This post is the conclusion of the story started in The Scandal in Pennsylvania. If you have not read that yet, I recommend you go back and do so before reading the conclusion.
So, it has taken weeks to comb through all available sources and sort out who is Claude Arthur Peterson’s (LDQ5-N98) father. As you may recall, I began this search because someone had changed Claude’s father on FamilySearch.org from Arthur Lee Peterson (KHBX-D21) to Joseph Roden (LRFY-DV6) and I was trying to verify if Claude was a relative or not. Initially I thought he was Arthur’s stepson because Arthur and Julia didn’t marry until 12 years after Claude was born. However, when I found Claude’s birth certificate, it lists his birth name as Arthur Claud Peterson but lists the father as Bill Rhoden, possibly meaning Julia’s first husband, Joseph Roden. Hence the muddle.
Since my previous post I have search a number of additional records and concluded with high confidence that yes, Arthur Lee Peterson is Claude’s father. Here are my reasons.
1) Claude’s last name on the birth certificate is Peterson – strongly indicating that his father is Peterson not Roden. Also, with the first name Arthur, Claude very likely was named after Arthur Lee Peterson. (Arthur and Julia named their 2nd child Paul Lee Peterson, after Arthur’s middle name Lee, demonstrating a trend in naming the children after the father.)
2) Claude’s birth certificate marks the birth as illegitimate but lists the “father” as probably Julia’s husband. (Bill Rhoden probably meant Joseph Roden, but someone else was acting as informant instead of Julia herself and got the name wrong). Birth certificates were recently introduced when Claude was born, so the nurse may have asked for the name of Julia’s husband and was told that, with no one really thinking about the fact that the real question is who is the father of the child.
3) As far as I can tell Joseph Roden & Julia Kidder had split up by 1902, 5 years before Claude’s birth. The 1902 Oil City, PA city director lists Joseph Roden without including Julia as he wife, indicating that she wasn’t living with him then. The 1904 Titusville, PA city directory lists Julia alone without including Joseph. By 1905, Joseph appears on the New York state census in Pomfret, Chautauqua, NY, living alone as a boarder. By 1910, Joseph and Julia are living in different parts of PA and have listed themselves as divorced or widowed, respectively.
This is a nice tight summary of weeks of research, looking for every record that showed where Joseph and Julia were between 1900, when they were together, and 1910, when they definitely were apart. I also searched for any Bill/William Roden/Rhoden, in case the birth certification did mean someone other than Joseph Roden, but there were no results. While I lack definitive proof, I think the evidence is good enough to give me high confidence.
Sadly, I also learned the Claude was mentally handicapped. I started suspecting this after seeing the 1940 Census, where Claude was 32 years old, still living with his parents, listed as unable to work, and had only a 5th grade education (compared to both parents and his brother, Paul, which all had up to 8th grade). Claude’s WWII draft card in 1942 listed him as an “imbecile” and he signed the card with an X, next to which someone wrote “his mark.” He died on 10 Jun 1958, 2 years after Arthur and 1.5 years after Julie each died. Arthur, Julie, and Claude lived with Arthur’s sister, Nellie Crosby, before they died, and she cared for Claude after Arthur and Julia were gone.
Now that I have reached my conclusions, I have updated FamilySearch.org to show the correct relationship, with a long explanation for why I think it is correct, so that hopefully it doesn’t get changed again. I also directly messaged the person who made the change that started this search, so that he will not just change it back to what he thought was correct.
Genealogy Adventures 