No. 13038 R. H. Magwood
Photograph contained in an album at the Dorchester Historical Society of about 150 photos kept by Nathaniel R. Perkins, MD, who examined thousands of men who were going into the war, 1914-1918. Given by Mrs N. R. Perkins in accordance with instructions from her late husband, Dr. Nathaniel P. Perkins of 1122 Adams St, Dorchester. Index catalog has entries for the individuals.
R H Magwood, 63 Vinson Street, 1st Lt F.A.
Roy Holman Magwood. Written by Julie Wolf.
Roy Holman Magwood was born at 17 School Street in Dorchester on April 23, 1892; his family lived at 31 Vinson Street. Roy’s mother, Lillia T. Witherbee, who owned the School Street residence, was also a native of Dorchester, born around 1856. His father, Robert H. Magwood, was born in Charleston, SC, in 1861. By 1880, Roy’s father had moved to Boston; in that year’s census, Robert and his own father, living at 8 Grove Street, were described as mulatto. By the time Roy’s parents married in Pennsylvania in 1889, however, Robert’s race was recorded as white. Records describe Robert’s sisters and relatives in Charleston as mulatto, black, and colored. It is unknown whether Roy, an only child, knew these relatives or anything about his family’s racial identity, but he himself described his race as white. .
Around 1902, the Magwoods moved to 63 Vinson Street. Roy’s father was a prominent citizen and sought-after speaker on temperance, holding office in organizations including the Antisaloon League and the Massachusetts Total Abstinence Society. Both parents were leading members of Codman Square’s Second Church; Robert was a deacon for 36 years, and Lillia headed its Chinese Sunday school. From 1922 to 1927, Robert was president of the Dorchester Historical Society.
In his youth, Roy garnered frequent mention in The Boston Globe’s society pages, including as a guest at “leap-year birthday parties” celebrated by a Vinson Street neighbor every four years. After graduating from Dorchester High School in 1910 and from Harvard University in 1914, he worked as a salesman in Wyoming and Denver, CO. In 1917, he was a commercial engineer for Newark, NJ’s American Telephone and Telegraph Company, the employer on his World War I draft registration card. We are not sure where he lived during this time, ashe gave his address as 63 Vinson Street. Roy entered Officers’ Training Camp in Plattsburg, NY, in May 1917. Commissioned in November as a 2d lieutenant, Field Artillery, he was assigned to Camp Devens’s 303d Field Artillery, 76th Division and transferred to the Field Artillery Replacement Depot at Camp Jackson, SC, in May 1918. A month later, Roy was sent to the Field Artillery Replacement Depot at Kentucky’s Camp Zachary Taylor, promoted to 1st lieutenant in August and captain in October. He was discharged in St. Louis on December 30, 1918.
Returning home, Roy enrolled in the Boston Continuation School’s Shoe and Leather Class, one of eight men who earned certificates in March 1919. On January 3, 1920, he married Nina Louise York (called Louise) of Denver, whom he had likely met while working there. Early in their marriage, Roy was a clerk for Boston’s U.S. Shoe Leather Company on Essex Street. Along with four boarders, the newlyweds lived with Roy’s parents until relocating to Atlanta, where Roy became a salesman for leather and shoe-store-equipment dealer H. Wilensky & Sons. They remained in Atlanta for two years before returning to New England. Their only child, Lois, was born in Manchester, CT, in 1923. Lois would become a darling of New York’s 1940s nightclub scene, a “showgirl” lauded by gossip columnist Walter Winchell as “a sixth cousin of Abe Lincoln;” Roy’s wife descended from the family of Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks.
Roy resumed military service during the 1920s, although his duties are unknown. In 1924, a Columbus, IN., newspaper noted the visit of “Captain Roy H. Magwood of Boston, Mass., who is stationed at Camp Taylor, Louisville, for the present.” No address could be located for him until 1928, when his father’s obituary placed him in Framingham. This was also his home in the 1930 census. An assistant manager for J. C. Penney Co., he and Louise lived at 46 Union Avenue with a 63-year-old female boarder.
A year later, as district manager for the Berkeley Textile Company, Roy and family moved to New Hampshire. In three years, they would have as many addresses: 56 Howard and 45 Franklin, both in Keene; and, as of 1934, 137 Broad Street in Claremont, Roy’s home through at least 1954. Around 1935, he opened the Magwood Clothing Company at Claremont’s 4 Tremont Square, which he operated for about two decades.
World War II saw another return to service, with duties again unclear. On July 16, 1942, 50-year-old Roy, a captain, was stationed at Georgia’s Chickamauga National Park, which temporarily housed prisoners of war but was primarily the Women’s Auxiliary Corps basic training site. After his discharge on June 29, 1947, he returned to Claremont. For the next several years, while still running his store, he served as the town’s director of civil defense. In this capacity, he oversaw New Hampshire’s first air raid alert in 1950.
Roy ultimately relocated to Clearwater, FL, leaving retail for finance. In September 1960, he was hired by the investment firm Grimm & Company after being similarly employed on Wall Street and in Lake Wales and Clearwater. His address appears in Clearwater’s 1960 city directory as 19 Idlewild, Apartment 3.
Either shifting careers or retired, in January 1961, Roy took a position as program assistant for nearby Largo’s new townwide recreation department, serving as a chess instructor. From 1963 throughout the decade, Roy ran free chess classes and all-ages chess tournaments for Clearwater Parks and Recreation.
By the time Roy moved to Florida, he and Louise were apparently separated. Her obituary from 1972, which lists only her daughter as a survivor, suggests that she joined Roy in Florida around 1969—at least part-time, as her name appears simultaneously in San Diego city directories. Whatever the state of their marriage, they shared Roy’s 1009 Pearce Drive apartment in Clearwater in their final years. Roy died almost a year after Louise, on February 20, 1973. His obituary describes him as a “retired broker” and lists no survivors, although Lois was still alive. Funeral services took place at Moss Lakeside Chapel.
SOURCES:
Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2004.
Ancestry.com. 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2006.
Ancestry.com. 1920 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2002.
Ancestry.com. Florida Death Index, 1877-1998 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2004.
Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, Birth Records, 1840-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.
Ancestry.com. New Hampshire, Marriage and Divorce Records, 1659-1947 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.
Ancestry.com. South Carolina, Death Records, 1821-1965 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2008.
Ancestry.com. U.S., Adjutant General Military Records, 1631-1976 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Ancestry.com. U.S., African American Newspapers, 1829-1947 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.
Ancestry.com. U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Ancestry.com. U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Ancestry.com. U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.
Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2005.
Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Armstrong, Amy, comp. Boston, Massachusetts, 1913 Harvard University Alumni Directory [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2.
Autry, Brian, and Chris Barr, National Park Service, “The Women’s Army Corps at Chickamauga,” Chickamauga & Chattanooga National History Park.
Blue Book of Dorchester: Containing Lists of the Leading Residents, Societies, Clubs, Etc. …, (Boston, Mass.: E. A. Jones, 1902).
Boot and Shoe Recorder: The Magazine of Fashion Footwear, vol. 79, part 1 (King Publishers, 1921), 103.
“Claremont Has First Air Raid Alert in State.” Nashua Telegraph (Nashua, N.H.), December 21, 1950: 18.
“Clearwater—Mrs. Nina L. Magwood.” Tampa Tribune, March 25, 1972: 8.
“Clearwater Slates Open Chess Event.” Tampa Tribune, April 4, 1963: 28.
“Dorchester.” Boston Globe, April 23, 1903: 4.
“Dorchester District.” Boston Globe, August 29, 1918: 5.
FamilySearch Family Tree, Roy Holman Magwood, 23 April 1892-20 February 1973, LCVH-6ZP.
FamilySearch. Massachusetts State Vital Records, 1841-1920, database with images.
FamilySearch. Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001.
FamilySearch. Pennsylvania, County Marriages, 1885-1950, database with images.
FamilySearch. United States Census, 1880, database with images.
FamilySearch. United States Census, 1940, database with images.
FamilySearch, United States, Freedman’s Bank Records, 1865-1874,” database with images.
FamilySearch, United States, Veterans Administration Master Index, 1917-1940, database.
“Graduates Number 125: Dorchester High School Turns Out Largest Class of Any of Boston’s Mixed High Schools.” Boston Globe, June 24, 1910: 11.
Harvard College Class of 1914 Secretary’s Third Report. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1921), 170.
Harvard University Gazette, Vol. IX, 1913-1914. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914), 262.
Hide and Leather: The International Weekly, vol. 57, no. 14 (Chicago: April 5, 1919), 12-13.
“Little Old New York by Ed Sullivan (reprinted from the New York Daily News).” Boston Globe, August 18, 1942: 15.
“Lois Westen,” TulsaWorld, Dec. 2, 2014.
“Magwood Joins Securities Firm.” Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg, Fla.), September 11, 1960: 21.
“Magwood, Roy Holman.” Tampa Bay Times, February 21, 1973: 37.
“Night and Day by Dorothea Day.” Miami News, December 12, 1941: 50.
“Recreation,” Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg), December 10, 1967: 29.
“Recreation Program Is Opened at Largo.” Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg), January 1, 1961: 5.
“Robert H. Magwood Dead in Dorchester: Was for Many Years Active in Temperance Work,” Boston Globe, February 24, 1928: 17.
“Shoe and Leather Class Receives Its Certificates.” Boston Globe, March 29, 1919: 6.
The Shoe Repairer and Dealer: For Progress in the Shoe Repairing and Allied Industries, vol. 13, Jan. 15, 1921 (Gill Publications: 1921, 16).
“Society: Personal Mention: For Captain Magwood.” The Republic (Columbus, Ind.), December 16, 1918: 2.
“Society: Personals.” The Republic (Columbus, Ind.), January 21, 1924: 3.
“The Globe Latest: 6 O’Clock: Leap-Year Birthdays: Second One for 12-Year Dorchester Girl.” Boston Globe, March 1, 1904: 7.
United States War Department, Special Orders No. 163 (Washington, D.C.: 20 June 1942), 21.
“Walter Winchell: On Broadway.” Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, N.Y., May 1, 1941: 13.