I've had a love affair with genealogy for over 25 years that I can trace back to a single school assignment. When I was a sophomore in high school, my English teacher required us to create a family tree. I'll be honest and say I don't remember the context of how it related to what we were studying in class, but I do remember being excited to interview my grandparents about their families. I was fortunate enough to have all 4 grandparents living at the time and even one set of great grandparents. I had also known another great grandmother who passed when I was 8 years old. What I didn't know when this project was assigned was that neither of my grandfathers had grown up knowing who their biological fathers had been. I diligently worked on my school project and was able to go back many generations on my paternal grandmother's family, but for both grandfathers, there was precious little information. I was frustrated and intrigued.
The mystery of my paternal grandfather's birth actually changed the course of our family history significantly - in trying to find the truth, my grandparents had adopted a new name. I can still vividly recall sitting with my father's parents in their living room near the big front window talking about how we had become the Philipps family.
 |
| My grandparents Jack & Ni, 1995 |
I always knew my grandfather as John Rothrock Philipps, but he was raised as John Anthony Rothrock aka Jack by his mother Charlotte Helena Mary King Rothrock (1894-1953) and her husband Lester Everett Rothrock (1894-1957). He was born October 2, 1922 in New York City. His mother and stepfather raised him along with his two younger brothers, William Henry Rothrock aka Bill (1927-2016) and Richard Edward Rothrock aka Rich (1939-2020), in Rutherford, New Jersey. After graduating high school, my grandfather enlisted in the army in June 1942. He served in World War II as an airplane bomb site technician - his vision prevented him from becoming a pilot like he'd hoped. After leaving the army, he worked in technical writing and sales.
 |
| My great grandmother Charlotte King Rothrock and my grandfather John Rothrock Philipps, 1943 |
But back in 1994, all of this information was new to me. Prior to this interview, I had no idea my grandfather had any siblings. While my grandmother talked often and fondly about her family, I had never heard Grandpa say anything about his family.
 |
| Rothrock Family in Gloucester MA, 1948 |
My grandparents explained that our very name was the reason.
It began with their love story. My grandmother Naomi told the story, with Grandpa chuckling and filling in a few details along the way. My grandparents met sometime in the late 1940s through a friend of hers at the bank where she worked. Her friend's husband had known my grandfather in the army. My grandmother was initially resistant to being set up because she was 7 years older than Grandpa, but she relented and they had a good first date. So good, in fact, that my grandfather proposed at the end of the date. My grandmother told me she thought he was crazy and didn't take the proposal seriously. A relatively short courtship followed and on December 31, 1949, my grandparents were married in her mother's home at 72 East Passaic Avenue. They were married as John Anthony Rothrock and Naomi Speer Rothrock - their wedding bands engraved with their initials. I suppose I looked incredulous so they took off their rings and showed me.
How had they gone from the Rothrocks in 1950 to the Philipps in 1951?
It was because of a fight, my grandfather said. Apparently, he had a somewhat tumultuous relationship with his parents - his stepfather had been abusive to him while he was growing up and there were frequent arguments. He didn't tell me the details of the fight - perhaps he no longer remembered them himself - but what Grandpa said was that he was having an argument with his parents not long after his marriage and they blurted out that Lester wasn't really his father. My grandfather was 28. He said he was hurt and he was angry. He decided to take action.
So he went to New York City and requested a copy of his birth certificate. I remarked that I was surprised that he had never seen it before since he was an adult and had served in the Army. My grandparents told me it wasn't common for people to have copies of their birth certificates back then - that they weren't necessary for obtaining other forms of ID. When he got the certificate, it listed his father as Gilbert Philipps. My grandparents then mulled over what to do with this new information. They were still very upset about the fight and were considering changing their names to match the birth certificate. They talked to some friends who were attorneys and were told that they could call themselves whatever they liked without going to the court to change it. After all, the birth certificate said he was John Philipps, not John Rothrock. My grandfather settled on John Rothrock Philipps, dropping his former middle name and adopting his stepfather's name in its place. This decision in and of itself probably wouldn't have shattered his family of origin if he'd gone about telling people in another way.
Remember the saying "Hurt people hurt people"? Well, still angry and feeling spiteful, my grandfather announced his name change at the wedding of his younger brother Bill in November 1950.
And that was the end of his relationship with his parents and his brothers. He was cut off. I have no doubt he felt righteous indignation about the situation and felt he had no reason to apologize. Even now writing this story down 70 years after it happened, I feel sadness for everyone involved. When my grandfather died from lung cancer in 1997, my grandmother told me she'd tried to reach out to his brothers to tell them the funeral details. She said they'd responded that they were sorry for her loss, but it didn't really affect them because they hadn't had a brother for so many years. It didn't have to end that way. But I digress...
 |
| Great grandmother Charlotte at Lake Walkill, NJ 1952 |
A few years later, my great grandmother Charlotte got sick. It turned out to be terminal cancer. My grandfather went to see her in the hospital as she was dying. They said their apologies and expressed their love for each other. And then she dropped the last bombshell - Philipps wasn't really his biological father's last name.
She wanted to be completely honest with him since she knew she didn't have much time left. Great Grandmother Charlotte told him that his name was Gilbert McCarthy and that she had met him while she was working at a residence hotel as a maid. He was a traveling salesman from Boston. His best friend was his brother John, who was an attorney. She thought he was about 15 years older than her. And it turned out he was married, which is why she made up a last name for the birth certificate. She selected Phillips because it was a common last name in her area of New York - but she misspelled it as Philipps.
It's not clear to me if Charlotte knew Gilbert was married during their affair and I don't think it was clear to my grandfather either. My grandfather was not sure if his mother ever told his father about her pregnancy, if he'd ever known he was born. My grandparents said they knew they weren't going to change their names again after the revelation - they'd already named my Aunt Peg - but they did want to see if they could find Gilbert. My grandmother Naomi volunteered for the Red Cross during World War II. So back in 1953, she reached out to those old contacts to see if they could find Gilbert McCarthy. They didn't get anywhere and eventually dropped it. Since this was 1994 and the everyday use of computers and the internet was becoming more of a thing, I was convinced that I could find Gilbert.
And I did. But that is a story for another day.
💕 Happy 71st anniversary to my grandparents, Naomi Speer Philipps and John Rothrock Philipps.💕
