Thanks for Traveling Frederick! ~ Esther Travels Again

This is part of a series of posts in which I share the documents relating to the travels of Watson (Frederick) Emory Webster and his family.

Esther (Matus Villatoro) Webster

This is my maternal great-grandmother, Esther Matus Villatoro. She was married to my "Traveling Dentist" great-grandfather, Watson (Frederick) Emory Webster.

The last time I shared a travel-related document about Esther with you, she was traveling with her one-year-old daughter, Carlota. They were listed on a passenger list dated October 19, 1911.

The passenger list¹ I'm sharing with you today is dated late January - February of 1913. As of this date, Esther was the mother of two young daughters, Carlota and Edna. And these two daughters were Esther's traveling companions on the S.S. Voltaire sailing from Santos, Brazil to the Port of New York.



Here's a cropped portion of the passenger list.



What information can we glean from this passenger list?

1. Esther, Carlota, and Edna sailed on the S.S. Voltaire
2. Port of departure – Santos, Brazil
3. Date of departure – January 29, 1913
4. Port of arrival – New York, United States
5. Date of arrival – February, 1913
6. Esther's age – 19
7. Esther's sex – Female
8. Esther's marital status – Married
9. Esther's place and date of birth – El Paso, Texas in 1893 (This is incorrect. She was born in Arriaga, Chiapas, Mexico. At the end of this line under the column heading "Address In United States" the correct place of birth is listed for Esther. Perhaps there was some miscommunication here. I also see another bit of incorrect information listed on this line. See the words "Husband born in Chicago, Ill." in parentheses? That is also incorrect. Frederick was born in Coolville, Athens, Ohio.)
10. Under the column heading "Address In United States," El Paso, Texas is listed in parentheses. I'm wondering if that's where they were headed to meet their husband and father, Frederick Webster, a.k.a. "The Traveling Dentist."
11. Carlota's age – 1
12. Carlota's sex – Female
13. Carlota's marital status – Single
14. Carlota's place and date of birth – It looks like US is crossed out and the correct place and date of birth are in the next column listed as Arriaga, Mexico in 1911. Also notice that in parentheses it says "Daughter of USC." I think it's safe to assume that USC stands for U.S. Citizen, not University of Southern California. Haha!
15. Edna's age – 3 months
16. Edna's sex – Female
17. Edna's marital status – Single
18. Edna's place and date of birth – Again, the correct information is listed in the next column over. She wasn't born in Mexico like her sister Carlota. Edna was born in Santos, Brazil in 1912.

As you can see from looking at the information in this document, it contained some errors. If I had only relied on this one document in my research, I would have recorded inaccurate information in my family tree. It's really important to find all the documents we can when researching our ancestors so that we can make sure the information we have for our ancestors is as accurate as possible.

It's interesting that El Paso, Texas is listed on this passenger list. I think it's quite possible that Frederick was, in fact, in El Paso, Texas and that Esther, Carlota, and Edna were meeting him there. In a passport application for Frederick dated April 17, 1907, he stated that his permanent residence at that time was El Paso, Texas. Perhaps he had ties there and returned in 1913.

I find it amazing that Esther, as a young mother, was traveling alone with two very young children. She must have had her hands full on that ship all by herself. And if she was continuing on to El Paso, Texas, she still had about 2,000 miles yet to travel with her two young daughters.

Thanks for reading!

Jana

© 2013 Copyright by Jana Last

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1 Source Citation: Year: 1913; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715; Microfilm Roll: 2016; Line: 1; Page Number: 142. Source Information: Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.^↩