Fred Ray Macbeth: 52 Ancestors Prompt "Brother"

Fred Ray Macbeth 1906-1943

            Fred Ray Macbeth was my maternal grandfather’s brother and my great-uncle. He was born December 30, 1906 to Walter and Lucy Dane Macbeth. He was the youngest of their sixth children, and was always referred to by his middle name “Ray”.

            Ray grew up on the family farm outside Mankato in Le Ray Township, the farm that my grandfather, Ivan Macbeth, would eventually take over from his parents. 

   Lucy and Walter Macbeth and their six children. Ivan at far right, and I believe Ray is at    the left, with Harold in the middle.

            When Ray was young, he apprenticed as a mason in Toledo, Ohio, living at 929 Brinton Dr. in the Five Points region. It was a new single family home at that time, built in 1925; I expect he was a boarder. I don’t know how he came by this opportunity or how he ended up in Toledo—I don’t know of any family members who lived there. He was already acquainted with young Ila Fern Smith, who grew up on a farm near the Macbeth place. Somehow, Fern (she too went by her middle name) also ended up in Toledo, living just two miles away in the Deveraux neighborhood at 2204 Rood Street, also a newer single family home. The addresses were contained on their marriage certificate—they married in Toledo on July 6, 1929, just months before the stock market crash and a year after my mother’s birth back in Minnesota.

                                   Ray and Fern's marriage record from Toledo, Ohio                          

            By the date of the 1930 census, Ray and Fern were living at 1619 Oakwood Avenue, with Fern’s younger sister Bernice. Ray was still employed as an apprentice mason for a building contractor. The Oakwood house has since been torn down; only an empty lot remains in what is now obviously a ghetto area of Toledo. Ray and Fern’s son, Wilfred Ray Macbeth, was born while they were living there, on May 5, 1930.

            By the time Ray and Fern’s daughter, Renee Aline, was born on December 23, 1932, the couple was back in Minnesota, where Ray turned to farming, working his father’s land with his brother Ivan. I suspect the start of the Great Depression destroyed the construction industry in Toledo, leading to unemployment for masons like Ray. This must have been a difficult time for the family. Ivan had been farming the land alone for several years, having married a couple years before Ray and Fern. Now he had to make the farm support both families. Ray must have been frustrated and depressed, having escaped a life of farming but now being forced to return to it after having spent so much effort and time learning a good trade.

            Ray and Fern moved to a small house near her parents’ farm in the McPherson area of Blue Earth County. My mother remembers that the family called it “the little place”. I can see why from the photo. There can’t have been more than four small rooms. 

            My mother remembers that Ray was a heavy smoker when she knew him. The two families saw quite a bit of one another, as the children were all within a few years of each other, and the parents had all grown up near one another. My mother was close to Ray’s daughter Renee, a pretty blond, and numerous photos feature the Macbeth cousins of Renee, Ione and Joanne, daughter of Ivan and Ray’s brother Harold. My mother Ione disliked her cousin Wilfred, however, who frequently teased and mocked her and destroyed some of her toys. She was still angry in her nineties at the memory of Wilfred laughing uproariously when she fell off a hay rack, breaking her ribs. Interestingly, Wilfred the prankster became a minister.

                                                       Renee, Joanne and Ione Macbeth

            Ray and Ivan continued to farm together into the 1940s. Ray registered for the draft in 1940, and his draft card states that he was five feet ten inches tall, with blue eyes, brown hair, and a light complexion, the same description used for my grandfather Ivan when he registered two years later. 

            Unfortunately, Ray's smoking habit caught up with him. He developed throat cancer, and died at the brutally young age of 36 on January 19, 1943. My mother said her father Ivan tried to care for Fern and the two children, providing money and assistance, as did Fern's parents. I am not sure how the Macbeth farm land was owned. I suspect it remained under the ownership of the brothers' father, Walter, until his death in 1955 when it passed to Ivan. Therefore, Fern may have been left without a share of the farm or the investment property Walter owned in Mankato. Fern went to work to support her children. She moved to Mankato and worked as a cook, a clerk, and then a sealer for an automotive electrical manufacturing company. Fern also died young, at age 50, on May 19, 1959. 

Fern and Ray's graves

            Ray and Ivan seem to have had a special relationship. They were not only close in age, but ended up working together to farm the land they grew up on. They looked quite a bit alike, and had the same vice, cigarettes, that destroyed their health (Ivan died of emphysema in his sixties). They had two children each, one son and one daughter. They also each considered non-farming careers before returning to farming. They were brothers of the heart as well as brothers by birth.