James Coffarelli, Chauffeur

I'll be giving  you an inside view on my family study methodology so that you can see how it happens that I seem to never get anything DONE!

First, your cousin has been so generous in sharing the ephemera from John Coffarelli's collection.  I spent much of Christmas afternoon scanning and researching.  Here's one example of the trail I followed until I was well off the trail.

As you can see, this is a vehicle registration from 1931 for your grandfather James.  I notice the vehicle is a Willys 6.  This was not familiar to me, so I can't resist doing a little further research.  And this is exactly where the scanning stops and the off course wandering begins.

This is a 1931 Willys Six Model 97.  Pretty snappy.  First it occurs to me that James had a very up-to-date vehicle for himself.  I don't really know what it might mean to be a chauffeur in Freeport NY in the late 1920s and early 1930s.  He consistently held a chauffeur's license but I don't know what it was needed or used for. 

I detoured my way through fultonhistory.com and found this tidbit of information that James was apparently involved in an accident with the fire truck one day.  Perhaps he was "on duty" as a chauffeur and a vehicle like the one above was damaged (althought this article is from 1922 Brooklyn Standard):


 




So I take another detour to check the 1930 census record which indicates his occupation as coal weigher.  This detour led me to a Freeport City Directory from 1926:

James is listed with Margaret as foreman but, interestingly for me--also listed are James' elusive siblings Elizabeth and Phillip!  Bazinga (as Sheldon would say on The Big Bang Theory).  Of course, I have to link this to these two as well and now the original research is well off track.  But I'm having a grand time and I'm so happy to be able to share it with you all.