Search result for " Ernest Monroe Thornton "
Ernest gets arrested
On November 25, 1940, my grandfather Ernest Monroe Thornton was arrested after firing 3 shots at James Rucker during a fist fight at West Park Cafe at 1111 Federal St. (3 blocks from his apartment) North Side, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The “cafe” was a rough place with gambling, drinking and repeated code violations. Read more in the updated chapter PDF:
Ernest and Helen Thornton
Ernest Monroe Thornton was born in 1902 in Radford, Virginia. At a young age his father drowned and his mother died of pneumonia. Around the age of 20 he moved to Pittsburgh for a better life. Helen Lucille Strawser was born in Preston County, West Virginia. They met and married and started a family. Ernest worked as a watch repair and maker and the family appeared to be doing well in North Side, Pittsburgh, PA.…
Birth Certificates
In September 1942, the American women’s magazine Good Housekeeping published an article “Why you need a birth certificate.” “America has suddenly become aware of birth certificates,” it declared. Between 1940 and 1943, as the United States shifted into a wartime industrial economy, many native-born Americans faced difficulty proving that they were, in fact, citizens by birth. In the early 1940s, about 43 million Americans—nearly one-third of working-age population—had no such document. Their births had never…