Alive Through Me: Charles Evan Ruston & Ruth Ireland

I have a collection of family photos going back to my 4x great-grandparents. But they’re not just photos of dead people. I know their names. I know some of their stories. I know their lives before marriage. I see those pictures and I know who they are to me. In this series, Alive Through Me, I will be sharing the known stories behind those faces.

When I do my ancestor work I do so with the four main branches of my line, my mom’s mother and father, and my dad’s mother and father: Art, Riddle, Ruston, and Eaton. What Polish ancestry I have comes from the Ruston line but the Rustons themselves were from England.

Why they came here is a fantastic story. I’d like to introduce you to my 2x great-grandparents.

Charles Evan Ruston was born July 4, 1847 in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, England to the far north of London. His parents were Richard Ruston and Anna Richardson. Richard was a wealthy land owner who employed a lot of hands. He would later own a popular department store of some kind.

Charles was the oldest of four siblings. He had three brothers and a sister; Frederick, Allpress, Emily, and Thomas. Charles was baptized at age 13 and a year later he is possibly listed as a pupil in another home in Oundle, Northamptonshire but appears back home by age 24.

Ruth Ireland was born in May of 1861 in Doddington, Cambridgeshire, England to William Ireland and Phoebe Lenton. She was also the oldest of four children, followed by Emma, Louisa, and Phoebe. I am guessing her mother might have died in childbirth with Phoebe as they share a first name. Whether that’s true or not Ruth must have lost her mother before she was a teen because at 12 years old she became sister to a fifth child, her half-sister Kate Ireland.

In 1881 Ruth is listed as a visitor in the parish of St. Benedict. She was a maid in the household. This is the year that everything changed.

On a free-European-Parish-records weekend on Ancestry, I learned that the household Ruth worked for and the Ruston family attended the same church. I know that Charles and Ruth married in England and then came to America. All in 1881. He was 33 and she was 21.

There is more to the story, of course, passed down through generations. Somewhere in between the tales lies truth but I will share what I know as I have been told it. As I remember it being told to me. Ruth caught Charles’ eye and they fell in love. Richard Ruston forbid his son from marrying the maid as the well-to-do man’s son was destined for a better marriage match. If Charles married her, he would be cut off.

Charles and Ruth did marry and soon after boarded a boat for America.

In the new world they settled in Lockport, NY. I do not know what brought them that far from the coast. I don’t know if they knew someone in Western New York, or if there were hawkers trolling for laborers at the dock when they disembarked, or if they arbitrarily pointed at a map.

Curiously, I do not know how many months into 1882 their first child was born, a daughter named Maud. But that knowledge may be a clue as to why the sudden marriage and relocation.

Six years after Maud, their son Frank William was born. He is my Great-Grandfather. After another eight years, their daughter Ruth was born. Neither of my Great-Aunts married before 1940, which was the last census I could find. Maud was 57, working as a secretary for the YWCA. Ruth was 43, working as a clerk at/on Cupson Road. Ruth Ireland, listed on the census as Mrs. Charles Ruston, was 78.

92 Saxton Street

Charles had many jobs in America. In 1900 and 1905 he was listed as a farm laborer.

In 1913, their son and my great-grandfather Frank William Ruston married Minnie Estelle Wicker, the daughter of a wealthy family.* [Huh. I just made that connection. The more ways I write about my ancestors the more fully fleshed they become to me.]

In 1915 Charles worked as a grocer but in 1920, and on, he was a laborer with Harrison Mfg. When I was a girl it was called Harrison Radiator, but still manufacturing. Charles and Ruth owned their own home at 92 Saxton Street in Lockport.

Ruth & Charles, back center, and their American family. Great-Grandpa Frank on the far right. Grandma Ruth in the front with the doll. Great-Grandma Minnie took photo. Maude is between Charles and Frank, and due to resemblance, I might say the seated woman on the left may be the other sister Ruth.

Charles died in 1933 and Ruth lived on with her two daughters. As far as my research shows, Frank was the only child of theirs to have any children, making Ruth Emma and Richard Wicker their only grandchildren.

Charles never kept his lineage a secret. It appears as though he even named his son for his father—or maybe a beloved brother. A couple generations back, cousins travelled to England and pointedly stopped at the Rustons to say hello from the American cousins. But the family had kept their promise to cut Charles off. Even though he shows clearly as Richard’s oldest son on the English census reports, none of the family members would acknowledge relation to any Charles Evan Ruston. It’s entirely possible that they feared previously-hidden family members were looking for their share of the Ruston money. Despite how much my cousins tried to say to the contrary, they were turned away.

The Cambridgeshire Rustons may have clipped off a branch of the family tree but thankfully there is documentation that proves what a man’s pride tried to hide.

*At the time of their wedding, father Charles was working as a farm laborer. I imagine that the marriage into one of the more well-to-do families of Lockport was a boon in some way. Minnie was the only child of Hiram King Wicker and Emma Angeline Whitcher. Hiram was a well-off store owner, one of the first fire chiefs of Lockport, and the head of the Masonic Lodge.