EDWARD F. WHITE SR. AND THE SSDI

I mentioned the Edward F. White I found on the SSDI at
the Family History Site the other night. The birth date is
right and the place of death is here in Massachusetts, but
the Social Security number was issued in New York.

Still I think this is my grandfather for several reasons.

This is my grandparents’ divorce decree dated 22nd November
1935. In it I learned that my grandmother claimed that Edward
“of parts unknown” had “utterly deserted” her and the children
for “three consecutive years.”

The Social Security System became law in that same year, 1935.
I posted earlier about the World War I draft card for Edward that

I found at Ancestry. He worked for the New York, New Haven,
and Hartford Railroad at the time he registered so it’s possible he

might have returned to railroad work or found work elsewhere as
a steamfitter, the occupation he’d listed on the Federal Census.

The “parts unknown” then might very well have been in New York.

I just realized as I typed this post that the date of the decree, 22nd
November,1935 is fifty years to the date 22 November, 1985, my
Dad’s death.