Who is Gertrude Valleau?

Allow me to explain.  Gertrude is the daughter of Mary O'Dea -Valleau and Charles Valleau.  Mary O'Dea is a sister of Marguerite O'Dea - Brady, my paternal grandmother.  Therefore, Gertrude Valleau is my first cousin one time removed.  More easily said - she is my father's first cousin.

Gertrude was born in Jersey City somewhere around 1907 or 1908.  In the 1920 and 1930 censuses, the family lives in Tenafly, NJ.  In 1930, Gertrude still lives in Tenafly with the family and her occupation is listed as Physical Training Teacher.  By the 1940 Census she is married to Charles Metzger with two children: Charles and Susan (who is the subject of my next blog).  They live in Ewing Twp and Charles' occupation is college professor, and both Charles and Gertrude's education status is C5, meaning that they completed more than four years of college.

Let me break here to add that I don't know how I started to check into this line, but when I entered Charles Metzger into Ancestry.com, I found that someone else has a family tree on line that has both Charles and Gertrude in the tree.  I have e mailed the tree owner, but have not received a response yet.  Anyway, on that family tree, I found a photo with a caption of Charles and Gertrude Metzger:

What do you think? Wedding picture maybe?  I sent the picture to my cousin Linda - who is my O'Dea expert - but she could not be sure if this was Gertrude.  The other thing I found was a social security death index entry for Charles Metzger.  He died in Lakewood, NJ 23Aug1996.  I tried to find an obit in the Ocean  County Library newspapers on microfilm - but no luck.  But my trip paid off big time for my next post.

So then I checked Gertrude Valleau on Ancestry.com and found the census records that I already had, but then I found school yearbook entries.  No not High School - a College yearbook!!  There were three entries:

Well, that answers the question of who is in the first picture:

Group shot and I have no idea yet which one is Gertrude, but her name is listed so she must be in the picture, and last but not least:

This was a snippet from a class prophecy type page, I don't know if they eloped or not but this is the 1929 Yearbook and in 1930 she is living at home with mom and dad in Tenafly teaching.

So Gertrude and Charles do get married (or elope) and they have two children of their own: Charles and Susan.  I found that Charles lives in Arizona and Susan married and winds up living most of her adult life in Maine, but that is the subject of my next post.

This is my favorite picture.  It is from the Trenton Sunday Times from 29 May 1927 and the caption which I could not easily scan says:  Prospective Teachers enjoy baseball.  Among the most popular sports at the Trenton Normal School are the bi-weekly baseball contests.

Above is Gertrude Valleau about to pitch a wicked curve.

There were other articles that I found along the way.  One from January 1955 says that Gertrude and her mother Mrs Mary Valleau (who had been widowed in 1946) went on a vacation to Mt Dora Florida. The next month in February 1955, there was a second article stating that Gertrude and her mother Mrs Mary Valleau had returned home from a vacation in Mt Dora, Florida.  The next article was Mary's O'Dea Valleau's obituary in the 17 May 1955 Trenton Times.  So at least they had a nice vacation together before Mary died.

I can't end a story about Gertrude without this last piece:

This is my kind of story - lots of pictures.  So Gertrude and Charles end up moving to Lakehurst, NJ - right down the road from me, and on to Lakewood, where Gertrude dies.  This obit is from the Trenton Times 7May1989, and Charles dies seven years later - his is the obit that I went to the library to find, but never did.

One more thing, I remember when I was younger, that Charlie and Gertrude Metzger had a family reunion in Lakehurst and my family went.  I did not go, and I don't remember why - I was either away at college or I had left school and was a cop at the time and had to work, or I just had much better things to do at Kelly's Tavern.   It is amazing what you think is important in your youth.   Either way, when I found all of this stuff and realized that I had a chance to meet them and missed it.  Well let's just say that I am kicking myself.

So in the end, the answer to the question "Who is Gertrude Valleau?" is pretty complex.  She was a daughter, sister, wife, and mother.  She was also a college graduate at a time when most women did not attend college, she was an athlete who taught physical training, and was an American Red Cross Life Examiner - maybe a lifeguard or EMT of her time, on the college hockey team, swim team, and basketball team.  Sounds like she was ahead of her time, and I am sorry that I missed the chance to meet her.