1948 Voter's Registration Lists for the Henry Fecht Family

Voters' registrations lists are a wonderful source, particularly after women were given the right to vote.

If didn't already know of the connection between Henry, Catherine, Gloria, and James H.Fecht, this 1948 voter's registration list from Los Angeles, California, would have hinted at it. The four Fecht are all living at 11005 Hesby Street at the time of their registration. The roster does not indicate their relationship, but Henry and Catherine are husband and wife and Gloria and James are their children. The "R" after their names indicates that they are registered Republicans.

Los Angeles Precinct 2672 Register of Voters for 1948; digital image,   Ancestry.com, 20 January 2013

This 1948 register did indicate that the Fechts moved to California in time to register and appear on the 1948  Register of Voters. I'm not certain of just when they would have had to have registered in order to appear on that roster. In my case, pinpoining their migration that precisely is not necessary--so I'm not overly concerned about it. What was crucial was to know that the parents moved to California in addition to the children. These voter lists could be combined with city directories to provide a more detailed picture of the family as the directories would give ocupations.

In this case, it is easy to see that these individuals were living at the same address. In the cases of more common names, go through all the entries for a specific surname to determine if there are others living at the same address.

Henry, Catherine, and Gloria are living at 1944 East 70th Street in Chicago, Illinois, at the time of the 1940 Census. Son James is not enumerated with them--possibly due to his enlistment in the military. As we've seen in other posts, the Fechts were in Chicago for at least part of the duration of World War II.

Stay tuned...

Reported Dead--He Lives

Date: Wednesday, May 6, 1942  

Paper: Seattle Daily Times (Seattle, WA)--obtained on Genealogybank.com 

I've written about James Fecht before who was believed killed in the Pacific during World War II only to be discovered alive and recuperating in a hospital. Apparently this picture was sent out over the wire services at the time and was taken by the US Navy.

I was tempted to "grab" the first picture I found of James, but I'm glad I didn't. There were several images posted of James in various newspapers, including one in a Maine newspaper with a French caption. Several of the images I located initially were not as crisp and nice as this one.

If you think an item may have appeared in several newspapers, it may be worth your time to look in more than one reference.

Retrouve in 1942

When searching old newspapers, particularly for stories that may have made the wire services, one should not ignore entries in foreign languages.

Date: Friday, May 22, 1942  

Paper: Justice de Biddeford (Biddeford, ME)--obtained on Genealogybank.com.  

Google Translate (combined with my paraphrasing of Google Translate's translation) indicates the caption indicates the mother of Henry Fecht of Chicago appears with her son, a sailor, that Uncle Sam had declared dead.

I almost ignored the French result--this family was not French and not live in Maine. However, news of Fecht's survival and his mother's unwillingness to admit he was deceased, made several newspapers at the time.

Only one little problem.

The "recovered sailor" was James Fecht. His mother was the wife of Henry Fecht, of Chicago, which is where the Fecht family had lived for some time before the war. Those little words like "mother" and "wife" can get confused. We've written about James before. There seems little doubt that the caption in the newspaper is simply incorrect. It seems highly unlikely that two "missing" soldiers in the South Pacific from Chicago with the last name of Fecht were found at the same time. It never hurts to double check a reference and the researcher is well advised to always keep in mind that a source could be wrong in one or more detail.

We've found an even nicer picture of James and his mother in another newspaper that we're hoping to use in a future post.

Going Forward

In further attempts to locate more on this incident, we are going to search for Chicago area newspapers, which may have included more detailed articles about the incident. I'm also going to see if there was any mention of this incident in newspapers from Hancock County, Illinois--where James' parents were originally from.

James Fecht Was Not a Casualty--Read the Whole Page

U.S., Navy Casualties Books, 1776-1941. Combat Naval Casualties, World War II, (AL-MO), "wounded" section, page  71; digital image,  Ancestry.com    (http://www.ancestry.com), 6 December 2012

This is the entry for James Henry Fecht from "Combat Naval Casualties" which appears on Ancestry.com .  One might be tempted to think he was reported as deceased (given the title of the database), but he is listed in the "wounded" section--which is clearly indicated on the page heading which has not been included in this post.

And "casualty" does not necessarily mean deceased.

Reading the whole page is always a good idea--as is making certain you know the meaning of all the words being used.

James Fecht's Mother Had No Doubt

Headline of article about James Fecht being located by his mother.

Date: Tuesday, May 5, 1942  

Paper: San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA)

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obtained on 

 Genealogybank.com. 

Women's intuition is mentioned several times in this 1942 article which was probably written by a man. Despite doubts about intuition, there was no doubt that Mrs. Fecht was correct, her son James was alive and recovering from his wounds at Mare Island Naval Hospital.

Mrs. Fecht had learned a week or so before that Jack Kennedy, a survivor of the same vessel on which her son was stationed, had returned home. She was told on 6 April that her son was among the missing. Through the USO and the Navy Wives, Mrs.Fecht traced her son to the Hospital and her airline travel was provided by those two groups.

Fecht had arrived at the hospital in April and did not know that he had been reported as lost to his parents. He was wounded on board the Langley and went overboard in a lifebelt and not on a lifeboat. He was in the water for six hours.

Then the newspaper article is not clear and states:

"Then same destroyer that had rescued The following day survivors were landed on an island and were there a brief time before the Japs bombarded the settlement.All who could be removed were placed in barges and were taken to another Navy vessel which also was bombarded and sunk."

Fecht plunged overboard and was "picked up by the same destroyed" as before and he was taken to Australia before being transferred to Mare Island Naval Hospital.

I've ended my newspaper searches for Fecht on Genealogybank.com, at least for now.In a future post, we'll see what military information we can locate on James.