Detroit British expat history wartime
 

I am looking for somebody who can access information about British expats in Detroit from earlier times, in this case around the Second World War. RODERICK FRASER was originally from Inverness in Scotland. He married HENRIETTA Fraser (née MACDONALD). They lived in Detroit where he worked as a banker. Throughout the entire Second World War he worked tirelessly to persuade the Americans to help the British with money, food parcels etc. I have made an initial search on the internet to see whether any details about Roderick Fraser and/or Henrietta Fraser appear but without success. I am now trying to find out whether there are any individuals or groups in Detroit to can help me with my further search for information - any information at all is welcome at this point. Thank you for your attention :-)

Re: Detroit British expat history wartime
 

You certainly don't give a lot of information for a google search. I did a google for an obituary and found a Roderick Fraser in Michigan who died this year but he was born in 1935. Could he have been the son of the person you are looking for?

Have checked to see if there any Scottish Heritage Clubs in Detroit or there about that he might have belonged to. Have you checked for an obituary for his spouse?

Have you checked the Census Reports for 1930, 1940, 150? This alone would be a great source of information.

Re: Detroit British expat history wartime
 

They are easy to find in the 1940 census. They lived at 19691 Shrewsbury Ave. Roderick was born in 1888 or 89, this is estimated from his reported age in 1940. He’s reported as a banker, with an income of 5,000+. Further, their house has an estimated value of 17,500. Pretty wealthy for that time, and that’s an expensive house I think.

I only looked in 1940. I’m going to look up Shrewsbury Ave now ..

Re: Detroit British expat history wartime
 

Shrewsbury Ave seems to be a very upscale street of nice houses built around 1927. They currently seem to fetch around $350,000. (If this was NYC or LA these would be three million dollar houses.) I don’t know Detroit at all, but the street is close to Woodlawn Cemetery.

All the houses on the street seem to start with “19,” eg 19691. I’d be pretty confident that the house the Frasers lived in still exists, and is still numbered 19691.

It would be pretty easy to find info about the couple in British sources; birth, marriage, census, and transatlantic passage UK to North America. Since they were wealthy, there might be additional transatlantic trips back to the UK.

Re: Detroit British expat history wartime
 

Yeah loads of hits for 19691 Shrewsbury on Zillow etc. It is a very nice looking pre-war mock Tudor single family house. Very suitable for a wealthy banker!

Also, back on Ancestry dot com, several steamship arrivals etc. recorded.

For instance, September 26 1950, he arrived at Quebec, Canada, on the SS Empress of France and was admitted to the US. This record gives his US passport number etc. His address in Detroit was still the same as in 1940 ..

Re: Detroit British expat history wartime
 

Thank you so much for your useful and kind reply, it is much appreciated. Sitting on the "wrong" side of the Atlantic, it is hard to know where to start: you have given me some useful pointers. Not knowing what databases to search in makes the search so much harder, I now have something to go on, beyond simply searching broadly on the two names (that sometimes works but not this time) and I have also tried to approach a museum in Detroit which might have helped but museums people are busy and often not able to help with random requests like the one I sent.

Re: Detroit British expat history wartime
 

Thanks for your reply. Based on what you say in your original post about Roderick’s activities in supporting the British war effort, I’d say it is quite possible you’d find information about him in newspapers at the time. For instance, reports on public meetings and such. Is the major Detroit newspaper at that time the Detroit Free Press? (Easy to research, I’m just searching my imperfect memory, haven’t had any coffee yet ..)

Generally, newspaper articles of that period don’t show up in internet searches. They are to be found in proprietary databases, only available to subscribers. Family history services (eg Ancestry, Find My Past) have historical newspaper databases for an additional fee, and library based services such as Ebsco and Proquest do also. I’m a retired librarian, and I have to admit it’s been quite a while since I’ve done any heavy-duty historical newspaper searching. I’m pretty sure that in the UK, your public library gives you free access to some of these services that they pay for.

Beyond that, as I alluded to in earlier posts, you can fill in all details of Roderick & Henrietta’s life events, birth, marriage, death, censuses, transatlantic travel, etc, on Ancestry and/or Find My Past. Which raises the question, did they have children? If so, they might have grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the land of the living. Find them, and they’d be another potential source of information.