Search for the new land
This photo was uncovered in an archive in Arizona by a distant cousin. It's one of those chance opportunities to view a family on the move. We have other evidence of the migration from Chicago to Southern California via directories and voter registrations, but this snapshot preserves a particular moment when two brothers were reunited, albeit briefly.
We know Clarence Petersen, kneeling on the ground at right, from other family photos, but this is a first: Clarence, his wife Dora, and Dora's dark-haired daughter Dorothy and her husband. Sometime after 1944 when the family matriarch died in Chicago, Clarence and his family relocated to Arizona where they ran a lodging house. This is documented in the family's photo collection.
But this is the only family photo of Clarence's brother, at first known as Alfred Emil Petersen, later Alva Elwood MacLaughlan, with his brother's family in Arizona. Behind Alva's uncharacteristically demonstrative wife, Marie neé Jatho, is their youngest camera-shy daughter Dolores. Next to Dolores is her cousin Fred Petersen, Clarence's and Dora's son.
The photo captures the moment in time when Alva and his family relocated from Chicago to the Los Angeles area, and since we know this happened around 1946, gives us the likely date for the photo.
There are two sons missing. Thomas MacLaughlan was in the process of exiting the U.S. Army around this time. Tom's younger brother Al MacLaughlan Jr. remained in Chicago. From a family journal, meticulously kept by Tom's future sister-in-law, we know that Tom made it to Los Angeles County by November 1946, so Tom's parents Alva and Marie were likely already in town or followed closely on his heels.
Census records provide evidence for residence only once every decade. To fill in the gaps for this family we relied on local voter registrations, specifically the collection "California, Voter Registrations, 1900-1968" via Ancestrylibrary.com, and telephone directories from the same source. The collection "California, Voter Registrations, 1900-1968" tells us that Alva in 1948 lived at 816 Washington Blvd. in El Monte city precinct number 7, Los Angeles County.
The 1950 federal census is not yet available and won't be until the year 2022, but other directory resources help us pinpoint Alva's whereabouts in surrounding areas, such as Pasadena, Azusa/Glendora, and eventually Whittier, where he died at the age of 63 in 1957.
After that date, Alva's remains, along with those of his late wife Marie, had a bit of a trek around the country before coming to rest in Santa Barbara, California. But that's a story for another time.