in pursuit of a pedigree

This is my third time writing for the Carnival of Genealogy and when I first saw the topic “Cars” I couldn’t think what I could really write about except the sad parade of cars my siblings and I have used.

And then I remembered when I was going through some of the paperwork we found in my grandmother’s old suitcase, I found the title to a car that my grandfather purchased in 1955. So I dug it out to take a real good look at it.

It’s dated 23 May 1955 and the car in question is an Oldsmobile 1941 4 door sedan. I did a quick Google search for this car and found this site, A Picture Review of the Oldsmobile from 1901 to 1949. Unfortunately, it didn’t have a picture of this specific car, but I thought this one was probably pretty close to what it looks liked:

And of course, then I remembered that I had seen a picture of my great-great grandfather William Crompton in a picture with a car that had been labeled “My Dad’s First Brandnew Car” along with a second label “Grandpop Crompton & Beatrice Trainer” I asked my mother and it turns out that my grandfather (her dad) purchased the car from my great-grandfather, his future father-in-law.

I can date that picture a little more easily as William Crompton passed away in 1944 and my grandmother was born in 1938. You can’t see much of her in this scan, but she’s about three or four, which places this picture about 1941, which definitely backs up the story that my grandfather bought this from my great-grandfather.

I did a little research and found a site that talked about the purchase price of this car probably would have been around $852. In order to afford that car, assuming my great grandfather Harold Trainer had made minimum wage ($.30), he would have had to work 2840 hours. It would have accounted for more than half his annual wage and at the time this page was published in 2001, it would have been worth $10, 266.00, which is about what I bought my 2002 Mazda Protege for in 2006. And I had to finance it! So I know a little about what my great-grandfather must have felt like to have such a nice new car, especially after the Depression.

What else does this title tell me? My grandfather Charles W. Hammell was living at 208 Morris St, here in Gloucester City, NJ. He was living with my grandmother’s parents at the time. It gives me a bit of a timeline for him. His mother, Minnie Mead passed away when Charles was five and from that time on, he lived with his father’s parents, Francis Hammell, Sr. and Rebecca Priest. Francis passed away in 1941 and Rebecca about 1951, though we haven’t confirmed that and my aunt thinks Rebecca might have died a year or two later, but definitely knows she died on my aunt’s birthday, November 18.

My grandfather then went into the military until he was discharged shortly before his wedding to my grandmother, Beatrice Trainer, in 1958. I don’t know what happened to the car after that.

After looking at the back of the title, it has my grandfather’s signature under “seller” but no one listed as a buyer. I asked my father about it and he thought that maybe since my grandfather bought it from his fiancee’s father, he wasn’t that concerned about where he signed. We’re not sure. It’s possible that when my grandfather went overseas, he attempted to transfer it into my grandmother’s name while he was gone or maybe deeded it back to Harold Trainer.

Without my grandfather to answer these questions, it’s not what this particular title means but it does clear up a few things for me — My mother knows that my grandfather’s grandmother, Rebecca, did not pass away until he’d met my grandmother, so we know it was before 1955, as they’re living together and my grandmother didn’t meet Charles until after she’d dropped out of high school after eighth grade, so it does narrow Rebecca’s death window to 1951-1955. I’ll have to continue a little search for that.

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This entry was posted on March 22nd, 2008 at 11:39 am and last modified on March 1st, 2009 at 1:55 pm, and is filed under General Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | Comment | Trackback