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Information from Greg Spadoni
Olalla, WA, USA July 2023
The wife of Henry Albert Fleuss, Rosabelle, and their son, Albert, both
ended up in the northwest corner of America. Attached is
Albert's obituary, from the Peninsula Gateway, the weekly
newspaper of Gig Harbor, Washington. It was rather charitable
for the cause of death to be listed as a nervous breakdown, when
in reality, he died of syphilis. It's unlikely the newspaper was
aware of that. Albert was indeed one of the leading citizens of
Gig Harbor, very active in civic affairs. He's completely
forgotten today, for his very important machine shop was
purchased from his widow in the mid 1940s by a guy named Howard
Cox, who was extraordinarily gifted as a machinist and mechanic,
and lasted forty years or more, so eclipsed anything Albert had
done. Albert's
machine shop building is still standing, in the heart of Gig
Harbor.
Albert came to America in 1910 from Canada,
apparently having arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
(I specify that because Washington state also has a city named
Vancouver) in 1909. He owned a car in Seattle in 1913, which is
also the year he married his first wife, Fannie. She died the
next year of complications due to a thyroid operation. She was
born in Denmark.
There is an anomaly here which may explain
why Albert Henry left for America.
There is a Marriage
Certificate for Albert Henry being married to Ellen Mary Allen
in 1908, 2 year before he and his mother left for Vancouver.
The reference below to "second
wife" may have to be "third wife".
His second wife was Annie Cooke, though his
wife at the time of his death was named Nancy. I'm pretty sure
Annie and Nancy was the same woman. The name seemed to alternate
throughout the years. Nancy was from England. In 1949 she moved
back to England, to "make her home with a sister in
Strathcona." I don't know if Cooke was her maiden name or a
previous married name. Listed as 52 years old in the 1940
federal census, she was born about 1883.
During WW1, when he registered for the military draft, Albert
was a machinist in Seattle, and his mother, Rosabelle, was
living in Seattle too. At some point she moved to Vancouver,
British Columbia, Canada, for a few years, but was living in
Tacoma, Washington, when she died in 1938.
Obituary
for Albert Henry Fleuss
We are left with the question as to why
Rosabelle left her Husband in England to go with her son to
Vancouver. Yet another eccentricity within this Fleuss
family with the issues of Katherine Fleuss "going of with a
count leaving 5 girls", and Dorothy Fleuss having her son adopted
and then within 2 years marrying the boy's father and both having
to leave for America in WW1 because of anti-German prejudice What
a family! |
