Meanwhile, Back at the Draft Board…

If you have been following the story of Leon and Ella Bean’s sons, you already knew something like the following story was bound to happen: after Sam’s visit to the local draft board in 1917, someone up the bureaucratic food chain choked on the extreme twinliness of the draft-aged brothers’ names.

It seems it took over a year for the confusion to actually cause office protocol to grind to a halt.

Perhaps it was due to Sam’s twin and his own status in the military. It appears that, just at the point in which William Samuel Bean was due to be discharged from his service with the United States Marine Corps, his twin, Samuel William Bean, had been included in the most recent draft.

William Samuel Bean? Samuel William Bean?

Was this man coming or going?

Little did the local bureau know that this “man” was actually two individuals.

By the time the whole thing was sorted out, the story actually made the local news—perhaps providing some comic relief to war-weary residents of the area, and, at any event, being resolved after the war itself had come to an end. Hopefully, though, Sam’s double disqualifications—being both blind and deaf—would have come to light in sufficient time to prevent initiation of induction procedures.

The news article appeared in the Oakland Tribune on Thursday, December 19, 1918, in a little clip tucked away on the seventh page. I have a transcription of the article, alerted to it thanks to reader Intense Guy—or Iggy, as so many call him. The microfilmed version is available in the holdings at NewspaperArchive.com (which, oddly, isn’t replicated in the collection at Ancestry.com, though NewspaperArchive is listed as a providing partner there…but that is a topic for another day’s post).

Sam and Will as Alike as Two in a Pod

Alameda, Dec. 19--The application of William Samuel Bean to be discharged from the United States Marine Corps service has revealed an unusual intermingling of names in the same family. William Samuel Bean has a brother, who also lives in this city, at 1807 Santa Clara, whose name is Samuel William Bean. The family simplified the confusing situation by calling William Samuel "Bill," and Samuel William, "Sam," but the draft board member who assisted in drawing the required affidavits nearly had nervous prostration trying to keep William Samuel and Samuel William properly identified in the affidavits. William Samuel Bean is stationed in Florida. Samuel William drew order number two in the original draft drawing. He is physically disqualified, otherwise both William Samuel and Samuel William would have been in the service.