Gertrude M. Barrows Bennett (1883-1948)-Part Five

Second Husband

Gertrude M. Barrows Bennett's second husband was Carl Franklin Gaster (1892-1952). He was born on November 7, 1892, in San Luis Obispo, California, to George Reed Gaster (1857-1916) and Rachel Isabel (Packwood) Gaster (1857-1927). Carl F. Gaster grew up on his parents' farm in Santa Barbara County, California. In 1900, he was in San Francisco with his parents, then, in 1910, in the household of his aunt, Eliza Scott. At age twenty-seven, Gaster had already been married and divorced.

Rather than write a narrative about Gaster's life and career, I'll just give some bullet points:

• In 1911, in Vallejo, California, Gaster stole from a man in an adjoining hotel room. He was arrested and put on probation.

• In 1917, he was a locomotive inspector with the Southern Pacific Railroad Company.

• In 1917, Gaster lived in San Francisco with his wife, Minnie Gaster.

• On November 21, 1919, Gaster applied for a seaman's certificate with the U.S. Department of Commerce. He had by then graduated from the U.S. Shipping Board Marine Engineering School.

• In 1920, Gaster lived in San Francisco and worked as a marine wiper. Once again, he was divorced.

• In March 1927, Gaster was arrested in Bellingham, Washington, for drunken larceny and illegal possession: he had stolen some bedding from a hotel while drunk.

• Gaster was otherwise employed from June 22, 1921, to July 5, 1927, as a 3rd assistant engineer, 2nd assistant engineer, and junior engineer aboard various oceangoing vessels.

• On March 27, 1930, Gaster was enumerated in the U.S. Census of merchant seamen. He was occupied as a 4th assistant engineer and based at Bayonne, New Jersey. His unnamed wife was in Merced, California. Twelve days later, on April 8, 1930, Gertrude Bennett, widowed, was enumerated in Mill Valley, California, where she was working at a trucking (?) company. So it looks like the two had not yet married.

• In 1933, Carl F. Gaster and his wife Gertrude were living in San Francisco, thus they must have married in the period 1930-1933. In 1933, Gertrude Barrows Bennett Gaster turned fifty years old. Her new husband turned forty-one that year.

• On June 12, 1938, Gaster wrote to U.S. Local Inspector of Boilers in San Pedro, California, requesting a record of his sea service. He explained that he needed that record in order to apply for a civil service job. He wrote with a return address of 642 9th Avenue, Prospect Park, Pennsylvania. Two years later, on April 16, 1940, Gertrude Barrows Bennett's daughter, then going by the Christian name of Constance and her married name of Wilson--Constance Wilson--was enumerated at that same address with her husband Walter Wilson and their children. So I wrote the other day stating that Gertrude and her daughter presumably never lived together again after the 1920s, but did they after all? On the other hand, a return address and a residence are not necessarily the same thing. In any case, Gertrude and Constance were presumably still in contact with each other as of June 1938. That same year, Gertrude Gaster was listed in the Sacramento, California, city directory, working in that city as a stenographer. According to Lloyd Arthur Eshbach in his introduction to The Heads of Cerberus, she wrote a final letter to her daughter from California on September 1, 1939, promising a longer one. It was either never written, never sent, or never arrived. I have not found either Gertrude Gaster or her husband in the census of 1940. She was very near to disappearing from the earth.

• On September 10, 1940, Carl Gaster arrived in New Orleans from Aruba, Dutch West Indies. He was then working as a machinist on board the Esso Bayway.

• In 1942, Gaster was in U.S. Army Transport (U.S.A.T.) Service at Fort Mason in San Francisco, afterwards with the Hawaiian Dredging Company in Honolulu, Hawaii. His wife was Gertrude Gaster, who had an address of 1351 Ellis Street, San Francisco.

• On November 21, 1944, Gaster arrived in Los Angeles from Honolulu on board the Makiki.

• From February to May 1947, Gaster appears to have made a trip by sea from Honolulu to Shanghai and back.

• Gertrude M. Barrows Bennett Gaster died on February 2, 1948, in San Francisco. It looks like she was Gaster's fourth wife.

• In 1952, Gaster worked as a Merchant Marine fireman.

Finally, on February 26, 1952, the body of Carl Franklin Gaster was found at 216 NW 3rd Avenue, in Portland, Oregon. He was fifty-nine years old at his death. He had a blood alcohol level of 0.13. A complete autopsy also found that there was "[m]arked coronary arteriosclerosis." However, no cause of death was found. There is also no indication of how long his body may have lain undiscovered. Both he and his wife died in the same month of the year, in February, and so he followed her to the grave shortly after the anniversary of her death.

Carl F. Gaster was buried at Greenwood Hills Cemetery in Portland, Oregon.

To be continued . . .

A photograph and physical description of Carl Franklin Gaster, from his application for seaman's certificate, November 21, 1919. Out of all of the principals in the life of Gertrude Barrows Bennett--herself, her parents, her brothers, her first husband Charles M. Stuart Bennett, her daughter--only Gaster is represented on the Internet with a photographic image.

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley