won't detail the corrections I had to make for the Rust family in Newton, but you can see that one correction I made was to Edgar's name which was indexed as Edna!

Last week, before I made that correction, it was the Edgar C. Rust in Monterey, California, which appeared as the top result.

1940 U.S. Census, Monterey, Monterey, California, Roll T627_268,
E. D. 27-34, page 83A, lines 9-10, record for Edgar C. Rust and Elizabeth Rust

The detail shows much more accurate information than what I found at their home in Massachusetts, which now I'm sure was reported by a neighbor because they were in California, where I understand they spent several months each year.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Dad in 1940

In honor of finding Dad and his step-father in the 1940 census, I share the following:

Charles McAlpin Pyle, Jr. and his step-father, Edgar Carter Rust.
May 11, 1940 is stamped on the back - possibly the date the photo was developed
I don't know the location.

Charles McAlpin Pyle, Jr., 1941
He graduated from Brooks School in 1942. Could this be his senior picture?

Wordless Wednesday is a daily blogging prompt from Geneabloggers, the genealogy community's resource for blogging. It is used by many genealogy bloggers to help them tell stories of their ancestors.

Error in 1940 Census ~ No Charles Pyle

I was so excited to find my 15-year-old dad with his remarried mother and step-father in the 1940 U.S. Census. I knew exactly where they were living, too: at 22 Reservoir Road, Newton, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and I had found the enumeration district of 9-454.

Imagine my disappointment when I found the record and it contained numerous errors.

1940 U.S. Census, Newton, Middlesex, Massachusetts, Roll T627_1616, E.D. 9-454
page 2B, lines 69-75, household of Edgar C. Rust

Detail from above census image of Rust family: left-hand columns

Edgar C. Rust was my step-grandfather. His home at 22 Reservoir Avenue was the 29th visited by the census enumerator. He owned the home and it was valued at $51,000. (It was not a farm.)

The 1940 US Census is the first census that indicated with a circled X who answered the enumerator's questions. Note that no one in this household has a circled X next to his or her name, so I don't know who provided the enumerator with the family's information, but they got a lot of it wrong!