Talk:Romaine Fielding

Recollections of a relative

Decades ago I was approached by an elderly lady in CA whose DNA matched mine in some way. She told me a story about her grandmother who "disappeared" one day, last seen walking down a road. The grandmother's maiden name was Blanden (or something close). My grandmother's maiden name was Blandin and I had done a lot of research on her various relatives.

Using the DNA I estimated our connection occurred in the early 19th century. My mind has decayed a lot since then so I can't recall everything well anymore but I wanted to pass onto Wiki what I can. I had traced down a line of Blandins to WI where a minister had a son who got a girl pregnant around high school age. The father "forced" his son to marry the girl before the boy was born. This boy was named William Grant Blandin, Grant being the baby's mother's maiden name as I recall.

The marriage rapidly fell apart and the mother was found (I think in the 1870 census) with his mother away from the WI/MN border area. I later found that the baby's father married a Harlow woman from Riceville, IA. Later research proved to me that a son in that new household census records was the William Grant Blandin. In short, his father apparently kidnapped the child from his mother and during the escape run to Riceville, IA he had a new birth record made in MN claiming a new name and new birth date/place for the child. (This was confirmed with Romaine Fielding Jr's eldest daughter. Jr had extensively researched genealogy during his lifetime. My research supported what she told me.)

This is why Romaine Fielding's birth info is so conflicting. There is a letter in an exhibit on Sr's life in a CA museum written by William/Romaine to a fan in England where he explains some of the conflicting info on his life. My recollection of that letter is that he said that his public relations people made up all sorts of exaggerations about his life leading to many false or misleading things said about him. I attempted to extract his life from government records nearest to the event to try to extract the most accuracy.

I must cut this short but William/Romaine took the name of a younger brother Alonzo Blandin who died young. I traced him in that persona through the Marine Corps, as I recall, and then the army in NYC and Washington, DC. He apparently became a doctor (although I found no education record to that effect) and somehow was a "surgeon" in Mexico for a number of years. I did find a city directory of Kansas City where he was listed as a surgeon but he wrote in that letter to a fan that it was there that the acting bug got him.

(His step mother's sister's husband had moved to Kansas City and was wealthy in real estate at the time. The actress Jean Harlow, who had actually taken her stage name as her mother's maiden name was a grand daughter of that wealthy guy, as I recall.)

The name Alonzo Blandin was abandoned and I found him in the 1900 census in Chicago living with what became his inlaws who owned a business supplying sets and costumes to the vaudeville industry. I can't recall the name that he used there but he soon became Romaine Fielding and married the owner's daughter.

I can't go into all the other details of his life that I uncovered. I found that his half brother (with his Blandin father and Harlow step mother) "disappeared" after marrying a lady from CA. That lady showed up in Portland, OR as "widowed" with their kids. That lady's daughter seemed to be the grandmother of the elderly lady who had contacted me which started my research on this whole line. It looked likely that the bond was through this line. I won't go into it but I don't think this is the connection anymore, but that's why I did so much research on this line.

Romaine's brother returned to life when I found a newspaper article of him being arrested in Utah for stealing a car in CO. In the article he claimed that he was visiting his brother Romaine Fielding ("the famous director") in CO where Romaine was filming a movie. I ultimately uncovered a marriage record in Washington state where the brother claimed the surname Harlow. The family was fraught with fakery throughout their lives. (The nephew of Romaine who I tracked back to CA ultimately changed his given name, too, but it was originally Adolf and since he changed it as WWII was starting, I could understand good reasons.) The brother was found guilty but married the woman he was with to try to keep her from being required to testify against him. Didn't work, I guess.

William/Romaine married at least 3 times and also got his sister-in-law pregnant while they were all living together in NYC. I can't recall all his kids. (I think one of his kids was named Chester, which I think was William's father or grandfather's name.) I don't recall that there were a lot of kids by Sr but I recall one was in an undeclared war in South America and later moved to Australia where he soon married, had kids, and died. His son Romaine Fielding Jr moved to CA and started building coin operated laundry mats. In the 1950s the Soviet Union's Kruestev (spelling?) hired him to build laundry mats there. He married a Russian woman and brought her back to America where they had 2 daughters before divorcing. (They are a wild but very colorful story, too.)

I'm tapped out. I'm getting old so you can question anything I wrote but the Riceville birth place made me want to tell you it is wrong. The date may be wrong too but the conflict is well documented on his headstone as well as various other sources. The proper date is the earlier one before his father remarried to Harlow. 107.123.53.12 (talk) 04:33, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

The article said that Romaine thought that he died in a quarry landslide in Mexico 15 years earlier. (I forget the dates that I read today but it must have been in the mid 1910s making the last contact between the brothers somewhere around 1900. Josie listed herself as a widow around 1901 and lived in Portland, OR. Burdette married Alberta Lea Fitch in Kansas City on 12 Aug 1902. (Notice how Alberta Lea is similar to Albert Lee which is a town in MN.) They divorced within a couple years.

On 18 Jan 1910 he worked 10 days as a switchman around Pasco, WA but quit on "short notice". He tried to reapply in March but I don't think they picked him up. On 5 Mar 1910 he was living in a hotel with 'Lena' who he married (Helena 'Helen' 'Lena' Mary) in Walla Walla County on 7 June 1911. (He used Harlow as his surname and faked his parents names but it was certainly him. He was just lying.)

Then in November 1914 he was arrested for stealing a car from the filming location of his brother Romaine Fielding in Colorado Springs, CO. The woman with him was M. Spohr. The newspaper article said that she WAS his wife but were then divorced. So I figure she was Helena Mary, but I haven't verified. They did a jail house wedding in the Colorado Springs jail, I suppose to allow her to not testify against Burdette. It didn't work and he was convicted of grand theft auto on 19 December 1914. I found no record of him afterward until today when that blog said that he was working in that quarry or mine that Romaine used as a film set to spend time with his brother.

William (using various aliases) married first to Genevieve Icylene 'Icy' Richards in 1891, presumably in Minneapolis. He then joined the army on 2 Aug 1893. (I had thought it was the Marines, but I recalled wrong.) He was discharged for "possible epilepsy" at Fort Smelling on 15 Aug 1894. He applied for a military pension a week later.

He was listed as Royal A. Blandin as a student in 1895 and under that name enlisted in the Marines on 25 Jul 1896 in Brooklyn, NY. In October he got orders to report to "the hospital" in Washington, DC and on 16 Nov 1896 he was reported there in the "hospital survey." I expect "the hospital" was Walter Reed. Originally I figured that he died there because I found no other record of Royal A. Blandin until I found a memoriam in a CA newspaper by Royal and Burdette around 1900 when their mother/stepmother died.

Chester John Blandin remarried after Emma Harlow died. He married Sarah Salinda 'Lenna' Phillips on 29 Dec 1903 in Des Moines, IA. They apparently moved to Kansas City soon afterward and had a son Chester there who died on 9 Aug 1906. Chester John Blandin died on 13 Aug 1906 in Kansas City.

Around 1897 he apparently went to the Yukon Gold Rush. I've done research on others who went there and hung out with the same group of people but I can't smooth out things. In my other research I found they moved down to the Dakota territory to search gold there. Don't know who was in the group but same names (Jack London, etc.) show up. Just haven't and won't investigate further.

In 1900 he was living as a son-in-law with 'Icy' and her parents in Fall River, KS. I don't find the census in my files so don't have record to clarify. (Just my notes that he was listed as son-in-law to someone there.)

In 1907 he was listed in an ad for Auditorium Drug Co. in Kansas City as Romanzo A. Blinding, clerk and physician.

He married Florence Mabel Van Valken (as Romanzo A. Blinding) in Chicago on 30 July 1907. 'Icy' married Elmore (or Elmer) Connor Dyer in 1908. I don't have any divorce date. Oh, Florence listed she was born in Tipton, IN.

Romaine and "Mabel" were in the 1910 census as "actor" and "actress" in "show business" living in a hotel in Minneapolis. They note that this was their first marriage, although it wasn't. They note that they were born in Minnesota, which I know he was. By 1912 he was in Prescott, AZ and in May 1913 in Silver City, NM. He's all over the SW making movies.

I'll have to finish later. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.123.53.12 (talk) 10:22, 21 November 2022 (UTC)