Census Sunday: Millard and Edith

If I follow my established pattern, it’s time to discuss my maternal grandparents.  However, I did that already HERE long before I decided to dedicate Sunday to the 1940 census.  So instead of discussing Granddaddy and Grandma Davis, I’m moving on to the aunts and uncles.  First up, Granddaddy’s brother Millard.

Millard and Edith Kite Davis
I can see that Millard had his father's dapper style
and Edith was very pretty as a young woman.

I always thought Millard and Edith Irene Kite Davis lived their entire married lives on Sixth Street in Shenandoah, Virginia.  But no.  I was surprised to find them instead in Norfolk, Virginia in 1940.  Apparently my perception that Ocean View was merely a vacation destination for them was incorrect.

Click to englarge

Image from Google Maps
The apartment building must have been on that vacant
corner lot.  I can remember seeing their building,
so the demolition is fairly recent.

They were renting apartment 4A on 3241 Granby Street for $35 a month.  If they lived there now, they could walk across the street to Lafayette Park and the Norfolk Zoo.

Image from Google Maps

The formal entrance to the park is right across the street.

Millard was working as an assistant storekeeper for the Norfolk & Western railroad. He was fully employed throughout 1939 and had worked 44 hours the last week of March 1940. His salary was recorded as “C” and then marked through. I have no clue what “C” could have meant since the salary is typically a dollar amount.

In 1935 Millard and Edith were living in Page County, Virginia, presumably in the same house as in 1930, which was next door to Walter and Mary Frances Jollett Davis, Millard’s mother and father and my great-grandparents. But in 1940, they were renting their house to Thomas and Edna Jensen for $20 a month. Jensen was a signal supervisor for the railroad. Maybe he and Millard met at work. 

By 1942, according to his draft registration, Millard and Edith had moved to 15^th Street in Ocean View. Again, another surprise: Millard had a tattoo on his lower left arm. 

The following year they returned to Shenandoah where Millard accepted a position as storekeeper for the railroad. He died a short eight years later. 

I wonder what other surprises Millard and Edith revealed in the 1950 US Census.

©2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.