The Mystery of Clifford Stolp

From the steamer trunk.


(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of E.H.

Here, in his too-large Sunday best, is Clifford Stolp. I love that little half-smile of his. It seems to say he's planning to do something big as soon as they let him out of those glad-rags.

On the back of the postcard is a date — "Apr 9 '16" — which, assuming it's near the date the photo was taken, would put Clifford at about 14 10 years of age.



If I've got the genealogy right, he was a cousin of Minnie Rossow Harms: the son of her mother's brother, Herman Stolp, and his first wife, Katherine Schrankel.

Clifford is maddeningly elusive. The only official record I can find him in is the 1920 Census, where he says he is 18 years old, boarding* at the home of Jennie Clifford in Hobart, and working in a steel mill. (His widowed father and a younger brother were boarding at a home in Chicago.)

Before that, and after that, he is invisible. The only clue we have about his fate comes from Minnie Harms' manuscript, "As It Was Told to Me," in which she says that he "died from wounds during the beginning of World War II," leaving a wife and daughter. But I can't confirm any of that.

Even more perplexing, to me, is that I could have sworn I found, a few weeks ago, some kind of military record on Ancestry.com that gave him name as Edward Clifford Stolp. I remember thinking that I had perhaps found the reason he was so elusive — because his official first name was Edward, but he usually went by Clifford among family and friends. However, I dropped the search at the time, and didn't put that record in my "shoebox." And now I can't find it again, which makes me wonder if I only dreamed that whole episode.

And so Clifford remains a mystery.

________________________
*On Ancestry.com, the word written in the "relationship to head of family" column is transcribed as "stepson," but to me it looks more like "boarder."