Smiths. The most dreaded name in genealogy. Well, that along with Jones and a handful of others. I am fairly certain I have mentioned my great grandfather, Maxie Jerrel Smith, before. He died in 1957 in Puerto Rico at the ripe old age of 31. Family story was that he was a civilian seaman who got to Puerto Rico, drank up his money (he was an alcoholic) and missed his ship. He spent a few months on the streets before contracting pneumonia and dying in a charity hospital because he had cirrhosis of the liver too badly to treat him- the meds to treat the pneumonia would be too harsh on his liver for him to survive. So they pushed him into a corner where he laid there and died. Granny got a letter from a transient he was with informing her of what happened. Maxie's body came over later on a ship with an accompanying description of the body that did not match Maxie's description and an order not to open the casket because the body had been on a hot ship for too long and would be, well, gross. We have never had a death certificate, or at least no one has seen one, although we assume granny had one at some point.
This week served as a major breakthrough, thanks to a couple of fellow ancestry.com members (seriously, I would have spent another ten years searching). A few days ago, someone found Maxie's death certificate for me. It was right there, on ancestry.com, indexed under the name Marie Smith. Therefore, it never came up in the searches, even when I searched under alternate misspellings of Maxie. And there it was, after ten years of searching, right in front of me. Not just an index entry, but an actual image of the death certificate.
From the death certificate, we have already learned a lot about Maxie's final days. He did indeed die on the date listed on his tombstone (I always wondered how accurate that was). He died of bilateral broncho pneumonia- mark another one correct for family oral history. No mention of the cirrhosis of the liver. His date of birth, spouse's names, parents names, etc are all listed as unknown. He is listed as born in Louisiana, USA. Where an address is supposed to be, it says "ambulante" which roughly translates to traveler/transient. It says he was in Puerto Rico for 3 months. He was last employed in May 1957 as a merchant marine. His employer appears to be a ship name. The first word is definitely Alcoa, as in the Alcoa Steamship Company. The second word really looks like "Pauger" or something along those lines, but there was no Alcoa Pauger, or any other Pauger for that matter. The first letter really looks like a P, and there is a definitely a g, j, or y at the back. The only Alcoa ships fitting this are the Pilgrim and the Pegasus, and this word does not look like either of those. However, there is also an Alcoa Ranger. Everytihing after the P really looks like it could say "anger". Thus, I feel like it is just a poorly written R and the ship is the Alcoa Ranger.
My first foray into researching the Alcoa Ranger turned up an Alcoa Ranger that was sank in 1942 by a German U-boat, with no notes of it ever being salvaged. End of story, every time I searched, that was all I could find. However, I had also recently searched the Alcoa Pilgrim before I discovered there was such a ship as the Ranger, and I found it was sunk in 1942 by a torpedo as well. Yet there were many lawsuits and newspaper articles referring to it being involved in a collision in the harbor in New Jersey with the African Star, another ship that was sunk in WWII. There were even photos. All from 1956. We all know that ships are sometimes named after previous ships, so I supposed that the later Pilgrim was just named after the first Pilgrim. It was obvious that there was an Alcoa Pilgrim in 1956. So I wondered if there was a second Alcoa Ranger. I had a lot of trouble finding information on this, since the most popular results involved the sunken WWII ship.
I finally found an article (thanks Wikipedia!) on the USS Prentiss, a ship not even built until 1944, commissioned in 1945 in the Navy, decommissioned in 1946, and sold in 1947- to the Alcoa Steamship Company. There it was renamed the Alcoa Ranger, obviously a nod to its sunken predecessor (it even looks a great deal like the original Ranger, but I suppose all of that class of cargo ships built in that time period look somewhat similar). This Ranger served Alcoa for nearly two decades before it was sold to another shipping company and renamed the Cortez. It was rather quickly sold and renamed again in 1969 when it promptly ran aground and had to be towed back to Mobile, Alabama. Repairs were determined to be more costly than the ship's value and it was later scrapped in 1970. Thus, this Alcoa Ranger was owned and operated by Alcoa during the time period when Maxie would have been aboard it. Further, I found information in old advertisements about the Alcoa Ranger sailing from the port of New Orleans to the Caribbean in 1957 specifically. I also found a photo of the Alcoa Ranger sailing at an unknown date in 1957. Maybe even Maxie was on it then.
In the end, I am not 100% certain that is the ship he was on, but I do think it is the best candidate. It would be very helpful if I could find port records for San Juan to see what ships came into port in May 1957. In lieu of that, a newspaper shipping column in a San Juan newspaper of the time might prove fruitful. A fellow military wife found that the National Archives in Atlanta has logbooks for ships, including the Alcoa Ranger, and I have emailed them to find out the procedure to receive copies or at the very least information on Maxie. Heck, just tell me if the ship was in San Juan at the time!
That was not all that the death certificate had to tell us. It also states where he died. That being the municipal jail of San Juan, where he had been for five days. Not a surprise. This also explains why the informant on the death certificate, a Michael V. Begne, has a detective number after his name. However, he is listed as a "friend" as well. Why was Maxie in jail? Well, Maxie had been in jail before back home in Louisiana. He was not a hardened criminal, he just found a way to get in trouble sometimes. My guesses are either 1) Public intoxication, or 2), he stole something, possibly food or money to buy more drink. A fellow ancestry member translated some of the death certificate and stated that he was transferred to the San Juan charity hospital, although it appears this may have been after his death? I am still confused on that one. There, an autopsy was performed. I would like to get a copy of that if possible. My grandmother, his daughter and next of kin, is still alive to request it. It would tell us if his drinking factored into his death and a description of the body may help clarify once and for all if it was actually him.
The other surprise? They guessed his age at 45, most likely from his appearance. He was 31. But that is what hard living and a permanent belly full of liquor does for you, I guess.
Now we can re-file our request for a copy of his military records. We had done so last year and were told that the government had no record of his death and as far as they were concerned, he was alive. Our plan of action at that time was to contact the VA for his proof of death, since they had placed his headstone, but now we can bring the death certificate itself and hopefully get records.
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