Working on Wednesday: Ross Lloyd Hughes (1878 - 1967) Stationary Engineer

Abandoning, at least for the moment, the farther reaches of my family tree, my attention was drawn to the career of Ross Lloyd Hughes who's the oldest child of Lewis Logan Slater's sister Serena Adeline and her husband Dr. Ezra Hughes. (So he's my first cousin, twice removed.*)

[Courtesy of Vicki D. via Ancestry.com]

In the 1900 Federal Census he was a single man working as a farm laborer in Kansas but by the end of the next year he was living in Blaine County, Oklahoma Territory, where he married Arizona native Blanche Rowe.

[Ancestry.com. Oklahoma, County Marriages, 1890-1995 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.

Original data: Marriage Records. Oklahoma Marriages. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, UT.]

I don't know where these pictures were taken but they're each holding the same branch of that leafless tree.

[Courtesy of Vicki D. via Ancestry.com]

[Courtesy of Vicki D. via Ancestry.com]

From another of Cousin Vicki's photos we can place the couple in North Dakota in 1906 at the Fort Berthold Indian Mission** in Elbowoods.

[Courtesy of Vicki D. via Ancestry.com]

This double portrait of Ross and Blanche, dated 1909, was taken the year after the fire mentioned at the top of the preceding picture.

[Courtesy of Vicki D. via Ancestry.com]

And the 1910 Federal Census found the couple and their two children residing at the Vermillion School at Pipestone Mission in Minnesota. (For some reason, the enumerator listed both adults as Canadian-born which they clearly weren't.) Ross's occupation was given as Eng[ineer} and Blanche was listed as a Teacher.***

[Year: 1910; Census Place: Township 62, Saint Louis, Minnesota; Roll: T624_724; Page: 8B; Enumeration District: 0244; FHL microfilm: 1374737. Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006.

Original data: Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910 (NARA microfilm publication T624, 1,178 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.]

Eight years later 40-year-old Ross, still residing at Pipestone Mission, registered for the draft and gave his occupation as stationary engineer.

[Registration State: Minnesota; Registration County: Pipestone; Roll: 1675774. Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Original data: United States, Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls. Imaged from Family History Library microfilm.]

Subsequent census records (1920, 1930, and 1940) confirm that Ross remained at Pipestone as a stationary engineer at least through 1942 when he again registered for the draft.

[Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: United States, Selective Service System. Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Fourth Registration. Records of the Selective Service System, Record Group Number 147. National Archives and Records Administration.]

[Courtesy of Vicki D. via Ancestry.com]

After his wife died in 1960, Ross went to live with one of his sisters in Oklahoma where he died in 1967. His body was taken back to Minnesota where he's buried next to Blanche in the Old Woodlawn Cemetery in Pipestone.



*All of the pictures of Ross Lloyd and Blanche in this post were originally shared by his great granddaughter Vicki D. in her Ancestry.com public tree (And she's a 5th-8th cousin in my Ancestry DNA matches).
**You can read more about the history of Indian Missions in North Dakota. including the early history of Fort Berthold, here.
***Here's a history of American Indian boarding schools in Minnesota (and elsewhere), and if you really want to get into the subject Adam Fortunate Eagle's memoir Pipestone: My Life in an Indian Boarding School is available from Amazon (and other sources).


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