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
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