1411 E. 63rd St. - The Beals: Malcolm, Mattie, Bernice, and Malcolm Jr.

House built: 1909
Cowen's University Park
Plat Block: 3 Plat Lot: 4
1910 address: 1411 E 63 St
Current address: 1411 NE 63rd St.

Malcolm Beal, age 30, was born in Kansas to Canadian-English parents. In 1910 he was employed as a travelling salesman in baking powder (KC Brand, of the Jacques Manufacturing Co., Chicago, IL).

At the time of the census, he and Mattie had been married for nine years.

Mattie K. Hall, age 29, was born in Texas. Her father had been born in Indiana, her mother in Ohio.
Malcolm and Mattie were married in Garfield County, Oklahoma on 18 Dec 1901.

They had two children: Bernice, age 9, who was born in Oklahoma, and Malcolm H., age 1, born in Pennsylvania.

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When I decided to tackle the project of researching the people in the 1910 census for the neighborhood that would become Roosevelt, I wasn’t sure where to begin. My natural choice would have been the house that my husband Brad and I own. It was certainly there in 1910, according to the Baist Atlas for 1905 (though we and the King County Assessor understood that the house had been built in 1909). But it wasn’t included in the 1910 census.

Maybe it was vacant in April of 1910. Maybe the inhabitants were away on vacation or business. Maybe the census taker had slipped up. Maybe a sheet has been lost. I know not.

For a first entry, the Beals are perhaps a little dry ... which is to say, they didn't make the papers. The public information available about them is limited, as is the public information available for most people in a pre-Internet, pre-overshare world. But they were the first family in Ward 11, Enumeration District 188, visited by Oscar Olson, Enumerator. And so I begin with them.

We know by the birth places of their children that they traveled. We know, by the birth places of Malcolm and Mattie, and those of their parents, that a segment of American society was as transient as our own. We know that they brought the new baby to a new house in a new neighborhood. Seattle's population had nearly doubled between 1890 and 1900. Cowen's boosterism predicted a 1910 population of 500,000 - a number not reached until 1960 - but the population continued to grow nonetheless.

The family was Not From Here, and in that respect, they resembled the majority of their neighbors. Of the 751 people enumerated, only 145 were born in Washington; of those, 115 were 10 years old or younger.

They were white, as was 98% of the enumeration district. They could read and write English. All but two could. Mattie listed "none" as her trade or profession. Only four wives listed other employment. Bernice went to school. Only a handful of children didn't.

The 1910 census was the only one to ask mothers to list the number of children born and the number of children still living. Of the 154 mothers in the enumeration district, 51 had suffered the death of one or more of her children. It's an aspect of early 20th century life that is almost incomprehensible to 21st century American experience.

Mattie's neighbors would have understood her loss, and would not have shunned her in her grief, when Baby Malcolm died in January of the following year.

The family lived in the house until 1919, when they moved to across Lake Washington to Medina.