I was so excited about what I found Saturday night, I could hardly sleep.
But first I will explain.
She is the mom of my Grandpa Romeo.
Okay, see that little baby she is holding? I'm pretty sure that's her grandson, baby Clair.
He is the son of her daughter, Rowena.
So Rowena was married to a man by the name of Archie Tatton.
Rowena died when baby son Clair was 14 months old.
Why or how she died I haven't figured out yet.
So Mary Jane's daughter, Rowena, is dead
and she takes over raising baby grandson Clair.
A year or two later (not sure exactly when), Clair's Dad, Archie, shows back up
and says he is getting remarried and wants Clair back. But it's worse than that.
He wants Clair growing up thinking the new wife is his birth Mom.
In order to do this he feels he needs to cut ties with Clair's grandparents and the entire Rozier clan.
Oh and did I mention that the Roziers lived in house after house on a street named after them near Stockton, Rozier Avenue?
They were a very tight group.
So gone is little Clair, leaving Grandma Mary Jane heartbroken, from what I've been told.
The entire Rozier clan, especially all those aunts and uncles living on Rozier Avenue,
must have struggled with this.
Fast forward several years and Clair is in high school.
He just so happens to be attending the same school as Grandpa Romeo's son Irving.
Even though Irving had been born the same month as Clair, he had been told about his cousin....
I'm sure it was the talk within the Roziers for years. So he explains to Clair how he is a Rozier,
and tells him about Clair's Mom, Rowena. What a shocker that must have been!
Clair had a right to know and I'm glad my Uncle Irving had the courage to tell him.
Rowena had a right to be remembered by her son.
After all, it's not like she gave him up for adoption...she died!
So I have wondered about baby Clair for well over a year....
since I first heard about him through my cousin's daughter Kelly,
and also from my distant cousin Meg in Idaho that I recently hooked up with.
What happened to my Great Aunt Rowena's son?
I finally heard through Meg that he had been a school teacher,
and then a principal somewhere in the Stockton, Ca area.
So I thought, okay, he must be in some year book somewhere.
Late Saturday night Elora and I went looking.
Page after page of year books online looking for Clair Tatton and we FOUND him!
1939
See him up there? 3rd picture down on the right. As soon as I spotted his face I thought,
that's a Rozier if I ever saw one. No denying him!
He looks some like my Dad and also my son McKay.
I learned from my cousin Meg that Clair never married and never had children.
So there he is. My Great Aunt Rowena's son!
There's more to this story, what happened after Clair found out he was a Rozier,
but I will save that for another day. This is long enough for one post!
(that I wrote about on anther day) fit into the Rozier family,
here's their family sheet in my Mom's writing, back in 1957.
Odd to me now, but growing up these were just names on a sheet of paper.
Now I think about these people everyday. I even occasionally dream about them.
I have pictures of all the sisters except for Rowena. She was only 26 when she died.
But still, her picture must be somewhere!