Larry G. Carroll,
It seems your family has been here in Washington State for quite awhile. You sent me your
Carroll dates sometime ago. And you're in what, Cowlitz County? Perhaps you can help
me solve a Carroll mystery in that area.
Wilber Morton Carroll was a great-uncle of mine born in Kalkaska, Michigan in 1878. He
married a woman named Della Ford in 1908, and they had a daughter. They also had a
grocery store in Flint, MI.
Several years later Wilber Morton Carroll disappeared, and his wife and dauighter never
heard of him again. Finally she sued for divorce and legal custody of their daughter.
She never remarried.
Then, years later, a couple young Carroll boys drove west from Michigan looking for work,
and camping, and sightseeing. They ended up in Ryderwood, Washington, and applied for
jobs at the Bell Lumber Company there. To their amazement they found their uncle Wilber
Morton Carroll was the head of bookkeeping at Bell Lumber Co., and said to be involved in
town politics. (It was a company town) They worked there for awhile, and then returned
to Michigan.
Wilber Morton Carroll died in 1938 in Ryderwood, Cowlitz, Washington in 1938. I have
spent time trying to locate his grave, and have spent weekends tramping through cemeteries
in Cowlitz County in the rain, but never found it. Sometime later I heard he may have
been cremated, and his ashes cast into the Cowlitz river.
The whispered Carroll family story was that he had contracted syphillis and disappeared
because of that. The truth will never be known, of course, but I would sure like to find
a record of his death and final resting place near Ryderwood, Washington. That I know of
his death date, etc., comes from a box of old family papers.
Eric Olson
Seattle