What She Left Behind.
- Jessica Knoch
- Nov 13, 2023
- 5 min read
Alice Schroer Blue (1874-1936).
2nd Great Grandmother.
From the Deep South to the Canadian Prairies.
The March 1910 immigration of James Blue from a farm near Little Rock, Arkansas, United States to Evesham, Saskatchewan, Canada is an exciting tale involving a packed settler’s car, a young stowaway (it is said that James's son, Carl, hid in the train car so he wouldn’t have to pay for his train fare) and a couple of mixed breed mutts passed off as true Arkansan bloodhounds and exchanged for a tidy profit in Winnipeg.
The story illustrates the anticipation that a new immigrant must feel when starting a new life – and while it has no doubt been embellished upon over the years, the sense of freedom and excitement that James and Carl might have felt still shines in the telling.
We have no such stories that accompany the immigration of his wife, Alice, and daughter, Martha, who joined James and Carl just a month later. The only documentation we have of their passage is their border crossing record, documented in Emerson, Manitoba, in April 1910. The document stated simply Mrs. Blue and Martha Blue, travelling by train from Arkansas to Alberta and bringing with them just 160 dollars.
Unlike her husband, whose immigration story became part of family lore, we don't know what Alice experienced or how she felt during her trip to Canada. We can hope that she experienced some level of comfort knowing she would be joining not just her husband and son, but also a brother and sister-in-law, who had moved to the Evesham area some years prior.
All About Alice.
Alice Schroer Blue was born in 1874, the second of five children in an American-German family living in Terre Haute, Indiana. Her father, Frederick William Schroer, was born in Indiana. The 1860 and 1870 US census listed his occupation as a farm laborer, the 1880 census, taken when he was about 41 years old, listed him as a Check Master, and the1900 census indicated he was working in freight delivery on the railroad. Alice’s mother, Sophie Hollenberg, was born in Ohio to German parents who immigrated to the United States sometime between 1840 and 1847.
We know very little about Alice’s early life – she appears with her family in the 1880 US census, and then appears again on an April 25, 1874 marriage certificate to James Blue. Their son Carl Jesse was born just six months later October 27, 1894. The birth was registered in Vigo County, and the couple likely lived in Terre Haute.
A Mystery Buried in the Census Data.
The 1900 United States census is the next time the family appears in official records. By this time, the Blue family is living in Jackson, Tennessee. The census record for the family indicates that James is working as a woodworker and that their home is rented. The location is corroborated by James Blue’s obituary as well as family lore, which indicates that the family lived in Tennessee for some time before moving to Arkansas. Little Carl appears on the census, a 6-year-old boy by this time. But the mystery of this census is that the record mentions two little girls who are living in the house with James, Alice and Carl. Sallie E. is listed as a daughter, born in 1896 in Indiana (age 4 at the time of the census), and Rebeca A., also born in Indiana in 1898 (age 2 at the time of the census). Alice is listed as the mother of 3 living children: presumably Carl, Sallie and Rebeca.
Because these two little girls did not immigrate to Canada with the rest of the family, who they are and what happened to them is unknown. Were they daughters of James and Alice, taken too early by an accident or childhood illness? Were they foster children? Were they visitors, somehow mistaken for family members when the census taker visited their home? A careful search of Indiana birth records between 1895 and 1898 turned up nothing on the birth of Sallie or Rebeca, nor was I able to find death records on file for them in either the state of Tennessee or Arkansas. This is not a surprise - statewide registration of births and deaths in Tennessee and Arkansas wasn’t mandatory until 1914, general compliance didn’t happen until the 1920s.
We know the family moved to Arkansas following their time in Tennessee. The only record I can find of the family's tenure in Arkansas is in a sales record: the name James M. Blue appears in a list of United States Bureau of Land Management Tract Book, citing a 1906 purchase of 163 acres of land in Arkansas (section 10, township 5 range 30). It is likely, but not certain, that this is Alice's husband.
Daughter Martha was born in 1901. Her birth location is a mystery: she immigrated to Canada before the 1910 US census could record the state she was born in, and subsequent Canadian censuses lists her birth location only as “United States”. I was unable to find birth records matching her name in Indiana, Tennessee or Arkansas. Her 1983 funeral program indicates she was born in Tennessee, which seems likely, given the family’s location in Jackson Tennessee at the time of the 1900 United States Census.
At the time of writing this, the fate of Rebeca and Sallie is unknown, although it is safe to presume they either died or somehow removed from the family's care following the 1900 United States census and before the family’s immigration to Canada in 1910.
What She Left Behind.
Aside from standard appearances in the Canadian census, Alice does not appear again in any official document until her death from cancer in 1936, when two simple obituaries are published in both the Saskatoon Star Phoenix and in the Terre Haute Tribune. Only the children who survive her are listed in both obituaries. Family lore is also silent on the fate of little Sallie and Rebeca Blue – to the best of our knowledge their names have never been mentioned.
This brief memory, penned in 1992 by her grandson, James Conly, is one of the few memories I could find that tells us about the kind of person that Alice Schroer Blue was:
“I can remember the excitement of Christmas at Grandma’s. The house would bulge with relatives, cousins and people who had no family nearby with whom to celebrate. Grandma was a great cook and everyone enjoyed her bountiful meals.”
We don’t know a lot about Alice Schroer Blue. Those who knew her are long gone, and very little remains to remind us about who she was. And yet one brief census record tells us so much about what she may have left behind in the United States and the pain she may have lived with after arriving in Canada. If Sallie and Rebeca were indeed Alice’s daughters, or even just two little girls that she knew and cared for, she was someone who left behind a huge piece of her heart in the American south.
Sources:
Ancestry.com. Indiana, U.S., Marriages, 1810-2001 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA.
Ancestry.com. Indiana, U.S., WPA Birth Index, 1880-1920 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA.
Library and Archives Canada; 1908-1935 Border Entries; Roll: T-5475.
"Prairie views from Eye Hill", 1992-01-01, (CU110306599) ,Macklin History Book Society. corporate. Courtesy of Local Histories Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900. T623, 1854 rolls.
"United States Bureau of Land Management Tract Books, 1800-c. 1955," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99WS-C16Q?cc=2074276&wc=M7W9-1TL%3A356162401%2C356209501 : 6 January 2021), Arkansas > Vol 51 > image 184 of 198; Records Improvement, Bureau of Land Management, Washington D.C.
Excellent. You should write a book.