Passing of "Clarence" Siener

Clarence F. Siener, 42, assistant accountant in the Station Accounting bureau of the Auditor of Revenues department at Cleveland, died in hospital there on July 14. He was born at Buffalo and joined the Erie July 7, 1914 as messenger at Black Rock, NY. He was employed at Buffalo until Feb. 1, 1933, when he was transferred to Cleveland. He was a member of the Erie Railroad Veterans Association and lived at 1858 Allendale Avenue, East Cleveland.

Thanks to Google Books, I discovered the above notice, which appeared in a 1942 issue of Erie Railroad Magazine. The above photograph is Clarence (circa 1937) holding his son Richard, with wife Harriet in the background.

Clarence was my maternal grandfather. Officially, his name was Francis Xavier Siener, but I am told that his sisters (for reasons that are lost to time) nicknamed him “Clarence,” and it stuck.

He was born in December of 1899, which means he was fourteen years old when he joined the railroad.

Update on Calden surname

On March 9th, I wrote about my second great-grandfather “John Callinan, otherwise known as John Calden and John Callanan.”

Still a bit confused by the name variants, I was poking around the Web and stumbled upon the below comment.

“People who were accounted for by scribes and church officials often had their name recorded many different ways because pronunciation was the only guide those scribes and church officials had to go by. This resulted in the problem of one person’s name being recorded under several different variations, creating the illusion of more than on person. Among the many spelling variations of the surname Calden that are preserved in archival documents are Callan, Callanan, Caillan, Calan, Calanan, Callen, Callin, Callon, Callinan, Callinon and many more.” (www.Houseofnames.com)

So, I guess Calden, Callanan, and Callinan were not “aliases,” in the clandestine sense.

Yes, spelling variations make sense, but…to me that implies that the pronunciations of the variations would be similar, and the above list seems like a stretch. Of course, the written records would be based on one person speaking the name and another person hearing, interpreting, and spelling the name, so I guess a lot of interpretation is involved—which does not make my research any easier. Interesting though.