Idas Joseph Crepeau, Page Three

On right hand is Richard Fitzgerald, 53 Montgomery St., works in twisting room of Eclipse Mills, No. Adams. On left hand, Joseph Adams, 107 Front St., works in twisting room of Eclipse Mills,. Location: North Adams, Massachusetts, August 1911, Lewis Hine.

I went back to the census, this time using Soundex, and found a family named Crepeau living in North Adams in 1910, but no child named Joseph. But I did find a WWI draft registration for Joseph Idas Crepeau, born in 1898, and living at 47 Front Street with the same family. He was working for the Boston & Maine Railroad. Pretty soon, I found an Idas J. Crepeau, a barber at the Devens Hotel, in the 1923 Greenfield, Massachusetts town directory, which is online in Ancestry.com. In 1924, his brother, Alphege H. Crepeau, was also listed as a barber in Greenfield.

I drove up to Greenfield one morning and started snooping around, like a missing persons detective. On a lark, I walked into a senior center and found a group of elderly men sitting in the lounge drinking coffee and shooting the bull. I introduced myself and asked if any of them remembered any barbers named Crepeau. One of them spoke up right away: "Sure, Al and Paul. They were brothers, but they didn't get along very well. Paul used to cut my hair when I was a little kid. I think he moved to Boston in the ‘30s."

I headed over to the library and poured through town directories. In 1921, there was a Paul Crepeau, who was listed as a barber. At that point, I had to assume that Paul, Idas J., and Joseph Idas were the same person. I found brother Alphege, married to Lea, listed all the way through 1935. In several of those years, his first name was spelled Elphege. But in the next available directory, 1939, he is suddenly listed as Joseph E. Crepeau, same wife, same address, same barbershop. I thought, "So now he's Joseph Crepeau, but his brother Joseph is called Paul. Did they do this just to trip up historians like me?"

Over at City Hall, I found the 1990 death record for Joseph E (aka Alphege H.) Crepeau. He was 95 years old. I guessed that the "E" stood for Elphege. Back at the library, I found his obituary. He was born in Quebec, and after living in North Adams, moved to Greenfield in 1924, and was a self-employed barber until he retired in 1968. There was nothing to clear up the mystery about his name.

Back on the Internet, I found Paul Crepeau in the Massachusetts Death Index. He was born November 15, 1898, and died in Boston on July 6, 1992, at age 93. But in the Social Security Death Index, I found him listed as Idas J. Crepeau, with the same date of birth and death. I wondered if there were any more twists and turns - and alternative names - coming up.

It got easy after that. I found a descendant living in Berkshire County who connected me to Paul's (Idas Joseph, et al.) only child, Rita Brown. When I called her, she had no idea about the Hine photos of her father. She told me that she had very little contact with him.