Paul Mayott: 1917 or 1918 to 1929?
The 52 Ancestors challenge paired the prompts “Easy” and “Challenging”. For my “Easy” post, I examined the short life of Penn Soland, who died at age 25 in WWII, noting that short lives were often easy research subjects. However, a short life can also be challenging, particularly when the person resided in a state without centralized, searchable records.
Young Paul Mayott, my second cousin once-removed on my mother’s side of the family, is one of those mysterious child ancestors who appear briefly and tantalizingly in records, only to disappear without a trace.
Paul was the only son of my cousin Zella (sometimes called Catherine) Macbeth. Zella, born in 1888, had a wild early life, running off at age 16 with a carnival calliope player who abandoned her months later. She divorced him—quite scandalous at the turn of the century—and remarried sometime between 1910 and 1918. The marriage probably took place in Wisconsin, as that is where she appears on a census record in 1920, living with her husband Paul Francis Mayott and her two-year-old son Paul Mayott in Ward 2 of Milwaukee.
Wisconsin’s marriage, birth and death records are difficult to find on Ancestry and other genealogy sites. Apparently I have to go to Wisconsin to do research or hire someone to do it for me. Therefore, I have no birth record for young Paul, so must merely surmise he was born in late 1917 or early 1918.
By 1930, Zella appears on the census as a widow with no children. She is still living in Milwaukee, but by July 30 of that year, she has moved to Indiana where she married a third time to a Fred H. Williams, a lodger in her Milwaukee apartment.
So what happened to her son Paul? What happened to her husband Paul Francis Mayott? I can find no death or burial records for either.
Some grisly newspaper articles from November 3 and 4 of 1929 may shed some light on young Paul’s fate. Wisconsin and Chicago newspapers reported that a 12-year-old boy named Paul Mayott fell four stories down a ventilation shaft at an abandoned school in Milwaukee on November 3. He was playing on the roof of the building with three friends, jumping over the shaft, which was covered with a metal grate. He failed to make it across and the grate collapsed under his weight. He fell to the first floor of the building.
His friends sought help, and he was extricated by police and taken to the hospital. He suffered internal injuries, a compound fracture of his leg, and a double break of his right arm. He died of his injuries a day later on November 4.
The Chicago newspaper article lists a home address of 160 Knapp Street, and also states that his friends were from Astor and Jackson streets. I studied a Milwaukee map, and see that this area matches the neighborhood that Zella and her husband were living in in during the 1920s according to city directories. By the 1930 census, Zella is living in the “Juneau Apartments” which is the other side of the block from Knapp. The age of the dead child also matches Zella’s son. I suspect this tragic story explains Paul’s mysterious disappearance from Zella’s life.
I will keep researching the Milwaukee area, attempting to find records of Paul’s death that would include the names of his parents. Even a newspaper obituary would provide some sort of evidence. I have been unable to locate a Milwaukee newspaper for this period either—the articles I found were from Chicago, Green Bay and other regional cities, and included no mention of the dead boy’s parents. Milwaukee is proving to be a research black hole for this time period.
Until I find conclusive records, young Paul Mayott will remain a challenge.
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