This is the 1940 census for Norman Frederick Scott. You'll find him on line 71. He is 11 years old, and living in St Peter's Orphanage on the corner of Alsace and Kelley streets in Manchester NH. The truly sad part about this is that he was not really an orphan. The story is that he was put in and out of the orphanage when things got tight for the Scott family. At one time he lived with his Uncle Fred Adams in Franklin. That will be another story to tell in another post.
Nope, his parents are still alive at this point in time. Where are they? I have yet to find his mother Cecelia in 1940, nor his father Chester. I have scanned the census for the entire orphanage and found no other Scott children. So, where did the girls go? Did they stay with their parents? Were they farmed out to relatives? I can find neither hide nor hair of his little sisters Dorothy and Yvonne.
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| 1940 census for Norman Scott, age 11 St Peter's Orphanage, Franklin NH |
This census really makes me both sad and mad. Mad because his family couldn't keep him, and sad because of the same reason. What does that do to a child's psyche to be put away when they couldn't afford to keep him? And, again, were his extended family also in a tight bind where they couldn't band together to keep the family together?
I got the impression NFS Sr did not like to talk about his childhood.
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