100 Years ago – Robert Harry Darling – (1907-1969)

Little Robert Harry Darling’s
mother, Anna/Hanna, died in 1913. He was only five years old at the time.
Apparently, his father, a railroad man, was either too transient or too ill to
take care of Robert and his six-year-old sister, Elizabeth Grace Darling as the
two of them went to live with their grandmother, Margaret Mary (Lamb)
McAllister.

It appears that Margaret and
her husband Peter were estranged. She was living at 1142 Bellaire Ave.,
Brookline (Pittsburgh) and Peter was rooming at 2237 Salisberry Street. (Some
years later Peter would return to England alone.) Therefore, in April 1915, it
appears that Robert was living, along with his sister, with his grandmother in Brookline
(Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania.

The “unsinkable” Titanic had
sunk only a few years earlier and by the spring of 1915, the Great War (World
War I) was well underway with German wolf packs sinking English vessels. On May
7, German U-Boats sank the RMS Lusitania as she neared Liverpool coming from
New York.

We think there was a death in
the family, probably Margaret’s mother, Jane Lamb, had passed and that there
needed to be actions regarding the family business, an inn in the Appleby-in-Westmorland
area in Cambria, England. In any event, Margaret took the children to England
aboard the S.S. New York leaving New York City and arriving in Liverpool,
England on August 29, 1915.

Time in England had to have
been stressful for Margaret taking care of the estate. However, family stories
indicate that the time was good for the kids though, as they should be. Margaret
made sure they attended school and were “civilized” in English ways. Margaret
was Anglican, so they certainly would have attended Anglican Church while in
England. Possibly, even St. John’s Church in Workington, where Margaret and
Peter had been married many years before.

Margaret and the children
stayed in England for about sixteen months returning to the United States
sailing from Liverpool on December 15, 1916, aboard the S.S. Philadelphia, and
arriving at New York City on December 23, 1916.

Any hopes that Robert may
have had regarding being with his father would have been dashed when his
father, Rufus Harry Darling, died in June 1917.