Sunday, March 17, 2013

Letting the Newspapers Tell the Story


When a newspaper story provides an unexpected detail about a family member’s history, sometimes there is no recourse but to seek further newspaper reports to fill in the story’s blanks. That was the case with Leon S. Bean’s 1928 obituary, which we questioned yesterday.

The trouble with stumbling upon family history details dated in the middle of a decade is just that: it’s a long way until the next census. Searching city directories might sometimes help to fill in the blanks for a year like 1928, but can often be spotty—especially if a person has just moved to the area, or there is no directory published, or currently existent, for the town in question.

In the case of Samuel Bean—the blind and deaf son of Leon Bean, mentioned in that 1928 obituary—the town of residence was listed as Boston. As luck would have it, the 1928 city directory for the City of Boston is available online at Ancestry.com, so I took a look there.

No Sam.

Granted, the obituary for his father was written in November of the year, so perhaps Sam had arrived in that city before November, but after the directory was published. Perhaps the 1929 directory would help?

Nope.

Of course, often folks living in outlying towns refer to their geographic location by the name of the metropolis rather than the relatively unknown village’s name. However, I’m not sure I’m willing to do an in-depth study of all the population centers near Boston in hopes of finding someone with a surname as common as Bean.

There is another approach I can use, though. At least this is the one I will try for now. Since Sam seemed to be a community favorite in the Berkeley area during his tenure at the California School for the Blind and Deaf, there are many more newspaper articles I can access.

Some of those reports are barely mentions of his name, nothing more. Others provide a bit of color about his personality or current challenges at school. I’ll start with the more substantial news reports and work my way through those first.

One, for instance, that I found on a recent research trip to Sam’s native Redwood City, mentions some details about his marriage to Maud Woodworth. While it predates Leon’s obituary by several years, it is a sufficient starting place right now, in our quest to figure out more about this unique student.

As I’ve mentioned before about the Schellens Collection transcriptions, the difficulty with this secondary source is the transcriber’s use of ellipses. I will, at some point, need to access the source for the transcription and see if that original newspaper article included more details germane to our purposes.

In the meantime, it will suffice to add this bit of information from the Redwood City, California, Standard, published on January 13, 1921:
Samuel W. Bean, well known deaf and blind poet and former Redwood City boy, was married last Friday in Berkeley to Miss Maud M. Woodworth of Irwindale, Los Angeles county. Mrs. Bean was an instructor in the California School for the Deaf and Blind at Berkeley when Bean was a student there and was his teacher for two years before he graduated in 1919. She laughingly said, following the wedding, that she had elected herself to be his permanent guide for life, taking the place of Fred Streiff, a close friend and constant companion during the time when the blind and deaf poet was selling his poems among booksellers. Mrs. Bean became interested in teaching the blind when she was a girl on the orange grove of her father, who is also blind and with whom she was a steady companion for many years. She came to Berkeley a little over two years ago and entered the blind and deaf school as a teacher.... Bean was sixteen years old at the time of being struck with a baseball at Palo Alto which rendered him unable to hear or see.... His purpose, Bean says, is to sell his poems through booksellers and gather sufficient funds to culminate the ambition of his life, the opening and operating of a broom factory to be run entirely by the blind....
Sam Bean blind and deaf poet and native Californian seated with his wife Maud Woodworth Bean

Photograph above: Samuel W. Bean and his wife, the former Maud M. Woodworth. Undated portrait, most likely from the 1920s, now in the possession of the author.

12 comments:

  1. My mom suggests Horace Mann School - in Allston, MA ... it was affiliated with Aalexander Graham Bell AND Hellen Keller, being the oldest deaf and blind school in the USA.

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    1. Good point, Iggy. That sounds like a possibility.

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  2. She says the school moved from Watertown, MA to Allston. Watertown is a town outside of Boston. She says A. Graham Bell's wife was deaf and Bell worked on ways to help the deaf, including primitive electtronics.

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    1. I've heard about the reasons behind Bell's development of the telephone, and knew his interest in the deaf, but didn't know it was regarding his wife. Interesting. I'll have to track the history of that school and see when the move was made.

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  3. Lastly she thinks it is possible Sam's wife continued her education at the Clarke School in Northamton, MA. A G Bell was working on hearing devices like aids when he invented the telephone. His mother was also deaf in addition to his wife.

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    1. Iggy, that sounds like a good lead, too. Please tell your mom thanks for all the suggestions! Very helpful!

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  4. The newspapers are full of information! I bet Iggy is on to something with the location of the school outside of Boston:)

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    1. Yes, absolutely! Those sound like real possibilities. I can't imagine Sam just deciding to move to Boston on a whim. There had to be a very specific connection.

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  5. They could not have been Boston long, if they were there, because they ate listed in the Alameda County city directory (SanFran) in 1928 and in Oakland in the 1930 US census. I suspect IF they were in Boston when called home for the funeral, the repotrter writing the obit was misunderstood when they asked something like "where are you from?" and not "Where do you live?"

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    1. Good point, Iggy! However, I think I will still try to follow up on your great leads in the comments above--with thanks to your mom!

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  6. This is such a tear-jerker! What a story. The fact that he is married to someone who loves him and will care for him is phenomenal. He is proud of his poems, and wants to sell them to own a broom factory. My heart goes out to him. In the photo he looks very handsome and also very serious.

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    1. What is interesting to me about this story, Mariann, is its multi-generational impact. Of course, that scope is broader than I can attempt here, but I really believe the many experiences Sam went through--both unfortunate and redeeming--had an impact on lives through the next two generations as well.

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