Intriguing Shirt-tail Relative with an Occupational Nickname
Robert Hargrave: 1859-1923 (Maternal Grand-Aunt’s Stepson)
I was researching a Smith family descendant by the name of
Serelda Hargrave Potts, and ran across a news item that mentioned her daughter,
Julia Potts Coe and Julia’s cousin Nellie. The item went on to note that Julia
and Nellie “are nieces of Nymphia Carillo Hargrave and Robert Hargrave,
violinist, and granddaughters of Robert Hargrave, inventor, who came to
California from Texas in a covered wagon train.” My research on poor Serelda
was abandoned for a delightful trip down a Hargrave rabbit hole. A violinist
married to a woman named Nymphia? I had to know more.
Robert Hargrave, the violinist, was Serelda’s half-sibling,
born in 1859, ten years after Serelda was born. Alas, Robert is what my
grandmother used to call a “shirt-tail relation”, meaning he’s rather distantly
connected to the family, and not even necessarily by blood. That’s the case
with Robert. Serelda’s mother was the Smith descendant, not her father, Robert
Sr. So Robert Sr.’s son Robert by his second wife was not a blood relation to
my husband’s family.
 |
| Photo of Robert Hargrave with his violin |
Still, Robert sounded fascinating. As I poked around on
Ancestry, trying to pin down exactly how he fit in the Smith family line, I ran
across another gem of a newspaper item:
The “Cowboy Fiddler”? Now that is a wild nickname! I found
Robert on census forms from 1880, 1900 and 1910. Each time he states he is a
music teacher, presumably a violin instructor. But apparently by 1920, teaching
music was no longer paying the bills, so he had branched out into tending
cattle herds on ranches outside San Diego. He was sixty years old, no longer a
young man by that point, so he must have been a little desperate.
But despite his circumstances, he had obviously continued to
perform. The “Cowboy Fiddler”—I imagine him playing jaunty tunes by a campfire
or in a bunkhouse to the applause of his coworkers.
It appears Robert “Cowboy Fiddler” Hargrave died on March
31, 1923, just three years after this news item was published. He was
sixty-five years old. He and wife Nellie had several children. Sadly, I did not
find a record of a wife named Nymphia, unless, of course, Nellie was a nickname
for Nymphia. That’s a rabbit hole I will not pursue!
Sources:
Cowboy Fiddler news item. The Daily Times Advocate.
Escondido, California. January 14, 1920 issue. https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-times-advocate-the-cowboy-fiddler/163112544/
“Mrs. Durand is Guest During Celebration”. San Bernardino
County Sun. San Bernardino, California. November 23, 1938 issue. https://www.newspapers.com/image/49170018/?article=52604465-1eb2-4097-9a7a-51a6ee02419a&xid
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