The Dandurand Family

My step-great-grandmother, Ozelda "Dandy" Dandurand

I was fortunate enough to have a living great-grandparent during my childhood. While Ozelda "Dandy" Dandurand Rutherfurd did not live near enough for me to get to know her well, I met her on several occasions. Dandy was the second wife of my great-grandfather, George Rutherfurd, and although she was not a blood relative, she was a kind and loving grandmother to my mother and her siblings, and very much part of our family.

Dandy and George

In an earlier post, I wrote about how George and Dandy met at the telephone company in Los Angeles, where they both worked. They married in their forties, after each had lost their first spouse. By the time I was a child, Dandy was quite elderly and was living in an assisted living facility in Medford, Oregon. She was in good heath, though, and when we went to visit her there she would walk around the grounds with us. She was able to leave the facility and visit us when we were nearby for a summer camping trip. I have a strong memory of her sitting in a plastic folding chair around a campfire, surrounded by tall pines. I must have been about nine years old.

Dandy with my brothers and me

Dandy died in Medford on her 101st birthday, March 20, 1997. I was a recent college graduate then, not yet interested in genealogy. Later, when I developed a passion for family history, I remembered the few stories I had heard about Dandy's past, before she married George. My mother had always told me that when Dandy was a young girl, her family had traveled the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon. It had apparently been a terrible journey and was something Dandy never wanted to discuss. With Dandy gone, and not knowing any of her extended family, I turned to the internet to learn more about her background.

Dandy and George on their wedding day

I knew that Dandy's father had been French Canadian, and I knew that they had lived in the Midwest before coming to the west coast. With a unique name like Ozelda, it didn't take me long to find my great-grandmother in the 1900 United States Census, living with her family in Knowles, Frontier County, Nebraska. Reviewing census data and city directories, I was able to put together some basics about Dandy's family.

Dandy and George at their retirement party

Dandy was born March 20, 1896. Her parents were Narcisse Dandurand and Lucy Isabella Dunn. Narcisse was born in Quebec, Canada in February 1866, and he was a 34-year old farmer in Nebraska by the time of the 1900 census. The 1900 census reports that his parents were both also born in French Canada, but I have not yet learned their names. Lucy was born in Nebraska in April 1872, the daughter of John Dunn and Margaret Wymore.

Narcisse and Lucy had at least six children together:

John Floyd Dandurand (1890-1956)
Bertha May Dandurand (1893-1986)
Ozelda Narcisse Dandurand (1897-1997)
Carrie O. Dandurand (1899-)
Eva A. Dandurand (1901-)
Thelma Hazel Dandurand (1910-1997)

On the 1910 census, there appears a listing for a child named Ralma H. Dandurand, aged 2, born in Nebraska. I suspect this may be a census error, and that child was actually Thelma H. Dandurand, who was born in Oregon three days prior to the census-taker arriving at the Dandurand household. While it's possible that there was a Ralma and she died after this census, I can find no other records for a Ralma Dandurand. It's also curious that Thelma would be left off a census, since she was very much alive when the census was taken on April 23, 1910. There's also the fact that Ralma is an unusual name, but similar to Thelma.

Another mystery is that Dandy's sister Helen does not appear in any records for this family. We know that Dandy had a sister named Helen with whom she was very close. My mother recalls Dandy talking about Helen frequently. Helen lived in Southern California, like Dandy, and in their later years they had planned to move to Medford together. Helen died shortly before the move, which was a great blow to Dandy. We know Helen existed, but don't know why she doesn't appear in census records with the family. I wonder if perhaps Helen and Eva were somehow the same person. Eva came to Southern California with Dandy and Hazel between 1918 and 1920, and they appear in the same household together in the 1920 U.S. Census. Hazel later married and moved to Northern California, but I have found no records for Eva after 1920. Perhaps she went by the name Helen? This is a total head-scratcher.

The Dandurand family appears to have left Nebraska sometime between the birth of Eva Dandurand in 1901 and their arrival in Oregon in 1908. In the 1910 U.S. Census, Narcisse Dandurand reported that he had been in Oregon for two years, which is how we are able to pinpoint 1908 as their year of travel.

While in Nebraska, the Dandurands lived in Knowles and nearby Freedom, in the southwestern corner of the state, not far from the Kansas state line. From there, it was less than a two day walk (today, less than two hours in a car) to reach the Oregon Trail, which followed the Platte River westward through Nebraska. Travel on the Oregon Trail had peaked decades earlier, and in 1908 it was possible to take a train west. We can only assume the Dandurand family did not have money to travel via train, and thus took a much longer and more dangerous route west. As to why the family would leave Nebraska in the first place, we can only guess. Lucy Dunn Dandurand's parents and siblings lived within a day's walk of her farm in Nebraska, and she and Narcisse had been farming in and around Knowles for nearly twenty years. Did the farm fall on hard times? Were the Dandurands lured west by stories of fertile farmland and increased opportunity?

The Oregon Trail's location in Nebraska. Approximate location of Knowles is marked with a X.

The stories of hardships on the Oregon Trail are well known. Dandy would never share stories about her experience, but hinted that it was a terrible journey for the Dandurand family. I wondered if a family member had died en route to Oregon, but it appears that they all made it to Portland alive, according to the 1910 U.S. Census, taken two years after their arrival. Their hardships on the trail were more likely those commonly reported: sickness, hunger, exposure to the elements, threats from bandits, and physical discomfort.

The Dandurands settled in Portland, Oregon, which was a city of over 200,000 people in 1910. This must have been a big change from the plains of Nebraska. Narcisse Dandurand bought a house on Detroit Street and in the 1910 U.S. Census claimed he was working as a farmer. His eldest son, John Floyd Dandurand, got work as a boilermaker, and eldest daughter Bertha May took a job at the local telephone company. Dandy was still in school in 1910, but she would later follow her sister Bertha into a telephone company career. Despite their success in traversing the Oregon Trail and establishing themselves in a new state, in the decade that followed, the Dandurand family unraveled.

John Floyd moved to Seattle in about 1916, where he married Dollie Davidson. Bertha May married Joseph Hague in 1912, and they moved to Astoria. Carrie disappears from records completely after 1910. It's not clear if she died, or if she married and moved away. As their children grew and left the home, the Dandurand marriage withered. In either 1919 or 1920, Lucy left Narcisse and married Fred Linton, a steamfitter (essentially, a plumber) who was also living in Portland. They took the three Dandurand girls who remained at home, Dandy, Eva and Hazel, and moved to Los Angeles. Narcisse went to Seattle, where he can be found in a boarding house in the 1920 U.S. Census. He may have gone there to be near his son, John. Both Lucy and Narcisse would eventually move back to Oregon, but their marriage was over.

I wish that Dandy had shared more stories about her youth and her experience on the Oregon Trail. It seems these were things she was glad to leave behind as she embarked on adulthood in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, she had a successful career and two happy marriages. She was a great companion to my great-grandfather after the death of his first wife, and a loving grandmother to his grandchildren. She lived to age 101, long enough to see nearly the entire twentieth century. I'm very glad to have been able to meet her and to share a little bit of her story.

George Rutherfurd: The Later Years

This is the eighth and final post in a series about my great-grandfather, George Roscoe Oliver Rutherfurd.

My grandmother told me that after her mother's death, friends were always trying to set George up with women.  He was still fairly young, in his mid-40s, and his friends didn't want him to be alone the rest of his life.  However, George found love for a second time without any outside help.  He had known Ozelda "Dandy" Dandurand Roberts for many years because they both worked for the telephone company.  Dandy had been married to the late John H. Roberts but had no children.  She had been widowed for a couple of years when George lost his wife, Julia.

George's employment at the telephone company had already allowed him to meet his first wife, given him a wartime assignment that kept him out of the trenches, and now it was about to change his life for a third time.  George and Dandy were married in 1942.

George and Dandy

My grandmother said that she had dreaded her father getting re-married after her beloved mother's death.  However, she liked Dandy, and Dandy never tried to replace her mother in any way.  They established a good relationship, and LaVerne was glad that George and Dandy made each other so happy.  Dandy was also a wonderful grandmother to LaVerne's children, all of whom spoke lovingly of her.  I had the pleasure of meeting Dandy several times in the 1980s, when she was in her nineties.  I remember her warm demeanor and the affection she showed us, even though my brothers and I were all at ages when we must have been a handful.

George in downtown Los Angeles

After their marriage, George and Dandy settled in Arcadia, east of Los Angeles.  By all accounts, they were very happy together.  They both liked to paint and were interested in photography. They shared an enthusiasm for travel and reading.  George also continued to have success at work.  In 1946, he was promoted to Plant Extension Engineer, after many years in management positions.  Outside of the office, he was involved with the Los Angeles Yacht Club, where he served on the board of directors and as chairman of the annual regatta.  My mother remembers him being quite the social butterfly, with many friends and social obligations.  He and Dandy had active social lives and enjoyed these years together.

Eventually, George retired from Pacific Telephone and Telegraph.  He and Dandy chose to retire on the same day and were given a lovely retirement party by their colleagues.  Then, George and Dandy bought an Airstream trailer and spent about a year traveling around the United States together.

George and Dandy during their travels around America

 After returning from their travels, in 1952, George and Dandy built a house at 710 Park Knoll Lane in Fallbrook, California.  Fallbrook was, at the time, a small, rural country town in northern San Diego County.  They had friends there and the quiet environment suited this time in their lives.

A modern view of the house at 710 Park Knoll Ln.  The wing on the left, with porch and chimney, is a new addition.

George left behind journals for the years 1952-1962. They detail construction of the house in Fallbrook, extensive travels with Dandy and visits with family and friends, including his daughter LaVerne (whom he called "Tommy") and her children.  Since there are too many entries to copy here, I've selected a few to give an idea of George's activities during these years.

1952, April 18: House & garage are framed, roofed, shingled, felt paper & chicken wire all around, fireplace in, hardwood floor laid in dining room, subflooring in rest of house, septic tank partly installed, electric wiring in and connected, garage doors installed.

1954, November 7: [Most of this year was spent traveling with Dandy in the Airstream]  Florida.  The dew collects at night until it looks as though it had rained.  A man in South Carolina told us that the east coast of Florida catered to the "fast" crowd while the west coast is for the more leisurely elders.  From the way they drive around here it seems that he was correct in part of his statement.  Clear day with a breeze off of the ocean.

1957, July 23: To Los Angeles, where Drs. Guiss and DeMoss, after poking the neck until it became tender, decided that the trouble is not a swollen lymph gland.  Quien sabe?  On the way home visited Tommy & family and Helen & Frank.

1961, June 24: In the past period we have (1) Visited El Jacal for some delicious Mexican food. (2) Been entertained by Tommy, Glenn and the four "at homes" at a delayed Father's Day dinner.  The food was superb & the company excellent. (3) At Dr. Lewington's request a PH blood test.  I doubt if there was ever a more unique doctor patient relationship. (4) Spent time with Helen. (5) Returned to Fallbrook today.  The trip down was through considerable heat but the weather at home was comfortable.

In 1962, George's health declined sharply.  He wrote in his journal less and his hand was shakier.  He was ill and in and out of the hospital.  Dandy began to write entries in his journal for him, noting visitors to their home and medical developments.

George Rutherfurd died of throat cancer on August 22, 1962 in Fallbrook.  He was 67 and had been ill for some time.  In his journal, Dandy wrote the following:

George went on his way today at 5:51pm.  Tommy was with him.

The funeral was held on August 25, 1962 at St. John's Episcopal Church in Fallbrook.  George was survived by his wife, Dandy, his daughter, LaVerne, and five grandchildren.  He was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California, in the same plot with his first wife, Julia Barrett Rutherfurd.