Four years after the original research into the adventures of the Welbourn(e)s in America, I revisited the story to see if I could find any further information.
The whereabouts of Albina’s husband James Welbourn(e) after he stepped off the ship in New York in 1885 had long been a mystery for me, because there was no trace of him living with either of his children or his wife after that. This time, a search yielded an entry in the 1904 directory of Sedalia, Missouri for a “Jas Welbourne” living at 203 Walnut. On a hunch, I checked if a Shaffer lived at that address and found that a Harry Shaffer (coincidentally the name of James’s son-in-law) resided at the same address.
Now that I knew that James was alive and living in United States as of 1904, I searched U.S. records and found that he had died on March 11, 1911 in Chicago and was buried in the same cemetery as his wife Albina and thus had most likely moved to Evanston with the Shaffers, possibly at the same as Albina who had lived in Illinois for 5 years by the time she died in 1909. Curiously, on his death certificate, James’s occupation is listed as “farmer”.
I also searched for more information about the Shaffers and found the following newspaper article from their local paper in Sedalia about the birth of one of their children that gives details on Harry Shaffer’s occupation and employer at the time.
I also managed to retrace the steps of James and Albina’s son Arthur and his wife Elizabeth. He appeared to have moved to Missouri with his parents because there is a record of him joining the 2nd Missouri Volunteer Infantry in Sedalia on April 28, 1898. In 1900, true to the family tradition, he is to be found halfway around the world in Orani, Philippines as part of the American forces in the Spanish-American War, with the rank of Corporal. By 1910 he was back in Evanston, Illinois with his wife, and after visiting his wife’s family in England in 1914 he moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He didn’t settle down there for long, however, as in 1918 he embarked upon yet another long trip, this time to Melbourne, Australia to visit his wife’s sick sister. Somehow, despite having previously traveled internationally, it seems he was unaware that he needed a passport to travel to Australia. This resulted in a letter written to the Secretary of State pleading his case, after he and his wife had sold up their possessions and begun his travels across the United States.
I was very pleased to find photos of Arthur and Elizabeth attached to their passport applications, as I had never previously seen a photo of either of them.
It’s not clear whether they ever made it to Australia, but they are back in Sioux Falls in the 1920 census. I had previously known that the couple were buried in Sioux Falls and this new information sheds light on why that would be. The couple have a shared gravestone in Woodlawn Cemetery in Sioux Falls, and Arthur also has second gravestone that he was entitled to as a military veteran.
While this answers many questions that were raised by the photo postcard, which I have since become the keeper of, one thing I would especially like to do in the future is to find out what happened to the only line of the Shaffer family that may still have living descendants, that of Herbert James Shaffer. His two children were born in the 1920s, however I have lost trace of them after the 1940 census which unfortunately predates either of the children being of marriageable age. To quote a famous Californian, I have a feeling that “I’ll be back” with more stories of the Welbourn(e)s…