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Bertram Aaron Rainwater

Bertram Aaron Rainwater

Bertram Aaron was born in Independence, Kansas on 6 Feb 1879 to George Washington Rainwater and Clara C. McClain. He was the youngest of his father’s six children, in a family composed of an elder sister, two half-sisters and two half-brothers. His father, George W. Rainwater, was born in Kansas, and was a stage driver there for many years. Apparently around 1890, the family moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where they are found in the 1900 census.

On 10 Oct 1904, Bert married May Belle Petre, and the marriage was recorded in the Petre family Bible. May Belle Petre was the daughter of Christopher Columbus Petre and Sarah Francis Asbury Rainwater, and a granddaughter of Moses Fowler Rainwater and Elizabeth Clay Oliver. The extent of their consanguineal relationship is unknown, since Bert Rainwater’s paternal grandfather, John S. Rainwater, has proven something of a genealogical mystery.

Bert worked as a jeweler, and the couple settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where their four daughters were born. These were Dorothy May, born 19 Nov 1905; Maude Love, born 10 May 1908 and apparently named for her aunt, Maude Love Petre; Alice Clay, born 8 May 1911; and Virginia Ellen, born 23 Jul 1916. In 1923, daughter Maude married R. H. Folmar, the individual who went on to create the controversial and flawed “Folmar Chart.”

May Belle Petre Rainwater died in St. Louis on 24 Nov 1935. Bert died 16 years later on 16 Dec 1951.

Credits
This photo was purchased on Ebay in August 2003, and is now in the collection of Susan Chance-Rainwater & R. Steven Rainwater.


© 2018 Susan Chance-Rainwater
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License