Family accounts and newspaper reports, with their original qualifications and sources.
More family stories from the newspapers
A leap-year birthday gathering
Friends surprised J. F. Roling with a birthday party on February 29, 1916. The Salisbury Democrat described about twenty guests and a gift of a smoking set. Both Salisbury papers reported that he was fifty-two, but they counted his leap-day birthdays differently: the Democrat called this his twelfth, while the Press-Spectator called it his thirteenth. Those are the newspapers’ own descriptions.
Sources for this story
“Celebrates Birthday,” Salisbury Democrat, March 3, 1916, p. 1, family-preserved newspaper clipping; and “Celebrates ‘Thirteenth’ Birthday,” Salisbury Press-Spectator, March 3, 1916, p. 1, original page. The latter gives his birth as February 29, 1864. The accounts describe the same gathering, not two separate parties. Newspapers.com may require an account.
Agnes at the Savings Bank
A July 1920 notice reported that Agnes Roling had taken Florence Botkins’ place at the Savings Bank. It described Agnes as a business-college graduate. The notice does not name the college or give her job title.
Source: untitled notice beginning “Miss Agnes Roling,” Salisbury Press-Spectator, July 2, 1920, p. 5, family-preserved newspaper clipping.
A separate account, “A Pair of Pairings,” Salisbury Democrat, October 20, 1916, p. 1, also reports Ben Roling and Katherine Korte’s wedding at the Catholic church in Glasgow. It describes dinner at the bride’s home and a dance afterward at the Catholic Club room in Salisbury. The family-preserved Press-Spectator clipping “Prominent Young Business Man Marries,” April 20, 1917, p. 1, corresponds to the Joseph Roling and Ida Bange wedding source already cited here; it is not counted as another independent report.
The earlier notices
Saying goodbye through the window
One family memory adds a poignant detail to Marvin’s story. During the scarlet-fever quarantine, his coffin was placed beside a window so friends could pay their respects from outside. The family account describes a private service at home, followed by burial at St. Joseph’s Cemetery.
The handwritten note credits Jeanne and Ida Mae with this memory and says Bob was too young to remember it himself. The contemporary obituary also reports the private home funeral and cemetery burial.
Two contemporary notices add to the later remembrance of Marvin Joseph. The May 2, 1930 birth announcement names him as the son of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Roling and gives his birth as April 19. His obituary, published December 9, 1932, reports that he died of scarlet fever on Tuesday evening. It names six surviving sisters, Ida May, Mildred, Evelyn, Jeanne, Helen and Rita, and a brother, Robert, and reports burial in St. Joseph’s cemetery after a private funeral at home.
Preferred birth date: April 18, 1930. Marvin’s Missouri death certificate 38884, filed under the spelling “Marvin Joseph Rolling,” gives that date and records his death on December 6, 1932, aged two years, seven months and eighteen days. It names Joseph Rolling as both father and informant and Ida Bange as mother. This adds strong support to April 18, also given in the obituary and a family record. The birth information was supplied retrospectively on a death certificate, not an original birth registration.
The May 2, 1930 notice’s April 19 birthday remains a genuine competing statement. The obituary’s description of Marvin as three years old conflicts with its own April 1930 birth date and the certificate’s detailed age. Later typed family compilations give April 18, 1931; that reading is retained as compilation history, but the contemporary 1930 birth notice and certificate rule out 1931 for this child.
Birth city remains unresolved. The certificate says only “Mo.” in the birthplace field. A family record says Moberly, while the obituary says Salisbury. The birth notice describes his mother’s return from Woodland hospital in Moberly; that does not by itself establish where Marvin was born.
Sources for the earlier notices and date comparison
Untitled birth notice beginning “Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Roling,” Salisbury Press-Spectator, May 2, 1930, p. 5; “Three Year Old Child Dies of Scarlet Fever,” Salisbury Press-Spectator, December 9, 1932, p. 1. Both are family-preserved newspaper clippings; their original wording and discrepancies are retained.
Missouri State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Missouri death certificate 38884, Marvin Joseph Rolling, death December 6, 1932; Missouri State Archives, Missouri Digital Heritage. Certificate number 38884 is distinct from the linked image filename 1932_00039731.PDF. The certificate also reports scarlet fever and burial at St. Joseph Cemetery in Salisbury on December 7, 1932; those are certificate statements, not a separate cemetery-register finding.
Roling binder 1, PDF page 2 (April 18, 1930, Moberly); Roling binder 2, PDF page 27, and Roling binder 3, PDF page 46, printed H-40 (repeated April 18, 1931 compilation). The repeated sheets are not independent support for 1931. A birth or baptism record remains the appropriate independent test of the one-day difference and birth city.