52 Ancestors 2026: What the Census Suggests (about the neighbors)

The census suggests a lot of things, but this one was not something I expected.  I was browsing Ancestry which suggested a hint from the 1930 census for my great-grandparents (my maternal grandmother's parents, northern European ancestry).  I love looking at the census records and I am getting better at reading them for maximum information.  On this particular page, my eye was caught by the oddity that there was only one veteran marked out of all the people on the page, and this veteran, Sanford England, seemed to have served in the Spanish American War, not the Great War as you might have expected.  My great-grandfather was too old to have participated so I wasn't too worried about him but this other fellow who lived five doors down from him on Pacific Highway in the precinct of Tumwater Washington. . .

Sanford England was living as a boarder in the home of Edward Scott and his wife and mother-in-law.   He was 59, born in Indiana, while both of his parents were born in Tennessee.  He was a widower, he worked as a janitor in private homes.  He could read and write.  What made Sanford and his landlord and the landlord's family stand out was that these folks were listed as "Neg"  Tumwater was a small town, just outside the state capital of Olympia and this was just unexpected (though one of the earliest and most revered settlers in Tumwater was a man named George Bush who was listed as Mulatto in the records I've seen).  A quick look at pages on either side of this entry did not show any other black households.

The landlord, Edward Scott, 27, his wife Bendina, 40 (not a mistake), and his mother-in-law Celia West, 69, were living with Mr. England in a house that was owned by Edward and valued at $4500, which was more than nearly all of the houses on that page, and which had a radio, also unusual.  Clearly Edward was doing well in this unlikely location. 

This set me looking for further information in Newspapers.com.  The Daily Olympian and its predecessor were dedicated to printing all of the local gossip and the Scott family did provide a bit.   Edward owned a window cleaning company, Capital City Window Cleaners, which was clearly doing very well.  In 1926, his wife, Bendina entered her puppy in a local dog show (and won!), using a handler.  Then things begin to go a bit grim.  In 1934, Edward announced several times in the local paper that Sanford England was no longer employed by Capital City Window Cleaners, apparently as the result of some on-the job pilfering, though the judge who got this case declined to pursue it, claiming that he didn't have jurisdiction.  At this point, Sanford disappears from the local record.

More seriously, in early June 1938, a front page story repeated over several days in the Olympian reported that a burglary had taken place in the Scotts' home and nearly $1500 in cash had been stolen.  Mrs Scott, described as a "negress" was tied up and left in a closet until discovered by her husband when he came home for lunch.  The couple had not kept their cash in a bank since they seem to have lost $200 when their previous bank closed two years earlier.  They had been planning to move this cash that very day to a "safety deposit vault" at Talcott's, a local jewelry store.  (Talcott's was still in business when I was a young woman in the 1970s and my family had made many purchases there over the decades.)

The local police, state police and sheriff's offices were all involved in investigating this crime, which leads me to believe that the Scotts were well-thought-of in Olympia and Tumwater.  Though several people were arrested over the next few months, a year later Don Miller, 22, confessed to the robbery.  

Bendina and Edward were together in the 1940 census.  Bendina passed away June 4, 1941.

Edward shows up twice more that I could be certain of (confusingly, another Edward Scott lived in the area and I nearly went astray looking at that one).  Edward remarried in 1942:  Iris M. Smitherman was 22 while Edward was 40.  Bendina on the other hand was 12 years older than Edward.  Neither of these marriages seems to have produced children and the only survivors listed for Edward when he died in 1971 were his two sisters, Mrs. Martha Scott Riley of Newark, NJ, and Mrs. Jaqueline Mitchell, White Plains, NY.  Edward was born in either South Carolina (obituary) or the District of Columbia (Census data) in 1901.  His last address, as given in the obituary, was on the south end of Tumwater, not far from Interstate 5 and I think not too far from his original address on Pacific Highway.

I didn't find any indication of what brought Edward to Tumwater or how he got his start in business. I did not find any photographs of Edward, though Bendina's picture appeared in the Daily Olympian for the robbery story.  I have to believe that my family was aware of the Scotts, especially after the spectacular robbery of their home, and also because my paternal grandfather had a roofing business in Olympia, both of my parents had lived in Olympia or Tumwater all of their lives, and it was a relatively small place:  a successful Black businessman would definitely stand out.  I am just glad that the Scotts seem to have been treated with respect and care in an era when Black families did not always get that from their white neighbors.