Sepia Saturday 686. Seventh in a series about letters written by my dad’s brother Frederic Mason Charboneau while in the US Army during WWII.
During 1940, my paternal uncle Frederic Mason Charboneau experienced two major life events during his transition to young adulthood — one was medical and the other was military.
The first event occurred right after he turned 22 on his March 13, 1940, birthday — and it was surely an unwelcome birthday surprise.
Uncle Fred has surgery
A short notice in the March 19, 1940, Rome Daily Sentinal (below) announced that Uncle Fred was taken from his Otter Lake, N.Y., hometown to a Utica hospital for appendicitis surgery.
This urgent event happened on Saturday, March 16 — just three days after his birthday. Yikes! What a way to turn 22.
Uncle Fred’s enumeration in the 1940 U.S. census of Forestport, Oneida Co., N.Y.1Family search requires free login to view documents. corroborates the news report of his illness. Census takers were instructed to base their questions on what folks were doing the week of March 24-30, 1940.
Apparently Uncle Fred had been seeking work — perhaps a job that best utilized his office skills — so the census-taker put “Yes” in occupation column 23, per the 1940 U.S. Census instructions to enumerators (p. 54):
512.b. Enter “Yes” for a person without a job who would have been actively seeking work except for a temporary illness such as a cold.
However, in occupation column 25, Uncle Fred was listed as “U” indicating he was “unable to work” during that time period, per the same census taker instructions (p. 56):
518.c. Enter “U” if the person was unable to work because of permanent disability, chronic illness, or old age.
Although this didn’t exactly fit with Uncle Fred’s acute illness, he was likely in bad enough shape after his surgery that he qualified as being unable to work from March 24-30, 1940.
Uncle Fred registers for the draft
Meanwhile, during and after Uncle Fred’s recovery the US government was busy passing the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 — the first peacetime draft in US history.
The draft was enacted on Sept. 16, 1940, in the ramp up to US entry into WWII — and Uncle Fred, 22, was just old enough to be covered by it. The act required men 21 and older, but under age 36, (later expanded to ages 18-64) to register with local draft boards.
And that’s just what Uncle Fred did on Oct. 16, 1940, at Local Board No. 435 in Remsen, Oneida Co., N.Y. — as shown below on his draft registration card and the registrar’s report.2U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947 [database on-line], Ancestry.com (http://ancestry.com : accessed 15 Aug. 2023), Frederic Mason Charboneau draft card, 16 Oct. 1940. In the US, that date became known as R-Day — the official start of nationwide WWII draft registration.
There is much to analyze about Uncle Fred’s draft registration and the details he and the registrar provided — which will be discussed in the next post.
For now, suffice to say that 1940 was a big year for Uncle Fred — both health wise and historically — and one I am sure he remembered as a turning point in his young life.
Up next: Family details on Uncle Fred’s WWII draft registration. Please stop back! Meanwhile, please visit the other intrepid bloggers over at Sepia Saturday.
© 2023 Molly Charboneau. All rights reserved.
I also noticed that the registrar is related to your family. Looking forward to more in your next blog post!
Thanks, Marian. You and Kristin are this week’s winners for spotting the bonus relative on Uncle Fred’s draft card 🙂
What a year for him! I love how you add the connections of every tidbit of info in these stories of your ancestors and relatives. 🙂
Thanks, Diane. One of the reasons I love blogging is because it forces you to look at every bit of information closely — something I didn’t do consistently in my early years of genealogy research.
You may have never known what the reason was for him being listed in the census as unable to work if it hadn’t been for the newspaper article. Amazing.
Right? The local newspaper columns reporting on who visited who and — surprisingly — medical issues do indeed give insights into a relative’s life that official documents may miss.
Appendicitis was certainly not a birthday gift young Fred was looking forward to! My Mom had to have her appendix removed in an emergency operation three weeks before I was born. Having born three children, I can’t imagine going through labor only three weeks after having an emergency appendectomy. Y’ouch!
Wow, your poor mom — surgery, then childbirth? I agree. Can’t even imagine what that must have been like for her. Relived that it all turned out well.
In my research I’ve encountered several similar notices of people who were taken to hospital for appendicitis. Apparently in olden times it was considered a very life threatening condition that merited a newspaper notice. It’s odd that though appendicitis is still a serious concern we no longer expect that such health emergencies deserve public attention.
Apparently, there were not the same privacy issues around healthcare as those we have now. As you mention, appendicitis was also a much bigger deal — as were other surgeries — since penicillin wasn’t widely available until around 1942 and surgical techniques were not what they are today.
Was the registrar, Lena D. Charboneau, related to your family?
Great catch, Kristin. Yes, she is a relative. I’m saving the details until the next post 🙂
What a birthday he had, with surgery to end the day! And then the strange census taking shortly afterward. But the registration for the draft proves he once again was fit…and I imagine working soon, though not at that time.
Yes, quite a year for someone in his early 20s.