Sepia Saturday 751. Third in a series about 1943 letters from my dad’s brother Frederic Mason Charboneau during his second year of WWII US Army service.
Recreating the everyday lives of ancestors, other family members, their friend circles, and the communities where they lived is an ongoing challenge for genealogists and family historians.
So I have been pleasantly surprised at how helpful my Uncle Fred’s letters are to this often elusive process.
Barred from discussing military matters, my dad’s brother Frederic Mason Charboneau tended to dwell on tidbits of information about life and family members back home when he wrote to his mother Mary (Owen) Charboneau.
Steady stream of family letters
“Somewhere in North Africa, January 29, 1943, Dear Mom: I got a letter from Kate, Owen, and also Norman broke down and wrote. It certainly seemed good to hear from them all again. [Aunt Kate was his mom’s sister, Owen was his oldest brother, and Norman, my dad, was his youngest brother — and apparently a reluctant correspondent!]
“Is Pop still with you and how does he like our winters? I suppose he doesn’t stir out of the house. He probably thinks if he gets out, he will freeze. [Pop, his maternal grandfather Frank Owen, usually spent summers rather than winters with Fred’s parents before he moved on to stay with another of his children.]
“Do you hear anything from Hubert, where he is and what he is doing? How does he like the army? I suppose Doris is lost without him. Where is she living now, I suppose she came back and is living with her parents.” [Hube was Fred’s middle brother and Doris was his wife.]
Surprising snowstorm saga
Nor were letters from home the only source of news. Amazingly, Uncle Fred’s hometown paper, the Boonville Herald & Adirondack Tourist, found its way to the troops, too.
“I got the December 10 issue of the Boonville Herald, and it told in there about ‘Unk’ getting stuck in a snow drift between Alder Creek and Forestport and having to climb out of the back door,” Fred wrote on Jan. 29. “I had to laugh when I read it.”
“Unk” was Fred’s paternal uncle Orville “Tom” Charboneau, who delivered Adirondack mail in the “Charboneau Brothers” school bus. Mornings and afternoons, Fred’s dad (and my grandfather) Wm. Ray Charboneau used the bus to pick up and drop off school children. Then, while school was in session, Tom got the vehicle to deliver mail.
Naturally, I went looking for the article that Uncle Fred found so amusing — and thanks to digitization, I found it! Alas, the scan is hard to read so I’ve transcribed the crucial third paragraph below.
Paragraph 3 transcribed: “No mail was received or dispatched Thursday. Robert Schoonmaker, substitute mail carrier, and Tom Charboneau, who carries mail to Old Forge, set out for the station but were unable to get through a drift near the [illegible] residence near Alder Creek and spent the morning waiting for the snow plow. The drift was so high that they were forced to leave the bus by the emergency door in the rear, being unable to open the regular door.”
The front page of the same Boonville Herald reported a record-breaking snowfall — the worst in 40 years — that closed schools and made roads impassible. Quite a challenge for Tom as a rural letter carrier who, according to his 1965 obituary, started postal work in 1939 and was a member of the National Star Route Carriers Association.
A Star Route Carrier
Curious about Tom’s background, I looked up Star Route Carriers and found an excellent history at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum website.
“The legislation establishing new mail service in 1845 called for contractors to carry the mail with ‘celerity, certainty, and security,’ ” says the website. “Weary of repeatedly writing these words in ledgers, postal clerks substituted three asterisks (* * *) and the phrase ‘Star Route’ was born. Star Routes were renamed ‘Highway Contract Routes’ in 1970, though they are still commonly known by their original name today.”
Apparently, these routes were set up in areas too sparsely populated to merit a full post office — which clearly included Uncle Fred’s Otter Lake hometown and other small Adirondack communities in New York State.
And that’s how Tom Charboneau found himself trapped in a snow drift in December 1942 — giving Uncle Fred a good laugh halfway across the world and prompting him to capture a family story that might otherwise have been lost.
In honor of my paternal grand-uncle Tom, here is a short video from the Smithsonian National Postal Museum about the Star Route Service.
Up next: More of Uncle Fred’s 1943 letters. Please stop back! Meanwhile, please visit the other intrepid bloggers over at Sepia Saturday
© 2024 Molly Charboneau. All rights reserved.
Molly,
Interesting to find out we both had uncles who served in North Africa.
I love the video.
Those barges were the view out my apartment window of the Detroit River when I lived there, though I don’t think I ever saw … “Jim Burns, the Mailman. Toot Toot!”
Pamela
Fun to see where all of our stories are preserved. Sometimes we find cool stuff stuck in the stories of other family.
Thanks, Allyson. Hope you will stop back again!
I loved learning about the Star Route. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks, Lisa. It was such a fun piece of history to discover.
Never heard of Star Route Service, so this was new to me! Also, some newspapers invited readers to pay for mail subscriptions to service men and women in the family. My grandparents gifted their WAC daughter (my aunt) with a subscription to a NY newspaper, mailed overseas to her.
I had heard of Star Route Service, but had to laugh upon discovering it got its name from three asterisks! Very interesting about the newspaper subscriptions. I was wondering how he was able to get his hometown paper halfway across the world.
Uncle Fred’s letters continue to be so interesting on different levels, as we get not only glimpses of his army life, but also glimpses of what life was like back home – notably in this instance, contrasts with the weather.
So true! Although I am sure Uncle Fred enjoyed the warmer weather after the bitter Adirondack winters, you can still detect a longing for home when he writes about the cold and snow.
I thoroughly enjoyed this, as I do all of the Uncle Fred letter stories. I once again learned something new, Star Route Carriers. I also love the image depicting the snow storm tunnels that were carved out; it shows how crazy that storm really was! 🙂
Thanks, Diane, and yes, the snow in New York’s North Country is quite astonishing — or at least it was in the 1940s, before climate change, when it could engulf a bus!
I imagine Fred took some delight to read about snow drifts in New York while he was enduring the hot climate of North Africa. My great grandfather was a rural mail carrier in Minnesota and I have photos of him driving through deep snow banks. He didn’t have a bus but I suppose he must have got stuck a few times too. Back in the day before heavy motorized snowplows I assumed people just slid, skied, or clambered over drifts as I’ve never seen pedestrian tunnels like that. I bet the snow tunnels turned to ice walls and stayed solid until late spring. Best wishes for a great Thanksgiving Day, Molly.
Yes, the climate contrast must have been amazing to Uncle Fred — hills of sand rather than mounds of snow. I hope you share those photos of your grandfather the mail carrier in a future blog post. It was a rugged life they led in the snowy northern climes. Best wishes to you and yours for the upcoming holiday, especially after the hurricane.
This was a really interesting post. I have photographs of our family from this time in history also. I didn’t show up until the late 50s.
Thanks so much! Those photos must be treasured items as windows to the past.
What a fun & interesting post. I’m familiar with a Star Route address from when we lived on a US Forest Service District station just off the highway. 😉 Thank you for including the video explaining what “Star Route” means. I think most of us don’t normally think about how people in different areas get their mail. I, for one, have never really thought about people getting their mail by boat. And when you spoke of Uncle Fred’s letters giving you a real feeling of the life of the family, I understood because the journal my Great Grandfather, J.K. Smedley kept of his trip to Yosemite in 1874 gave me a bit of interesting insight into the sort of fellow he was.
I remember your posts about J.K. Smedley and you are so right: From his letters, I am getting to know Uncle Fred and my dad’s extended family in ways that research alone could not accomplish.