Chalmers Gaston
Chalmers Gaston was born on 2 April 1877 in Chester County, South Carolina, the ninth of the ten children of Lee Gaston and Drucy Bailey. His death certificate and his obituary both name his parents. His father had ridden with the 1st South Carolina Cavalry in the Civil War and farmed in the Baton Rouge neighborhood of the county.
Chalmers was nine in 1886, the year his family came apart. In August his brother Johnie Jefferson died at fifteen. In December his father shot and killed his sister Susana's husband, William Estes, on the ride home from Chester, with both men drunk. Lee Gaston was tried for murder at Chester in March 1887 and acquitted. Susana remarried and was widowed again within ten months. His mother died in 1889, when Chalmers was twelve, and his father in 1892, when he was fifteen.
He married Mary Cornelia McKeown, ten years younger than he was. In 1910 the census found them in Baton Rouge township of Chester County: Chalmers, thirty-one, Mary, twenty-two, and two small children, James M., three, and a daughter written as Virginie, one. That baby was Virginia Louise Gaston, born on 11 February 1909, who married Leonard Campbell at Chester in 1925. Chalmers's obituary of 1953 names her first among his daughters, as "Mrs Leonard Campbell".
In September 1918, at forty-one, Chalmers registered for the First World War draft at Chester. He gave his address as Route 1, Lowrys, and his work as farmer, for W. M. Gaston, very likely his older brother William Mack Gaston. His nearest relative was Mrs. Mary Gaston. The registrar described him as tall and stout, with blue eyes and sandy hair.
More children followed: Carrie in 1911, Ellie Harmon in 1917, Marie in 1920 and Chalmers Marion in 1925. The youngest became a staff sergeant in the 331st Infantry. He was killed in action in Belgium on 12 December 1944, aged nineteen, and lies in Evergreen Cemetery at Chester under a military stone.
Chalmers later moved into the town of Chester. He belonged to Mount Pleasant Presbyterian Church. He died at home, 205 West Elliott Street, at 3:30 in the afternoon of 20 February 1953, aged seventy-five. His doctor, C. W. Brice Jr., gave the cause as bronchopneumonia of ten days, following five years of hypertensive heart disease. The certificate calls him a retired farmer. His wife was the informant. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery on 22 February 1953, with J. I. Barron of Chester as funeral director. His obituary, "Chalmers Gaston Dies at Chester", said he "had successfully farmed all of his working life until he retired several years ago". It named his five daughters, Mrs. Leonard Campbell, Mrs. Posey Estes, Mrs. Maggie Mae Bailey, Mrs. Marie Allen and Miss Elizabeth Gaston, his sons James and Ellie, twenty-one grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and his one surviving brother, Walker Gaston. The service was held at the Gaston home by the Rev. Edsel Huffstetler. Mary lived another twenty years.
Sources
If Chalmers Gaston is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Chalmers Gaston (1877-1953)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/chalmers-gaston-1877-1953-de98ad.