Fossil Hunters, Biographers and Chas.
Insco Williams
Skywatchers
readers,
Please
bear with me in these first four paragraphs while I set up an analogy that will
be exemplified at the end of this essay…
When
a Tyrannosaurus’s skeleton or millenias-old Hominid jawbone is found,
paleontologists are usually able to tell us the nearly miraculous way they were
preserved in rock. The typical process I
remember reading about was that a corpse was quickly buried by river silt which
prevented oxygen from decomposing it.
Ages passed with more sand burials, and the bones petrified in their sandstone
matrix. Eventually a fossil hunter wins a
grant for exploration because of her insight about probable burial locations; she
chips and scrapes away rock layers and uncovers a prized specimen. Sometimes a scientist’s analysis and
explanation of the burial scene provides us with a description of the animal’s
last moments, perhaps even what led to its death; reading the rock tells the
fateful story.
People’s
life events are preserved by the written word in documents: their birth dates and
parents’ names, school sports feats, graduations, marriages, work achievements,
awards, failures, and their death dates and places. Our lives are recorded in lines of printers’
ink and on social media pages. Over time
these pages accumulate in layers in archives, waiting for the probing
biographer to locate and open the correct one. Then, the writer can reconstruct
a biographical narrative from a life’s sequence of events.
Fossil
hunters and biographers have a lot in common task-wise. Displaying a new fossil
specimen requires assembling scattered bones that were freed from a rocky
matrix; publishing a person’s life narrative means sequencing life events found
in scattered texts in archives.
However,
many peoples’ biographies are not written even though their facts are archived. They await the investigator whose interests
lead to the archive with their records. I consult archives containing records
about astronomers. That’s how I have
publicized people whose vitae may not have been cited beyond a death notice, or
an obituary in a newspaper or online funeral notice. My privilege has been to
introduce Skywatchers’ readers to
some little-celebrated lives; people who have engaged in observational
astronomy. For me, that was their ticket
to a memorial on these pages. I like to
unearth accounts of those people who have studied the heavens; I believe that
readers would like to know about them.
Popular Astronomy’s
volumes are the archives I often peruse.
Its 1934 tome contained two lines of print about a man named “Chas.
Insco Williams” who had submitted a sky watch report. He was one of the citizen scientists who
assisted astronomer Charles P. Olivier to record ‘shooting stars’ during 1933’s
Leonid display.[1,2,3] Williams reported
his address as, ‘Eglinton’ in King George County, Virginia about 80 km from
where I live. I became curious about him simply because he had lived so nearby.
[1, 2] Williams had counted Leonid
meteors during the height of the shower’s 1933 return, when Olivier had cautiously
hoped a stupendous ‘storm’ of meteors would fill the sky. Specifically, Williams
spent 8.5 hours during two early mornings, on November 16 and 17, waiting for
the sky to fill with fire. That never
happened. But he did count 32 Leonids on
the 16th and 9 the next day. [3] He also reported that he had company during
those predawn hours because he noted that “we” had watched meteors. [3]
So
there were three questions to answer: who had Charles Insco Williams been,
where was Eglinton located; and who were his meteor watch companions?
Ancestry.com
has been a dependable go-to archive when I need to learn someone’s history, but
it disappointed me. It did not reveal a
specific person to the prompt of ‘Chas. Insco Williams, Eglinton,
Virginia.’ However, it did have two
‘Charles Insco Williams’ in its databases.
One was born in 1853 and had been a noted architect; the second was born
in 1906 and had been an executive for a refrigerator manufacturer. Unfortunately those men had lived in Ohio and
additional information about them showed that neither had lived in Virginia. Compounding the confusion over Charles’
identity, my colleague, Tim Manley found a third man with the same three names
who had been born in 1873 in My Heritage.com’s database. Had Charles number 3 migrated to
Virginia? Did any of the three Charles
have a summer cottage or estate in Virginia that he called Eglinton?
Locating
Eglinton was frustrating too. Scrutiny
of a King George County geographical map, where Williams had claimed residence
did not show Eglinton. I wrote to the King George County Historical Museum in
King George, the county’s seat, asking if staff had records identifying
Williams and his residence. The staff
had no information about either one. So, I was stumped with the same two
mysteries: who was Williams and where did he live?
Investigating
Williams online and by postal mail had reached a dead end There was nothing left to do but take a field
trip to a regional historical archive in Fredericksburg, about 10 miles (16 km)
west from King George village. In a
breakthrough, its online search engine had revealed some documents related to a
Charles Insco Williams who had lived locally.
Indeed, it contained letters written to Williams in his role as
Secretary of Fredericksburg’s Masonic Lodge No. 4. [4] There was also a music
score and lyrics written for Fredericksburg’s James Madison High School’s song that
was attributed to him. That score provided a crucial clue that led to
identifying the correct Charles. It had
been published by “E.H.S. Williams.” [5]
When
that publisher’s name was entered into Ancestry.com’s search engine, the 1930
U.S. Census’ database offered ‘Elsie H. S. Williams.’ And she had had a husband
named Charles. He had been 57 years old
in 1930, so he was the Charles who had been born in 1873! [6] At last the correct Charles was known. The 1930 Census showed the Williamses to have
lived in King George County, but not precisely where: ‘Eglinton’ was not
mentioned as a location. The most direct way to locate their residence was to consult
the Deed Books in the county’s
Circuit Court Clerk’s office. Indeed, it
was the correct place to look: in 1931, Elsie had purchased 25 acres from another
county resident; the parcel was on the western outskirts of King George
village. [7]
Her
property’s location was found on a county real estate plat, but neither the
plat nor the Deed Book entry was
labeled Eglinton. [8]
Disappointed, I guessed Eglinton had been an informal name that the couple gave
Elsie’s property. Above, Eglinton’s location is shown as the pink-outlined area
on an excerpt from a real estate plat in Deed
Book 38. North is toward the bottom
of the diagram. The village of King
George is to the left on the State Highway.
Finally,
we had found the correct Charles, Eglinton’s location, and his Leonid watch partner’s
name; I assumed that the “we” Williams had referred to in his report to Olivier
was a reference to Elsie. Although those
three data points were exciting by themselves, they only furnished a skeleton
sketch of the sky watching couple in 1933 Virginia. Tim and I wanted a description of them with
more ‘meat on the bones.’
With
persistence, we succeeded in finding more information which filled out our
understanding of the couple: meaty ‘bones’ were added to the skeleton. Newspaper accounts as well as the high school
song gave evidence of Charles’ musical performance and composition skills. Even though he claimed in the 1940 U.S. Census
that he was a “retired artist” [13], there was better evidence that he had had
a successful career in music. [11, 12, 15] Elsie’s newspaper and Census records
show that she had had a long-term career as an educator. [6, 10, 14] The 1910 Census reported that the couple had
had a son born in 1904 and a daughter in 1907. [16] A newspaper obituary documented
Charles’s death in 1940. [9] Elsie published Charles’ song posthumously in 1941
[5] and she sold Eglinton for $100 on May 30 of the same year. [17] Elsie relocated
to Ohio after Charles’ death to live with their daughter Virginia. Elsie died in 1960 at age 83. [10] She and
Charles are buried together in a rural family‘s private cemetery in Louisa
County, Virginia. [9, 10]
A
photograph of Elsie H.S. Williams taken from an unknown local newspaper circa
1936.
Courtesy
of King George County Historical Museum, King George, Virginia
In
retrospect, Charles’ 1933 report in Popular
Astronomy was a fact that served as analog to a fossil hunter’s discovery
of a fossilized bone fragment: it led to ‘digging further’ to find more. As Tim
and I explored more archival strata, the history of Charles and Elsie Williams
emerged as a coherent whole instead of remaining buried in scattered records.
References
[1]
Olivier, C. P, 1933. Bulletin 14, List of Members, American Meteor Society, p.4
[2]
Olivier, C. P, 1934. Bulletin 15, List of Members, American Meteor Society, p.4
[3]
Olivier, C. P, 1934. Meteor Notes, Popular
Astronomy, volume 42, pp.100 and 102
[4]
Messrs Timberman and Uhlman, 1930. Two letters
to Williams from Masonic Lodge Officers in Northern Virginia. Central
Rappahannock Heritage Center, File number
2017-001-019-001
[5]
Williams, C. I., 1941. The James Monroe
High School Song, words and music by
Charles Insco
Williams. King George, Virginia: E.H.S.
Williams. Central Rappahannock Heritage
Center, File number 2007-044-004
[6]
United States Census for 1930; Rappahannock Magisterial District of King George
County, Virginia. Household of Elise (sic) H. S. Williams,
Husband: Charles S. (sic)
Williams
[7]
King George County, Virginia Deed Book 43,
p. 84. Purchase date was May 9, 1931.
[8]
King George County, Virginia Deed Book 38,
p.636 Williams’ property location was
deduced using a plat that accompanied
this deed.
[9]
C. Inscoe (sic) Williams Buried in Louisa. Free
Lance Star (Fredericksburg, VA),
August 24, 1940, p. 1
[10]
Long Illness Fatal to Mrs. Williams. Free Lance Star (Fredericksburg, VA),
October 5,
1960
[11]
Charles Insco Williams, Musician, Palladium-Item
(Richmond, Indiana), February 5, 1900,
p.4
[12]
Musical Club Recital, Palladium-Item
(Richmond, Indiana), March 17, 1900 p.4
[13]
United States Census for 1940; Jackson District of Louisa County, Virginia;
House hold of
Dr. S.F. Hart. Lodger there: Charles I. Williams, “retired
artist”
[14]
School Officials Meet in Fredericksburg, Northern
Neck News, volume 57, number 22,
October 25, 1935, p.5
[15]
1901 City Directory, Cincinnati, Ohio,
p.1857
[16]
United States Census for 1910; Westmoreland County, Virginia, House hold of
Charles Williams
[17]
King George County, Virginia Deed Book 50,
p. 528.
Acknowledgements
I
had help to ‘unearth’ the facts in this detective saga; Timothy P. Manley was
the able investigator who shared the laborious searches needed during the ten
months it took to reconstruct Charles and Elsie’s story.
Ms.
Elizabeth Lee, Historian at the King George County Historical Museum allowed me
to use a 1936 newspaper photo of Elsie Williams, who was the first Principal of
King George County High School, opened in 1927.
Ms. Lee also provided a history of Willow Hill, the general area where
the Williamses had lived.
Staff
members of Central Rappahannock Heritage Center in Fredericksburg helped Tim
and I find photocopies of Charles’ correspondence and a high school’s song he
wrote.
Staff
at the King George County Circuit Court Clerk’s office helped Tim and I locate
property deeds and real estate plats in its Deed
Books.
