Great-Grandma Alter's Secret: She wasn't an orphan.

My great-grandmother, Helene (Herline) Alter, claimed to be an orphan—but that wasn't exactly true!

Helene was born in 1886 in Hoboken, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York City. Her roots were deeply planted in a proud German-American lineage. Her grandfather, Edward Herline Sr., was one of the “Forty-Eighters”—a group of intellectuals and reformers who fled the German states following the failed revolutions of 1848. A Bavarian artist by training, he established a thriving lithography business in the United States.

Helene’s father, Edward Otto Herline, initially followed in his father’s artistic footsteps but found his skills less in demand as printing technology advanced. He pivoted to sign painting, a trade that took him throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes regions.

Edward Otto Herline

But in June 1887, the family's story took a dramatic turn. According to the Pittsburgh Post, Edward fled the city with his wife and infant daughter, leaving behind a trail of unpaid debts. He owed his business partner $500 and his landlady $120 and had passed several worthless checks on his account at Duquesne Bank. The family soon resurfaced in Toronto, Canada—safely beyond the reach of U.S. authorities—where Edward was listed as a sign painter in 1889. But by 1890, Edward's name had vanished from the city directory. After that, the trail goes cold.

In subsequent years, there are scattered sighting of a similarly named man turning up in major cities like Cincinnati and Fort Wayne, but none can be definitively tied to Helene’s father. In 1918, Edward’s sister, Helen Lach, filed a legal claim against his property in New Jersey, summoning him via newspaper notice to appear in Hudson County Court. The implication was clear: Edward Otto Herline was either dead, missing, or in hiding.

But what of Helene and her mother?

By 1900, Helene’s mother—Elma Etta Ross—had remarried a man named Henry Truex and relocated west to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where Henry worked as a bartender at a local tavern. Helene, once a well-to-do city girl, was now a teenager in a rural town—and she wasn’t happy about it. At 16, she married a young man named John Kissel and moved to Denver, Colorado. Whether she ever saw her mother again remains unknown.

Elma Etta (Ross)
Herline Truex Becker

Tragedy struck in 1905 when John died at just 21. Helene was then taken in by John’s sister and her husband—a couple she always referred to as her Aunt Margaret and Uncle Dan. In 1909, she married my great-grandfather, Dr. Charles Alter, a dentist who would go on to run a thriving practice in Southern California. Together, they raised two daughters—my grandmother and great-aunt—neither of whom ever knew their mother had been married before. They also never knew that “Uncle Dan and Aunt Margaret” were not truly family.

Most remarkably, their mother never shared a word about her own parents. Helene claimed she was an orphan, and that was that. It was a story the family accepted without question for generations.

It wasn’t until I began my own genealogical sleuthing that the truth began to emerge. Elma’s marriage to Henry Truex seems to have lasted only a few years. By 1904, while Helene was living in Colorado, Elma had moved to Southern California with her aging parents, Hiram and Sabra Ross. Hiram, a Civil War veteran suffering from serious health issues, sought out the ocean air and nearby veterans’ services in Santa Monica.

Later that year, Hiram died, and Elma witnessed her mother’s application for a widow’s pension - signing her name as “Elma Becker” of Santa Monica. She was only 35 at the time and theoretically could have lived for decades more. But like Edward before her, after signing her name, she simply vanished from the records. We don’t know who Mr. Becker was, or whether Elma stayed in California. And we don’t know when—or where—she died.

Helene Herline, not an orphan!

We do know that Helene’s grandmother, Sabra Ross, remained in Santa Monica until her own death in 1917. At the time, Helene’s daughters—my grandmother and great-aunt Ruth—were just three and six years old, living in the city of Pomona, a mere 40 miles away. Yet they never knew their grandmother even existed.

So, what was behind Helene's attempts to erase her entire family from memory? What secret was she carrying that caused her to bury her past so completely that even her own daughters were convinced that she was an orphan. Was my great-grandfather aware of the truth? Was he complicit in the lies?

We may never know the entire truth – but it’s a mystery I will continue trying to solve.

[[David Randall > Mary Edna Alter > Helene Herline > Edward and Elma (Ross) Herline]]

From Sea to Shining Sea: A 330-Year Randall Family Migration

The Randall family’s journey across America was a slow, steady march that took more than three centuries to complete. From a seaside settlement on the Atlantic coast to a sun-soaked suburb on the Pacific, our family’s westward movement spanned some 3,000 miles over roughly 330 years. Ours is a story not of overnight transformation, but of quiet persistence, each generation taking its turn pushing the family a little further west.

Rhode Island Beginnings

Although he was clearly of English origins, where exactly our progenitor John Randall came from originally is unknown. What we do know is that he first appears in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1660. Perched on Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay, Newport was a bustling seaport with a reputation for tolerance and independence. It was also home to America’s first Baptist church, founded by Roger Williams, and John and his wife Elizabeth were among its most devout members. Religion and community mattered deeply to early New Englanders, and the Randalls were no exception.

But John was a restless soul and city life was not for him. In 1663, he and Elizabeth joined a band of settlers who set out to tame the colony’s wild western frontier. They helped establish what would become Westerly, Rhode Island—a move that, by today’s reckoning, would seem like a paltry 40 mile treck. But in the 17th century, 40 miles meant a day or more of trecherous travel, often on foot or horseback, through dense forests, across rocky terrain, and over unbridged rivers. The settlers had to clear land, build homes, and establish farms from scratch—all under the looming uncertainty of colonial boundary disputes and Native American resistance.

Westerly’s founding was more than just a real estate venture. It was a political statement. Rhode Island’s claim to its western boundary was contested by Connecticut, and planting settlers on the disputed lands was a way to assert jurisdiction. But this frontier gamble eventually backfired for the Randall family. After years of argument, the colonial boundary was formally settled in 1720—with the Pawcatuck River marking the division. Unfortunately, the Randall homestead ended up on the Connecticut side. With John deceased by that time, the family, now header by John Jr., had a difficult choice to make - return east and remain Rhode Islanders, or stay on their land and swear allegiance to the Connecticut Colony. They stayed.

The Connecticut Years

For several decades, the family remained on their land in what was not Stonington, Connecticut. But land was always a finite resource in New England, especially for younger sons. Benjamin Randall, John’s grandson and the fifth of six boys, knew he wouldn't inherit enough to support his own growing family. Around 1733, Benjamin moved about 50 miles inland to the young but rapidly growing town of Colchester.

Colchester had been settled just a few decades earlier and, by mid-century, had become a hub of farming and local industry. There, Benjamin and his wife Ruth raised ten children, including Sylvester, who lived out his own life farming in Colchester. But like generations before and after him, Sylvester’s own son, Abram, eventually faced a familiar problem—too many heirs and too little land. So, when opportunity knocked in the early 1800s, he answered.

Bouncing Around the Empire State

Abrams grandfather, Abraham Wightman, was a land speculator with a vision. He had purchased several tracts of land in New York’s fertile Mohawk Valley—then still a developing region on the frontier – in anticipation of an eventual land boom. Encouraged by this opportunity, Abram and Margaret packed up and moved northwest to Herkimer County, New York - about 200 miles westward from Colchester.

The Mohawk Valley was more than just farmland. It was the main artery through which the future Erie Canal would run, connecting the Hudson River to the Great Lakes and opening up the interior of the continent. The canal’s completion in 1825 revolutionized commerce, allowing Midwestern grain and goods to reach the Atlantic world. But this revolution was not all good news for the Mohawk Valley farmers who saw their incomes deteriorate due to competition from the more fertile lands further west. Like many others, the Randalls eventually shifted their focus to dairy, joining a regional cheese-making boom that supplied growing eastern cities like New York and Philadelphia.

Abram’s son Abial, born in Colchester and raised in the Mohawk Valley, inherited the family’s restless spirit. Beginning around 1810, he and his wife Ursula began a long and meandering migration through upstate New York. They moved first to Williamstown in Oswego County, then to Vernon, then to the fledgling towns of Sweden and Ogden in what was then Genesee County (and later became Monroe County).

Each move seemed motivated by a combination of economic uncertainty and the search for financial opportunities. Like so many early American families, the Randalls were improvisers, moving west one county at a time, trying to find a foothold in an ever-changing economy. By the 1820s, the family had settled in Ogden, where they remained for several decades before relocating to nearby Riga, New York.

It was in this region that Abial’s grandson Isaac—better known as Wilmoth—was born. And it would be Wilmoth who took the next giant leap: west to Michigan.

Hard Times in Michigan

The mid-1800s were a time of intense migration to the Great Lakes region, fueled by the promise of cheap land through the federal land grant system. In 1856 and again in 1857, Wilmoth secured two land grants in Gratiot County, Michigan—totaling 200 acres near the village of Ithaca. The move was ambitious, but like many pioneering efforts, it came with hardship.

Records show that by 1860, the family had returned to New York, likely due to financial difficulty or perhaps the failing health of Wilmoth’s aging parents. They moved back and forth several times in the 1860s—Hartland in Niagara County, then Barre in Orleans County—before finally returning permanently to Michigan by 1869. This time they settled in Eaton County, in the township of Oneida.

Still, the difficulties continued. In a letter from 1883, Wilmoth’s wife Paulena wrote to their son George about his father, “He’s not contented here… If we can't sell the place, we will rent it… It will be better than to stay here.” By 1884, they had moved yet again—this time to the village of Mesick in Wexford County, where several of their children had already relocated.

Off to Arizona

Wilmoth’s son William lived a difficult life in Wexford County. He farmed and worked in the local potato warehouse in Glengary, but his first marriage ended in abandonment, leaving him to raise three children alone and in abject poverty. Yet from this hardship came an unexpected breakthrough.

His son Claude Randall left home as a teenager and, through sheer determination, put himself through school. He attended DeKalb Normal School in Illinois and took various teaching jobs across rural Bureau and LaSalle Counties. In 1910, he married fellow teacher Lena Kaiser, and together they pursued a life built around education.

In 1912, they moved west again—this time to Phoenix, Arizona, where Claude served as Assistant Superintendent of Schools and Lena taught. Claude spent his summers at the University of California, Berkeley, eventually earning a bachelor's degree in 1921. He later completed a master's degree at Stanford University in 1924. These weren’t just academic achievements—they were the culmination of generations of striving for stability, knowledge, and progress.

After his time at Stanford, Claude took a position in Ontario, San Bernardino County, California, as Superintendent of Schools. At last, the Randalls were firmly established in the Golden State.

California Here We Come!

Claude and Lena’s son—my grandfather, Louis Randall—brought the family the final few miles west. In the 1940s, he moved to the San Gabriel Valley, just 30 miles inland from the Pacific Coast. And in 1983, when my little sister was born at Santa Monica Hospital, within view of the Pacific Ocean, we had finally made it to the edge of the continent. A family that had initially set down roots in colonial Rhode Island, just steps from the Atlantic, had at last reached the shores of the Pacific. The 3000-mile trek took us a sometimes grueling 330 years to complete – a distance I can now fly in a meager 330 minutes!

THE RANDALL FAMILY GREAT MIGRATION

[David>Bruce>Louis>Claude>William>Isaac>Abial>Abram>Sylvester>Benjamin>John Jr.>John]