The Trowbridge Siblings

The six Trowbridge siblings were Jessie June, Eloise Hammond, Leslie Amelia, Kate Elliot, Nelson Seymour Jr., and Olive Rose.  (An oldest boy, James Clayton, died at age 2 before the others were born.  I'll refer to birth order without counting him.)

The children were born variously in Nevada and California, and possibly also in Utah, as the family moved around for papa Nelson's merchanting and mining businesses.  When the older children were at or near adulthood the family spent time in Alaska at a mining camp.

The family was clearly cultured.  The father started out as a teacher, and the parents were among the co-founders of the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley in 1891. Three sisters were photographed posing with musical instruments, and an interior shot of their very rough cabin in Alaska shows a music stand.  One sister was a photographer and another was a painter who attended art school.  The four oldest sisters attended Cal, and the brother may have as well.

 

The five Trowbridge sisters: Leslie, Eloise, Jessie, Olive, Kate Elliot.  I can't help wondering if they are posing in dresses they made themselves, as the skill of the dress-making increases with age (with the exception of Olive, who would be too young to make her own). 

The house where they are posing appears to be the same one as in the individual portraits where Nelson and Olive are shown outside.  If all the individual portraits are from the same time, then the ones of Leslie and Eloise presumably show the interior of the same house.  From the background of this group portrait, the location is probably Nevada or California. 

Olive Rose Trowbridge

 The top picture is courtesy of Olive Rose's granddaughter.  The childhood pictures are from the photography collection of Jessie June Trowbridge.  The bottom two photos are IDed tentatively, based on who else is in the pictures.  They were probably taken in 1913, when Olive Rose was about 23, but would have to be before she started showing her first pregnancy.  I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who can confirm the identity of these last two pictures, or who has other pictures of Olive Rose.

Born Dec 4, 1890 (Trowbridge Genealogy), in California (census records).  During her childhood the family was based in the east bay, but spent extended amounts of time in Alaska where father Nelson ran a mining company.

In 1910, at age 19, she lived in Berkeley with her sister Leslie and Leslie's husband and children, along with brother Nelson and their mother.  She was not employed.  There is also no record of her attending Cal, although her older sisters did.

In 1910 she married John Franklin Trusty, one of several brothers who moved from Maine to Marin County, from a family of Maine farm laborers, originally French Canadian. Three of his brothers lived in San Rafael in 1910 running a bookstore.  In 1914 Olive (and presumably John) lived in Glen Ellen, southeast of Santa Rosa, where several members of the Trowbridge and Turner families had moved to take up poultry farming. (Olive registered to vote as a Progressive; John appears not to have registered.  Brother Joseph M. Trusty, previously of the San Rafael bookstore, also registered to vote in Glen Ellen in 1914, and was working as a cook.  Joseph later went on to become an attorney working in SF.)

 Piecing together census records and personal communication from living family, Olive Rose and John had four children:
- Kathryn Mary, 1913
- Olive R., 1914
- John Franklin, 1915
- Thomas, 1916
 Olive Rose died in 1918 in the flu epidemic, while pregnant again.  The children were given to relatives and neighbors, and by two years later her husband John was living in lodgings in Merced, working as an auto mechanic.  Thereafter he moved around California, and died in Los Angeles at the age of 76.

Kathryn went to live with her aunt Mattie Evelyn Trusty, the divorced ex-wife of eldest Trusty brother William Robert Trusty.  (William and Mattie had been the manager and asst manager of the bookstore.)  In 1920 Mattie was living in San Rafael (census) and/or Corte Madera (SF phone book) and working as a manager at a publishing company in San Francisco.  She appears to have kept on friendly terms with at least some of her in-laws -- in 1918 Peter Trusty (one of the bookstore brothers) was also living in Corte Madera and listed her as next-of-kin on his draft registration.  (Peter was an interesting character.  He was a mechanic and inventor, and though he was blinded in WWI he continued to work, doing engineering work for the war effort during WWII in Los Angeles.) (Ex-husband William also ended up in Los Angeles, working as a book salesman, and re-married to a much younger woman.)

Olive went to live with her aunt and uncle, Eloise (Trowbridge) Ellis and Frank Ellis.  She could not have lived with them very long.  Eloise died in 1923, and when Frank remarried to his widowed sister-in-law (Kate Elliot (Trowbridge) Turner) in 1924, Olive was no longer living with him.  (At least, my grandmother, who became Frank Ellis's stepdaughter, did not mention her.)

By 1930 Mattie Trusty had moved to Los Angeles and had custody of both Kathryn and Olive, and worked as a manager for publishing company.  They lived in the home of Edith Lacey, also a single career woman, and are listed as Edith's partner and daughters, respectively, suggesting a warm family-like arrangement (not just lodgers of convenience).

Kathryn married Elmore Darwin Johnson and had two children.  She died in Riverside CA at the age of 95.  Olive attended UCLA, and died in Nevada at the age of 96.

Olive Rose's son Thomas was adopted by John's sister Sara Jane "Sadie" and her husband Fred Hawkes, in Maine. John Franklin was taken in by neighbors Julian and Louise Kendrick. He wasn't formally adopted but he took their name.

[Posted edited based on the information in the comment below.]

Nelson Seymour Trowbridge Jr.

 Born Nov. 18, 1888, in Berkeley CA.  His WWI draft card lists him as tall, medium build, blue eyes and light brown hair.

In 1910, at age 21, he was living in Oakland with his sister Leslie and her husband (as well as sister Olive and their mother), and working as an office clerk at an insurance company.

He married Marie B., who was born in California abt. 1894.  They married some time before June 1917 (according to his draft card).  According to family history she was Mexican, but according to the 1920 census her parents were born in California. (Her parents were presumably born after 1848, when the U.S. annexed California, but they probably meant that she was culturally Mexican.)  Their marriage was a bit of a scandal in the family.  My grandmother Elliot, who was her niece, liked her very much and wanted to name her own daughter after her, but felt obliged to name her after a different relative.  Our family's pumpkin pie recipe was from aunt Marie (and according to Elliot's sister Ruth, it was originally a recipe for squash pie).

In 1920 they were living in Vallejo, he was working as a freight agent for a steamship company, and she was working as a dressmaker for private customers.  They had no children at this time.  In 1930 they lived in Antioch (Contra Costa county).  He was working as a salesman and she was not employed.  Still no children.

In 1942, according to his WWII draft card, he lived on Oil Canyon Road in Antioch, and worked for the California State Automobile Association in Martinez.  He listed his sister Leslie as "person who will always know your address."  Probably she was his only surviving sibling.  

He died August 3, 1961, in Contra Costa County.

Kate Elliot Trowbridge

 

The fourth Trowbridge sister, and my actual ancestor, born 12 October, 1886.  The necklace she is wearing in the third row right is still in the family.  The identifications of the top, 2nd row right, and 3rd row left pictures as Kate Elliot are tentative.  But looking at them all together, they seem undeniably the same person.  Some that look the least alike are positively identified as her, while the tentative pictures each strongly resemble at least one of the definite pictures.  The top three pictures are from the photographs taken by Jessie June Trowbridge of her siblings, and the bottom four pictures are from the collection of Kate Elliot's daughter Elliot, containing pictures of her immediate family.

She attended Cal, class of 1907 (1), but left during her freshman year to care for her mother who was an invalid (2).  Her 2nd cousin and future husband, Wallace Foote Turner, was at Cal at the same time, class of 1905.  Family stories say that she was a piano teacher in Glen Ellen when Wallace was courting her.  They married in 1908, in Oakland.  Kate Elliot Jr. was born in 1909 in Esparto.  Wallace Foot Jr. ws born in 1912 in Ione, and Adeline Ruth in 1916 in Santa Barbara.

Wallace Sr. was a high school teacher, and then went to Europe with the YMCA towards the end of WWI (approx 1917-1919).  When he returned he had serious health problems that prevented him from working.  The family moved from Santa Barbara to Lancaster for the drier climate, and the family experienced a serious decline in their standard of living.  They ran a small dairy farm, with Kate Elliot and the children taking much of the responsibility for the chores. 

After Wallace Sr. died in May 1922, Kate Elliot moved the family to Tulare, to be near her sister Leslie.  She took a job as a companion, and studied for and took the teacher's examination.  She took a job teaching 5th grade in September 1923.  During this period the eldest daughter Elliot had the responsibility for caring for her younger siblings.

The following April Kate Elliot married her widowed brother-in-law Frank Ellis (Eloise's husband) who lived in Oakland.  She died in childbirth October 18, 1927, when Elliot Jr. was in her first semester at Cal.

Wallace Foot Turner and Kate Elliot Trowbridge Turner, with their three children: Adeline Ruth, Wallace Jr., and Kate Elliot Jr. (my grandmother).

This is Wallace Jr., Frank Ellis ("Dad"), Ruth, and a Mrs. McLean, Spring 1928, about half a year after Kate Elliot died.  He would be 52 in this picture.  We don't know who Mrs. McLean was.

(1) The Golden Book of California.

(2) Affidavit of Kate Elliot Turner Studt, personal collection.

Leslie Amelia Trowbridge

The third Trowbridge sister, born abt. 1882.  Attended Cal, class of 1905, but didn't graduate.  Married William M. Brown, b. abt. 1867.  Son William M. Jr. was born 1906, and Nelson T. was born 1908.  In 1910 they were living in Oakland, along with the mother of the Trowbridge siblings, Katie Clayton Trowbridge (presumably widowed) and siblings Nelson (age 21) and Olive (age 19).  Son Edwin W. was born 1917.

In 1930 they lived in Tulare, CA, and sibling Kate Elliot's second daughter Ruth lived with them for a while after the death of both parents.  She was around the same age as the youngest son Edwin.  (Kate Elliot's older daughter Elliot was in college, and son Wallace still lived with step-father Frank Ellis.)  In Tulare Leslie's profession is listed as Christian Science practitioner.

Leslie lived long enough to be in the living memory of my family as "Aunt Leslie."  By 1942 she and Uncle Will had moved back to Oakland and were living at 148 Bayo Vista Ave. (1).  Living family members visited them in Oakland in the 1940's.  Leslie and Will visited Japan at some point, and brought back Japanese art pieces which they had in their house in Oakland.  Will died in 1950, and Leslie some time after that.

Leslie was the only Trowbridge sister to survive past middle age.  The pictures of her as an older woman are from a Turner-Trowbridge family gathering in San Francisco, hosted by Elliot (daughter of Kate Elliot), some time around 1947 or 1948.

(1) Nelson Trowbridge Jr.'s WWII draft card