Tracing the history of a vintage WW1 razor - Part 7: What became of Robert Mercer?

Read all eight parts of the story here:
Part 1: The Khaki sets.
Part 2: Searching for Pvt. Robert Mercer.
Part 3: Robert Mercer Joins the Army.
Part 4: Over There.
Part 5: Battle.
Part 6: At Wars End.
Part 7: What Became of Robert Mercer?
Part 8: Fathers and their children
Part 9: Robert Mercer and Little Chicago


So, this is it then. The final chapter in this history “essay” is finally here.

What started as a casual examination of a newly acquired Word War 1 razor, eventually turned in to the story of the WW1 veteran who brought it to the war a 100 years ago. The story of the razor turned in to the story of Robert Mercer, and now, after an unusually amount (even for this examination) of digging around the archives, I can finally tell the story of his later years.

I know that a handful of “Den regulars” have been following the story closely, and to you guys I sincerely apologize that the wait for this final chapter has been so long. But now, the wait is over. This is the story of what became of Robert Mercer.


The Mercers of Virginia

When tracing Robert Mercers life, the U.S. National Archives is a very helpful resource. I have used it extensively, and a fair number of documents mentioning Robert Mercer and his family has surfaced. Actually, I have found so many documents, that it would be too much to post them all in this examination. Therefore, the family history I am about to tell, is based extensively on documents from these archives, even though I only post pictures of the most important ones.

The documents from the National Archives gives me a lot more information about Robert Mercers childhood, a subject that I only covered very lightly in part 3. Therefore, the family history you are about to read, begins before World War 1. It begins in the year 1899 when Robert Mercer was born (and yes, I am sure about the year this time).

As mentioned in part 4 I originally thought that Robert Mercer was born august 1st 1897, because that was the birth year stated in his military records. When I started unearthing old documents however, I found that most reported that he was born in 1900 leading me to conclude that he had lied about his age when he enlisted, as I wrote in part 4. But once again, I was not entirely accurate.

Robert Mercers true birthday was august 1st 1899, as the documents mentioned below will show. That means that he really did lie about his age when volunteering, but he was 17 at the time, not 16 as I previously thought.

The evidence (along with other documents shown below) is the US census of 1900. As mandated by the US constitution, article 1, section 2, the US census is done every 10 years. The 12th US census recorded the Mercer family of Virginia on June 23rd 1900, and since Robert (called Charles R. Mercer in the document) is mentioned in the census, that naturally means that he could not have been born in August that same year.



The Mercer family in the 1900 census. They are listed from row 95 to 100.


In 1900 the Mercer family was living in Marion, Virginia. Roberts father, Charles Miller Mercer was 27 years old, and he worked as a farm hand, to support Roberts mother Mary Mercer (26) and four children: Nettie M. (6), Ella G. (5), William F. (3) and 10 months old Robert. They lived in a rented house, under what must have been sparse conditions.

But things improved for the Mercer Family. Ten years later they had moved to 1001 Russel St. in nearby Bristol, a house which they owned. The family now counted 7 children and Charles was working as a railroad Engineer. A job which gave the family a good and steady income. Nettie and Ella (listed by her middle name “Gertrude”), now 17 and 15 years old, were both working as seamstresses to support the family as well.

For reasons unknown the Mercers moved to Dayton, Ohio sometime between 1910 and 1914. The reason can have been, that Charles had to relocate to keep his job, because in the census of 1920 he was still working at the railroad, now as a "switch-man", despite (or maybe because) of the move to Dayton.



Charles Mercer is listed as being a ”switch man” for the railroad in the 1910 census.


Robert Mercer in Ohio

The move to Dayton meant a new start for the Mercers, but their family life was about to be shattered.

On February 7th 1914 Mary E. Mercer, Roberts mother died. She was only 39 years old, Robert was 15. Her gravestone, which can still be seen at the Collinsville cemetery in Butler, Ohio, reads only: “Mother”.



Mary E. Mercers grave.


Marys death certificate does not state why she died, but in 1914 she also gave birth to her 9th child Margaret (she gave birth to James Mercer in 1911). That makes it possible that she died in childbirth, a very common occurrence in 1914.

When Robert signed up for the army in 1917, he was living with his sister Gertrudes family, and according to the census of 1920 he was living there again after his return from the war. His two younger siblings, Josephine (14) and Margaret was also living in Gertrudes household, but the rest of the underage Mercer children Hazel (12) and James (9) was living with Roberts father, who by 1920 had remarried.

This means that the Mercer family had been split up due to the death of Mary. Exactly how this happened we do not know, but there is no doubt, that 1914 was a tough year for Robert and his family.

I have not been able to find any evidence that Roberts only older brother Willie Mercer signed up or was drafted for the Great War, and he might even have stayed in Virginia when the Mercers moved to Ohio. So, Robert was most likely the only one in the Mercer family who fought in the war.


A wedding and a funeral

When Robert Mercer finally was discharged (honorably) from his military service on April 18th 1919, he packed his gear (including his J2164 Khaki Razor set) and went back home to live at his sister's house again. He got a job as a wood worker at a motor car company, and within half a year he had made a young girl pregnant.



The 1920 census where the Tilson household can be seen (Roberts sister was married to William Tilson). Robert is listed on row 55. In the occupation columns we can see that he is working as a wood worker for a car company.


The girl was 17-year-old Edith-Marie Balser, who was working as a clerk at the time. On July 17th 1920 Edith and Robert got married. I imagine that Robert used his Khaki razor before the wedding, but I do not think that he was thinking only happy thoughts while looking at himself in the mirror. Maybe he even looked at his razor and longed for the simpler times in Europe, when all he had to do was follow orders, stay alive and shave regularly.

The reason for me speculating in this way, is that the documents hint, that the circumstances of the wedding were not entirely happy. In 1920 It was extremely stigmatizing to be pregnant out of wedlock, and Robert married Edith-Marie only three days before she gave birth. In fact, in the 1920 census, Edith-Marie is listed as living at home with her parents on the 2nd of January. At that point, she was pregnant, though it probably did not show at the time. But obviously the pregnancy could not stay hidden, and since it must already have been quite the scandal that Edith-Marie was not married while pregnant, I think it is legitimate to theorize, that it was very important for her family that Robert did “the honorable thing” before the baby arrived. That the wedding happened mere days before the birth hint at things not going smoothly, although this is just speculation.

When the marriage of Robert and Edith-Marie was secured, all could have been well, but the problems were not over for the young newlyweds. On July 20th, Edith-Marie gave birth to a stillborn baby girl.



The marriage certificate from Robert and Edith-Maries wedding (On the lower right page).



The death certificate of the stillborn Mercer girl.


We will probably never know exactly what went on in Ohio in July 1920. There is a chance that Robert was content and in love when he married Edith-Marie, but the circumstances seems to tell us otherwise. And no matter how he (and Edith-Marie) felt about the marriage, the first days of their marriage were marred by the loss of the newborn baby-girl.

To summarize: Robert Mercer had been married, had become a father and had lost a child, all in the span of three days. Robert Mercer was 20 years old at the time.


The children of Robert Mercer

No matter how planned (or unplanned) Roberts marriage was, the young Mercers seem to have gotten over their differences rather quickly. Three months after the wedding Edith-Marie was pregnant again, and on July 14th 1921 she gave birth to Amelia-Lucille Mercer. The young couple were quickly at it again, and on June 7th 1923 Mildred Launa Mercer was born.

At this point we also encounter something of a mystery. In the censuses of 1930 and 1940 an Allan Mercer is listed as the son of Robert Mercer. In 1930 he is listed as being 9, which means he is the same age as the stillborn daughter of Robert and Edith-Marie. This opens up some possible explanations, that have one thing in common: They are all very uncertain.

One explanation is that Allen is the twin brother of the stillborn girl born in July 1920. Twin-births can be dangerous, and in 1920 they could very easily be lethal. That would offer an explanation as to why the newborn girl died. Her death certificate does not offer any proof to this theory though.

Another explanation could be, that Allen was a nephew or some sort to Robert. In that case Robert seems to have adopted him (or reported that he did so), because the 1930 census list Allen as being Roberts son.



Robert Mercers household in the 1930 census. Roberts family starts on row 34 and Allen is listed on row 36.


After showing up in the census of 1940, now 19 years old, Allen disappears from the archives (at least the archives available to me) and also from the family records. I have found evidence of an Allen Mercer who was killed in World War 2, but his data does not match with “our” Allen, so if Robert Mercers mystery son was killed in the war, we have no conclusive evidence of this, even though he seems to vanish after 1940.

This means that Allen Mercer still remains somewhat of a mystery. We might know more in 2022 though – read on to learn why.


The marriages of Robert Mercer

On the surface it would seem that by 1923 Robert Mercer had settled down. He had a young wife and three children (including Allen). Already before his wedding in 1920 he had switched jobs, and he was now working at the Baltimore Ohio Railroad Company. He started as a switch man, in 1923 he worked as a conductor, and at some point, he became a so called “brakeman”. In the 1920’s this was a good job with a steady income, and Robert kept it in the following years. He actually also kept it through the depression years, which means that the Mercers must have gotten through these tough years relatively unscathed.

Roberts father, Charles M. Mercer, had worked at the Baltimore Ohio Railroad Company ever since moving to Ohio, and there is not much doubt that it was the elder Mercer who secured the railroad job for young Robert. However, getting a job for his son was one of the last things that Charles M. Mercer helped his son with, because, sadly, he passed away due to heart problems on November 5th 1926. He was 53 years old.



Death certificate of Roberts father: Charles M. Mercer.


At the time of his father’s death Roberts marriage with Edith-Marie was on its last legs, if it had not ended already. At some point during the mid-twenties they were divorced, because on the 20th of August 1927 Edith-Marie married William Schmaltz, whom she would stay married to until 1977, where she and William died within three months of each other.

Robert Mercers stab at building a family of his own had failed, and the young family was split apart. How and why the split between Robert and Edith-Marie occurred we do not know, but at this point a pattern begins to take shape. He had impregnated Edith-Marie when she was 18 and had only married her a few days before she was due to give birth. Sometime before 1930 he had remarried, this time with Myrtle Mercer, a woman of 24. Robert had turned 30 at this point. But this marriage was also not going to last. It might even have ended in great tragedy.

Surprisingly, in 1930 his three kids (respectively 6, 8 and 9 – the eldest being the mysterious Allen) was living with Robert and his new wife, Myrtle. That would suggest that Edith-Marie and her new husband was probably going through some busy times, and that Roberts new home was the stable place to be. According to the records Edith-Marie was probably busy being pregnant a couple of times during this time. In the long run though, all could not have been too stable in the new Mercer household.

In the census of 1940 something has gone wrong between Robert and Myrtle. Myrtle have not given birth to any new Mercers (which is peculiar at the time) and Roberts two daughters from his first marriage, Amelia and Launa, now 18 and 16, are living with their mother, Edith-Marie. She now goes by the name Edith Schmaltz, and has had no less than four children with her new husband William Schmaltz.

Roberts wife number 2 Myrtle Mercer however is living alone with the now 19-year-old Allen Mercer. The odd thing is, that Myrtle is registered as being a widow, even though Robert is seemingly alive and married to a third woman, May Mercer. They are living together with a roomer and a 17-year-old daughter called Allene Mercer on 2811 Dixie Highway in Hamilton Ohio. Myrtle is living on 1026 Symmes Ave., less than 600 m. away from Robert address.



The household of the “widowed” Myrtle Mercer from the 1940 census. Myrtle is listed on row 28, Allen is on row 29.


This is puzzling, and again we have to make some assumptions based on the evidence available, to piece together what was happening in the life of Robert Mercer in 1940.

Firstly, there is little doubt that the Robert Mercer who is married to May Mercer in 1940 is the one and only Robert whom I have been tracing for some time now. The census clearly lists him as being 40 years old and born in Virginia. He is also still working at the railroad, now as a “railman”. Therefore the “new” daughter Allene is probably the daughter of his new wife May, and Robert have in all probability adopted her, since she is listed as a Mercer.



Roberts Mercers new family from the 1940 census. Robert is listed on row 63.


Having thusly identified that Robert Mercer is our man, the question remains why Myrtle is listed as being a widow. My best guess is, that that is what she told the census people that she was. Why she did that is a mystery. One reason could be, that Myrtle lied to the census people because she was mad at Robert, who had left her to live nearby with a new woman. But in the end, this is just guesswork.

What we do know though, is that Myrtle cannot have been a happy woman at the time. She was 35, childless and divorced. In all probability she was also in poor health. She spoke to the census people on the 22nd of May 1940. Less than three months later, on the 12th of August at 3.30 she died of what the death certificate describes as a “Coronary Hemmorhage”.


The 72 year wall

So, by 1940, Robert had turned 40 and had been married three times. That may be a common occurrence today, but in 1940 it was much rarer. His two first marriages seem to have been difficult ones, and Robert Mercer does not look like he was a quiet family man. Actually, he seems like a man who had trouble settling down. One can speculate that he had been traumatized from having spent his first grownup years on the battlefields of Europe, and that that was the reason behind him having trouble fitting in back home, but there is no hard evidence to suggest this. He could just as easily have been an unlucky guy, with a knack for meeting women with whom he could not find happiness.



The house on 2811 Dixie Highway in Hamilton, Ohio, where Robert Mercer lived in the early 1940’s. The house was built in the 1920’s, which means that it is the exact same house as Robert resided in.


In 1943 Robert Mercer was still living at 2811 Dixie Highway in Hamilton Ohio, and he was probably still married to May Mercer. The USA was now involved in an even greater war than the one he had fought in, and that probably brought back memories from the trenches of St. Mihiel, the mud of Meusse-Argonne and the devastation at Ypress-Lys. Based on the contents of the bladebox of his Khaki razor set (examined in part 6) he was still using the WW1 ball end razor in 1943, and the Khaki set probably still brought back memories. But now, it was a middle-aged man who stared back from the mirror. The once young recruit from the Buckeye Division was on his way to becoming an old man, while a new generation of soldiers were marching out into the world to fight in new titanic battles. The war to end all wars had failed to end war. It had instead ignited a new and even more devastating one.

But in his middle age Robert was an active man. He was a member of “The Campbell Guard Post 1069 Veterans of Foreign Wars”, “The Butler Aerie 407 Fraternal Order of Eagles” and “Local 504, Brotherhood of Railroad Train-men” (the source for this will be mentioned later). I read this as Robert being a “respected” member of his community.



Robert Mercers 1943 issued birth certificate.


For some reason Robert had a new birth certificate made in 1943. On the certificate we get the first and only sample I have found of his handwriting, as he has signed the document himself. His address is filled in with the same handwriting, and he has misspelled “Highway” as “Hiway”. That little error gives us a little hint of Roberts nature. He was a hardworking rail man, not an educated scholarly type.

The document also marks a point in time from where the investigation of Robert Mercer becomes more difficult. It is 72 years old (at the time of writing), and 72 years is the official US limit for making censuses and other personal papers public. Therefore, for instance, the 1950 census will only go public on the 1st of April 2022, making it a lot more difficult to keep track of Robert Mercer in his later years. We have in effect hit “the 72-year wall”.


The end of the story

So, the 72-year boundary could have actually spelled the end of my examination, and for quite some time I thought that I would have to come to terms with the fact, that I would not be able to properly finish the story of Robert Mercer.

This all changed a short time ago, because this Easter I finally found, and got in contact with some of Robert Mercers living relatives.

Some of the descendants of Robert Mercer are today living in the same area that Robert lived his entire adult life, so the legacy of Robert Mercer is very much alive today in Hamilton, Ohio. I am happy to say, that now some of these descendants have actually read my account of Roberts experiences in WW1, a story which they did not know any details about beforehand.

Also, they have been so gracious as to fill me in on the later life of Robert Mercer, for which I am eternally grateful. Through this contact I am now able to establish that Robert in the 1950’s was living with his 4th wife Elizabeth Mercer. They were living at 554 Ross Avenue in Hamilton, which would become the last address of Robert Mercer. Why Robert was no longer married to May Mercer at this point I do not know.



Robert Mercer’s last address on 554 Ross Avenue. The small house was built in 1907, so this is the very same house that Robert lived in in the 1950’s.


The descendants of Robert Mercer have also provided what I have been searching for for quite some time now: A Photo of Robert Mercer. So now, finally, we can get a glimpse of the man, whose story we have learnt so much about.



The handsome young Robert Mercer. The photo is probably from the early twenties, shortly after Roberts return from the war. On Roberts right (our left) is his sister Gertrude (whose family Robert lived with a couple of years before and after the war) and on his left (our right) is his sister Nettie. Robert was respectively 5 and 6 years younger than his sisters, and I seem to detect a hint of him being the unruly little brother, and them being the loving and overbearing older siblings.



For a long time i thought this to be the older Robert Mercer with his fourth wife Elisabeth in the early 1950’s. However, since my initial posting of this article, I have come in contact with yet another of Roberts descendents. She has pointed out, that the persons in the photo are actually the parents of Henry, the husband of Roberts daughter Amelia. They are, in other words the other set of great grandparents to Roberts great-grandchildren.


Roberts descendants have also provided me with documents that tells the sad story of Roberts death.


The death of Robert Mercer

On a cold Monday night on the 31st of January 1955 Robert Mercer was out working on the railroad, as he had done for the past 34 years. In what appears to be a freak accident, he fell under the train and was dragged 100 feet. The rail men who found him had to lift the wheels of the boxcar to remove his body. The incident was reported in the local newspaper:



The paper wrongly lists Robert Mercer as being 54 at the time of his death. The census of 1900 disproves this. Robert was 55 at the time of his death. The confusion must stem from the multiple different birth years reported in different official documents over the years.



The view along the tracks from the Hannover street crossing in Hamilton, Ohio. At this spot Robert Mercer died in a horrible accident in January 1955.


Apart from describing the unfortunate way in which Robert died, the newspaper article also tells us that the veteran in his fifties were active in both veteran and railroad brotherhoods, and the fraternal order of Eagles. Members of these organizations were present at his funeral, that was held the following Thursday:






The memorial card from Roberts funeral services.



A view from Dayton memorial Cemetery. One of the gravestones in the back is Robert Mercers. If any of you happen to come by the neighborhood of the cemetery, I would very much appreciate if you would take a photo of the grave. I can provide you with the plot number if you send me a message.


So, the story of Robert Mercer ends on a winter night in 1955. Robert, who had handled tons of ammunition in the great war, who had taken part in the biggest battle ever fought by US troops, who had volunteered for the war even though he was only 17 years old, who had crossed the Atlantic, in imminent danger of being torpedoed, that Robert Mercer was killed in an accident, while doing the job he had done for most of his life.

Roberts story is just one of the stories of the 2 million US troops and the 65 million international soldiers who fought in the Great War. But his story is still unique, as are all the stories of these men.

Every day history is being made, but only a very tiny fraction of it is being recorded for the ages. The story of Robert Mercer, like so many millions of our ancestors, could just as well have been forgotten, but now it has been told. And the reason for this is that he coincidentally owned and used a World War 1 Khaki razor set with the serial number J2164.


More than four years after this blog "ended" the story of Robert Mercer and his WW1 razor, the story finally continued in:
Part 8: Fathers and their children

 

Thank you, you did a great job as an investigative historian. I enjoyed the series immensely.

 

WOW, what an amazing and exhaustive research project. I really enjoyed reading about the life of Mr. Mercer. Thank you.

 

Fantastic story; incredibly well researched!

Thank you.

 

Great! (I think you mean descendants, not ancestors)

It's wonderful that you did manage to contact some of his descended family, and that you could give them information about their antecedent that they did not know.

A horrible death, but probably pretty quick as those things go. He would have been the age of one of my great-grandfather's, of whom one died long before I was born, and the other the year before I was born.

Thank you for all of your work, and giving the human touch to a human artifact makes it all the more special.

Oh - did anyone else notice that the funeral pamphlet must have been a boilerplate one? The name of the funeral conductor is a stamp.

 

Thanks alot bookworm. And of course i mean descendants. Thanks for pointing it out. Ill correct it shortly.

 

Thanks Keithmax.
It has been extremely fun to write it and watch it grow. Knowing that some of you guys really enjoyed reading it made it even more better.

 

Thank you LL. I'm very happy that you enjoyed it.

 

Thank you! And thank you for taking the time to read it

 

One more thing Bookworm... Could you elaborate on the "boilerplate thing"?
As you know I'm from Denmark (hence the ancestor/descendant mistake), so i'm not all that familiar with the things you seem to refer to concerning funeral "pamphlets".

 

Absolutely amazing work! Congratulations! And I'm happy to hear the end of the story.

 

From wiki...

"Boilerplate text, or simply boilerplate, is any written text that can be reused in new contexts or applications without being changed much from the original. The term is used in reference to statements, contracts and computer code."

and...

"'Boiler plate' originally referred to the rolled steel used to make water boilers but is used in the media to refer to hackneyed or unoriginal writing. The term refers to the metal printing plates of pre-prepared text such as advertisements or syndicated columns that were distributed to small, local newspapers. These printing plates came to be known as 'boilerplates' by analogy. One large supplier to newspapers of this kind of boilerplate was the Western Newspaper Union, which supplied "ready-to-print stories [which] contained national or international news" to papers with smaller geographic footprints, which could include advertisements pre-printed next to the conventional content."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boilerplate_text

 

In this particular case, it's a card (or whatever that thing might have been that was scanned), that had fill-in-the-blank spots. For example. "In Memory Of" - then a blank space. Then Date of Birth (blank), Departed this life (blank). Depending on how many were needed, either they'd be put in a typewriter, or a print shop would make a very careful mostly blank sheet, and just stamp in what was needed.

In this case, it looks like a combination of rubber stamps and typewriter. You can tell a typewriter from a printed sheet by looking at the alignment of the letters.
The "In Memory Of' is very straight. The "Robert Charles Mercer" goes up and down, with the S in charles being dropped lower than the rest, and Mercer going at an angle. That fits with the typewriters of the time. I suspect they had two typewriters. One with the heavier letters, and one with regular letters. Replaceable heads for typewriters didn't happen until much later. The funeral home name is nice and straight, so is either printed on the original stock by the funeral home, or a well lined up rubber stamp.

It doesn't mean much, it's just interesting to me.

 

Thanks for clearing that up guys. I get the point.
I was actually pretty surprised by the good condition of the pamphlet. The scan was done by one of Roberts descendants.

 

Thanks Rich! Im glad you enjoyed it. Im also happy to finally reach the end of the story, even though i think ill be digging a bit more into Mercers story in the future

 

Got to say that I think that is very wonderful too. It was a big moment for me when I received the photos of Mercer and got to see him for the first time! But also, it brings a whole new dimension to the research for me, knowing that Mercers family are exited to read new stuff about their ancestor.

 

Who knows. In a year or two, one of them might want to buy the razor back

Don't worry about the descendant/ancestor thing. Even people that grow up with English will do that. Your English is better than many of the people I interact with daily.

 

What a very informative piece of research and a personalizing insight into one person's journey. Thank you for doing this!

 

And thank you for taking the time to read it Jason

 

This is wonderful and I have enjoyed every section. BRAVO, SIR