My great-grandfather, PopPop Fox joined the US Navy at 16. When they found out he was only 16, they sent him home. It was 1917 and surely he would have been sent to fight where forces were needed in World War I. Instead, he had to wait until he was 18 to enlist and by the time he was trained, the war was near its end. In 1920 he was stationed in Vallejo, California, serving on the USS Nebraska.

The first born of an American steel worker father and a Welsh immigrant mother, Frank Kermit Fox was born in Reading, Pennsylvania in the fall of 1900. Their family moved to Philadelphia somewhere between 1907-1910. Grandma always spoke very highly of her parents, and she was close with them both. They struggled to have children, but finally they welcomed their first (and only) baby, my grandma, seven years after they were married. They named her Joan Elizabeth.

By this time, they were working and living in Baltimore, Maryland, and on occasion visited his family back in Philadelphia. My great-grandmother Fox would ask about her husband’s parents, especially his father’s family but very short answers were given. “He was born in New York or New Jersey.” This is a branch that continues to be a mystery to us.

So what was the story on Frank Kermit Fox’s father, Frank Fox Sr.?

Frank married Elizabeth Anne Simmons (née West), a widow with nine children. First question that comes to my head is: why? She was born in Wales around 1871 and married John Simmons when she was very young. They immigrated to Philadelphia in 1893 on the SS Maryland with five children and had the other four in the US from the records I can find. When her husband died in April of 1899, she meets Frank (how, I’m not sure) and they show up in Reading together by June of 1900, saying they’ve been married for six months. My great-grandfather is born in October of that year. In the next five years, they would have his two sisters, Mae and Fern. I think twelve kids is quite enough to have in a very populated city like Philly.

I have no idea who Frank’s parents are and it’s been gnawing at me to figure it out for years. Another thing that drives me nuts is that I can’t even pinpoint where Frank Sr. lived or what he was doing prior to marrying the Widow Simmons (sometimes spelled Simmonds) in 1900. I can’t seem to find a marriage record or registration for the two, and there are so many Frank Foxes in Philadelphia, Reading, New Jersey, and New York that city directories are of little help for now without some other strong information to support that one of those is our Frank Fox. The only other document that gives me any kind of clue to his past is his death certificate. It’s not a pleasant one.

He was found off the Disston Street wharf of the Delaware River on August 6, 1939. They didn’t lived far from there, on Tulip Street, and though it says Inquest Pending on his death certificate, the next document only says death by drowning. Family stories tell us that he was taking a walk along the river and had a heart attack, fell in the river and drowned. He was 72 (ish).

What’s interesting is that it looks like someone corrected the birthdate from 27 April 1865 to 1867 and his age from 74 to 72. I don’t know why it was changed, but I noticed it. While normally death certificates are like liquid gold for genealogists, it didn’t help me at all to give me names of his parents. It only says “Not known” and that he was born in New York City.

But did his wife Elizabeth really know it was New York City? Or was it even in the state of New York? Occasionally I run a search for their marriage record, or a birth record of sorts for both dates and different parts of New York or New Jersey. A newspaper scan here and there.

Then I found an entry for a Social Security Application and Claims Index for a Frank Fox. It was made in December of 1937 about a year after the first Social Security card was issued. Frank was still working an Elevator Operator at a Dying Company in Philadelphia so it’s possible he filled out an application for one. The other information this index gives me is the SS number, date and place of birth, and his parents names!

The date on this particular record was 27 Apr 1865 and place was New York City. The first three digits of the social security number told me that it was issued in Pennsylvania (where he was living at the time).

If James Fox and Jane E. Bogart are truly the names of my 2x great-grandfather’s parents, that cracks open a whole new area of searching I can dive into.

So I make a list of all my old and new questions, to help guide my searching.

1. WHEN did Frank come to Reading? As a child or as an adult?
2. Was he born in New York City for real?
3. If his parents were James and Jane Fox, were they NYC natives? Or were they immigrants?
4. What happened to James and Jane?
5. Why didn’t Frank ever talk about them to family?
6. What are the details about Frank and Elizabeth’s marriage that must have happened around December 1899/January 1900 (per the info found in the 1900 census)?
7. From Elizabeth’s husband’s death in April of 1899 to the birth of my great-grandfather Frank Kermit in October of 1900, what was life like for them and the mess of kids that now had a new step-father?

This blog post was started over 10 years ago, and since the paper trail is still a brick wall, I’ve been doing some DNA digging. No big ah-ha moments yet, but there is some interesting patterns I’ve been seeing with my grandma’s DNA results. I have been able to tag many matches to the known two branches on her maternal side (Nevins and Taylor), and to her Grandmother Fox’s side (West and Rees). So the matches that aren’t matching to the other 3 branches? I’m getting places in New Jersey like crazy. And in northern Georgia. So that is super intriguing to me.

My guess is that in 1864/5 a northerner met a southerner somehow during war time and Frank Fox Sr. came into the world. Now, whether he was given away, adopted, or his parents were biologically James Fox and Jane E. Bogart, is another question that I wonder about.

If I’m fortunate enough to get a break in this search, look for a new blog post about the findings of our mystery man Frank Fox, whose secrets were lost for good in the Delaware River in August of 1939.

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