In 1905, Mrs Castleman came to Berne with her adopted daughter for an operation. The daughter's cure, and the mother's thanks, made possible the building of our church. In the last issue, I wrote of my failure to find any trace of them. There seemed to be no official record of either of them in birth or census records on either side of the Atlantic. I now know why.
One clue allowed me to solve the mystery. The shipping manifests, which listed passengers arriving in New York in the early years of the last century, can be searched on the Web. And rather than trawl through the 1,115 Castlemans who were among the 76,212,168 people living in the U.S.A. in 1900, it was easy to check the 69 occasions when a Castleman had landed at Ellis Island. One name leapt out - Lucie Cable Castleman had made eight transatlantic crossings between 1903 and 1922. On 10 November 1905, she had steamed into New York on the SS Baltic, the largest liner of its day, after a nine-day passage from Liverpool.
The next name on the manifest was neither an Ursula nor a Postlethwaite. It was Margaret A Postlewaite (and it is surprising what a difference a 'th' makes!). She was aged 33, and Lucie Castleman was 55.
With this key, it was easy to unravel the next few parts of the mystery. A bit of serendipity helped, too - in the form of the Boca Raton Historical Society down in Florida, and of Connie Duke, a keen genealogist who goes by the pseudonym of grannyapple. What we know is this.
Lucie Castleman was born Lucie Cable in Kentucky in 1849. When she was seven, her father moved to Rock Island, Illinois, with a business partner, a box containing $80,000 and a shotgun. The partners set up a bank, which prospered. They went into mining and railroad building, and became seriously rich. Papa became President of the Rock Island Railroad.
The 1880 census gives us a picture of the household. Lucie is now 30, still living at home. So is brother Ben, 26, and already preparing to step into Papa's shoes. There are six servants. And someone else. An eight-year-old girl called Margot Postlewaite. She lives there, for she is described as "at home".
Move on with me to 1905. Lucie has left home. In 1888 she married George Castleman, but she is now widowed. She lives in St Louis, and Margot lives with her. Margot is apparently "a pampered debutante". But more relevantly, Margot is in love.
The lucky man is Henry Mizner. His father was an ambassador, his uncle had bought land to build a city, which became California's state capital. Henry had been just about to graduate from West Point when he felt the call of the Episcopalian ministry. Since 1901, he has run St Stephen's mission in St Louis. Mrs Castleman disapproves. He is of good family, so why then is he not a bishop? (In fact, Henry was offered several bishoprics and turned them down.)
At this point comes the trip to Berne, the near-miraculous operation. Was it for goitre? Perhaps we shall never know.
Finally in 1912, Mrs Castleman grudgingly consents to Margot's marriage. A great society wedding is held in St Louis Cathedral, after with Margot joins Henry at the mission, ministering to the poor and disadvantaged of St Louis.
The story does not end there. In 1914, Margot has a daughter, Alice. In 1925, Mrs Castleman dies. The next year, Henry falls ill and moves to Florida (where a brother has just been the chief designer of a city called Palm Beach). Later, Henry suffers a stroke and moves to France, on medical advice. In 1930, he dies, and, after a funeral at the American cathedral in Paris, is buried at S Germain-en-Laye. The daughter, Alice, marries a New York artist and is active in church work there. In time, a granddaughter is born, called Margot after her grandmother. Alas, Alice died in February 2004, and with her, the chance of first-hand recollections of her mother, the woman whose cure was the key to the building of St Ursula's.
And possibly also the chance to discover the story of the church's name. For if the adopted daughter was not Ursula but Margot, where did the name come from? Was it just a play on the Bernese arms ("Ursula" means "little bear")? Or was there more to it than that?
HD