Charles Elton McDonald

Charles Elton McDonald, third of the three children of Mary Josephine Harrington and Charles Sweden McDonald, was born 2 May 1903 in California. He was known mostly by his middle name, and even appears in some public records as if it were his first name. For example, he appears as Elton C. McDonald in the 1910 Stockton census. Elton’s precise birthplace has yet to be confirmed. The family had been strongly associated with Merced in Merced County, but Charles Sr.’s occupation as a railroad man means the birth could easily have occurred during temporary residence elsewhere.

By the time of Elton’s birth, his only sister Ruth had perished in infancy. He grew up in the company of only one sibling, his brother Robert. Together the two boys were among the eldest of all the great-grandchildren of John and Martha Branson -- Robert being the very eldest. They were part of the fraction of the great-grandchildren to be born during John and Martha’s lifetime.

When Elton was very small, his father became employed by the fledgling company Western Pacific instead of the giant Southern Pacific, and was made responsible for overseeing the construction of the company’s line between Oakland and Sacramento. When possible, Josephine and the kids maintained a home within commuting distance of his various worksites. Therefore, Elton’s first few years were probably spent in transit up and down the Central Valley of California. By the time he was three, a somewhat steadier period ensued, with the family settling for several years in Stockton, San Joaquin County, CA. During this period, from 1906 into the early 1910s, most of Charles’s responsibilities were in the Sacramento delta region, and Stockton was a good base of operations for him. In 1906-07, the house was shared with Elton’s mother’s first cousin Inez Branson, a teenager getting her teaching degree. In 1909-10, the place was even more full while Josephine’s first cousin Clarence Johnson and his young family lodged there. (Josephine and Clarence had been raised next door to one another in Merced and regarded each other like sister and brother.)

How long the Stockton phase lasted is unclear. During the early 1910s the family may have lived farther north in California while Western Pacific constructed the portion of its route that crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains through the Feather River Canyon. Elton’s father and even his brother are known to have been involved with this work. It is also possible the household was briefly based in Corinne, UT, near the end of the W.P. line. (Shown at right, Elton is in the center between his father and brother in this photograph taken in Utah -- the question being whether they were in Utah on an excursion or actually dwelled there for a year or two.) But by the middle of the decade, and perhaps as early as 1911, the family moved to Oakland, Alameda County, CA. This marked a long-term McDonald presence in the East Bay. As Robert and Elton came of age, there were plenty of entry-level jobs to be had thanks to the shipyards, which were heavily involved in the war effort. Robert is known to have worked at the shipyards. Elton was a bit too young, but soon would have had other job opportunities thanks to the urban surroundings.

The family lived in Oakland on Valdez Street into 1919, and then in June of that year bought a home at 1442 Morton Street in Alameda that would stay in the family long-term. They were residing there by the time of the 1 January 1920 census. Elton appears in that survey as C. Elton McDonald. The household is shown as consisting of himself, his parents, his brother Robert, and Robert’s fiancée Vera Douglas.

1920 was the year of Charles S. McDonald’s death. He was not yet fifty years old. His passing was surely the result of complications -- probably in the form of liver failure or a heart attack -- of an inherited health condition. Charles was a carrier of the gene that causes hereditary haemochromatosis, also known as iron overload. His father Robert Seafield McDonald and grandfather Sweden McDonald (aka Suidhne MacDonald) had also died in middle age, undoubtedly from the same root cause. The condition had also shortened the life of Elton’s great uncle William McDonald of Merced, and would go on to do the same to Elton’s brother Robert. Elton had to feel the brunt of losing his father while not yet a man himself. His luck was better regarding his own health. He was one of two great-grandsons of Sweden McDonald who showed no signs of being carriers of the gene, and unlike many of his paternal-side relatives, would live to a ripe old age.

Becoming a widow seems to have dimmed Josephine’s affection for the Morton Street house, which when acquired must have seemed as though it would be a place for her and Charles to grow old within. Though she kept the title to the property for years to come, she spent relatively little time there, and as the 1920s progressed left it to Robert and Vera to be its main occupants and treat it as their own. Elton used the home as his base in the early part of the decade, but gradually asserted his independence. His first foray was when joined Western Pacific in 1921 and was assigned to the division office in Elko, NV. He was back in the Bay Area after a year or two, where he held a series of positions in W.P.’s operating, engineering, and traffic departments. By the end of the decade he became the chief clerk to the vice-president and general manager, working at W.P.’s home offices in San Francisco. (At left, Elton and his mother in the early 1920s.)

It was undoubtedly his workdays in San Francisco that acquainted him with a young Russian immigrant girl named Antoinette Utkin. Better known as Tonia, she was the daughter of John Philipp Utkin and Lydia P. Aksenoff. She and her slightly older sister Ludmila and their mother had come to San Francisco from the mother country in 1919. Her father had arrived in 1921 -- whether or not he had spent time in America earlier in his life is undetermined. It could be that John and Lydia had divorced back in Russia. However, the 1920 census shows Lydia as Married rather than Divorced. If true, then she seems to have found it impossible to wait for John to arrive, and became the wife of Konstantin Leko in either late 1920 or early 1921 -- meaning that John may not have encountered the reunion he expected. John went on to marry Irene Syvers, a native of Vladivostok who had been raised from infancy in California. They wed in 1922 and moved to Los Angeles. John, who became a naturalized citizen in 1931, changing his name at that point to John Otkin with an “O” in the surname, was a singer in motion pictures, and can be found listed in Who Was Who on Screen, Third Edition by Evelyn Mack Truitt. (Irene, who did not have children with John, was a printer of movie film.)

Tonia had been born 10 May 1907. (The year is 1909 in family records. Apparently at the time of her death, her birth year was misremembered and the stat became entrenched in documentation. Inasmuch as Elton was the informant for her death record, the error appears even in that source.) Her precise birthplace in Russia is unknown. Her father was a native of Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea, but it is obvious from his immigration records that he spent a chunk of his adult life far to the east in Siberia, probably in Vladivostok. When he immigrated, he reached San Francisco through Japan. Mila and/or Tonia might well have been Siberian-born.

Not only did John Utkin move to Los Angeles, but so did Lydia (with Konstantin), though naturally the former spouses did not live next to one another. They found a place of their own in Hollywood. Ludmila and Tonia came along as well for the time being, but Elton and Tonia missed each other too much. He came down to fetch her. The pair were married 27 February 1926 in Los Angeles. Tonia was eighteen, not quite nineteen -- the perfect age to be a bride by the standards of the time.

This photo dates from 1928. It was taken outside the Palo Alto residence of Josephine Harrington McDonald Baysinger and her husband Daniel, and it was undoubtedly Josephine who handled the camera. From left to right behind the bench are: Robert Seafield McDonald holding his baby niece, Charles Elton McDonald, and Daniel Webster Baysinger. Seated from left to right are Vera Douglas McDonald, Elton’s grandmother Nancy Anne Branson Harrington Napier, and Tonia Utkin McDonald.

If Elton had not already moved out of 1442 Morton Street by then, he did so upon becoming a married man. He and Tonia nested in at a place of their own Euclid Street in Alameda. Elton seemed to relish the chance to be well grounded after his brief period as a single man “off having an adventure.” It is a safe bet the bleak scenery and fierce summer heat of Elko had dampened whatever wanderlust he may have harbored. Alameda was an easy ferry ride to his job in San Francisco, and the choice of venue kept him near relatives -- not only his brother and Vera, but his “uncle” (technically his mother’s first cousin) George Bertrand Johnson.

Elton and Tonia remained at the Euclid Avenue place through the early infancy of their daughter, who was born in the early part of 1928. (Shown at left, Tonia and daughter in the early 1930s.) But before the decade was out, no doubt needing more room for a growing family, they moved to 1064 Park Avenue, again in the town of Alameda.

Unfortunately, Elton and Tonia did not get to enjoy decades of bliss. She grew despondent in 1934. An article in the Oakland Tribune confirms this, describing her suicide attempt on the twelfth of June by throwing herself out a second-story window. Either her injuries were more severe than indicated in the article, or she made another attempt, and it succeeded in claiming her life. She died 14 June 1934 at only twenty-seven years of age (rendered as twenty-five in her obituary).

Elton spent more than a decade as a widower. It was not an era when single fathers usually maintained a custodial role, so some adjustments in living circumstances developed in the wake of the tragedy. His mother agreed to take care of her granddaughter during the day, so that Elton could keep his job. Josephine and Dan Baysinger sold their Palo Alto home and acquired a large residence at 1535 St. Charles Street in Alameda. Elton and his daughter moved in and spent at least the next four years there, if not close to six years. During some of this period, his aunt Elsie Harrington Cowell also shared the home, having moved there from Manteca, San Joaquin County, CA in 1936, two years after she had become a widow. Fortunately Elton was able to be home regularly during evenings and weekends, not having to adhere to the same sort of mobile working conditions his father and, to some extent, his brother endured. Elton was promoted to assistant to the general manager in charge of wages and working conditions, train rules, and safety in 1937.

Elton’s second and last wife was Edwa Dorsey Langdon, daughter of Dr. Samuel Walter Ross Langdon and Mary Eva “Matie” Root. Elton and Edwa were married 2 January 1945. She had been a USO singer during the war. She would go on to a career as a school teacher. Edwa had been born 10 July 1916 in Oakland. She was affectionately known as Eddie. (Her full name had been inspired by her paternal grandmother, Edwa Dorsey.) By mid-century Elton and Eddie were living in Stockton. This choice of venue probably had something to do with Eddie’s family connections. Though she had been raised alternately in Oakland and on her parents’ fruit farm in Winton, Merced County, CA, her father had been born and raised in Stockton. For decades Eddie’s grandfather Walter Ross Langdon had been a doctor in that city.

Though Eddie was still of childbearing age when she and Elton wed, the union produced no additional offspring, and inasmuch as Elton’s daughter was in her late teens by the mid-1940s, Eddie did not get much practice being a hands-on parent. In spite of that, the pair were renowned for their nurturant character and their willingness to have the youngsters of the clan visit them for extended periods. They in turn were very popular with those youngsters. After Robert McDonald died of cancer in the mid-1950s, his youngest daughter, then a teenager, would spend two or three weeks every summer with Elton and Eddie -- and subsequently stayed full-time for more than a year while in college in Stockton. Having her in their home was a treat for Elton and Eddie, because his own daughter had gone off to teach school in Hawaii and then settled in Arkansas, and was no longer part of his day-to-day, face-to-face life.

Elton and Eddie (shown at right in May, 1968) are recalled as being very different types of people, a case of opposites attracting. Eddie was an organizer and people-person. Elton was laid-back and easy going. They both exhibited deep patience. They worked well in tandem and enjoyed an especially fine marriage. They were both well-read. They enjoyed doing puzzles, both jigsaw and crossword. They had a large circle of friends and kept up an active social life. Elton loved to talk of politics and current events. He was an investor in an era before personal investing became the “in” thing to do, even for the non-wealthy.

Elton and Eddie eventually moved south, spending their retirement in Orange County, CA. They changed apartments a number of times, and lived variously in the towns of Laguna Niguel and Laguna Beach. The latter site in particular was popular with the Arkansas grandkids and the nieces and nephews during their vacations. The couple, despite being used to their freedom, never made an issue of bending their routine to accommodate the presence of a grandchild for a chunk of the summer. A measure of Elton’s interest in his family is that he was in the midst of writing a letter to a grandson when he suffered the stroke that claimed his life.

That stroke came late in a long lifetime. As mentioned, he appears to have been spared the family curse of hereditary haemochromatosis and for the most part -- an exception being difficulty with his hearing -- Elton did extraordinarily well healthwise until the inevitable reminders of mortality in his twilight years. Even at the very end his mind was sharp. Edwa was somewhat less fortunate in terms of longevity. She died quite suddenly 27 June 1986 of a brain aneurysm. This was a family health tendency that had taken the life of her brother Ross a few years earlier, and Eddie had in fact been nervous that she might be struck down in just that way. Elton was lost without her, but he hung on a few more years, expiring 15 November 1989 in Orange County.

Descendants of Charles Elton McDonald and Antoinette Utkin

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