Still Searching for Walter Frederick Buttery

No one cares about this but me, but the more info. I post, the more likely someone will see who knows something. I don't know why the fate of Walter has bugged me so much. Maybe its because I'm afraid of falling off the face of the earth, too, one day. Hopefully, someone will search for and remember me as I am doing for Walter.

A break in the case might have come yesterday when I was notified by Ancestry.com that there was a potential match in the 1940 census. As I have never found much evidence of him past 1909/10, I thought he must have died young. His sister (my great grandmother Eliza Buttery Scott) had no photos of him in old age, as she did her other brothers. Maybe he was just the family drifter or black sheep.

The just released 1940 census has a man named Fred Butter living in Detroit, Michigan. He was born in Newfoundland in 1888. So, it's not the same name, but everyone changed their names back then. The census lists his son, also Fred Butter (Jr.), who was previously living in Conneaut, Ohio. The census says Fred (Sr.) is married, but no wife is listed. They lived in an apartment at 2127 Oakdale Ave., and both were in the automobile industry. As you'll see from this map, it is just across the river from Canada...and not that far from Rochester, NY, where his sister lived.

 

Here is a screenshot of the chart I've pieced together on Walter. Click on image to enlarge.