"An Exciting Game": Why Some People are Hard to Track in the Records

Robert Ellis Standen is descended from Henry Tibbetts through Henry's son Robert's daughter Grace Tibbetts (1879-1907).

Yesterday I was shoring up and expanding through newspapers what I knew about the descendants of my 3rd great grandfather, Henry Charles Tibbetts (1826-1902), and came across this passage about one of his great grandsons, Robert Ellis Standen (1906-1971, a second cousin 2x's removed of mine), a sailor and itinerant writer and, at least initially, a hard-to-track person.  For years it seems he bounced around between the West coast and Florida.

Ogden Standard Examiner (Ogden, UT) (from NewspaperArchive.com)
May 9, 1943
page 9-B, col 8

[except from a longer article on Charles Hyde Pratt's magazine, "Florida Magazine of Verse" and the post office.]
The magazine's most spectacular find is Robert E. Standen, who had a poem in the first issue.  The contribution was postmarked Winter Park.  He finally visited the office--in paint-daubed jeans.  His shock of yellow hair was uncombed, his tongue salty with irony.  It developed he was carpenter, painter and night watchman, rolled into one.  He said he had played an exciting game for many years with ill health, unemployment and starvation.

The last line made me laugh out loud.  Definitely seems like a smart aleck relation of mine.



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