Robert Huntington

Robert c.1949

Robert Huntington (1865-06-10 – 1952-05-28), formerly Henry Gesner Huntington, family nickname Papa, was my matrimaternal great-grandfather. He married Martha Martin on 1903-11-01 and had four children, including my grandmother Genevieve. He was the son of Caleb and Emily Huntington.

His mitochondrial haplogroup has been identified as U2e1a.

Oral tradition

Family tradition gives Robert the following background: His father John was a ship’s captain, and his mother Mary a passenger, and they met on board and married. Robert was born in Galveston, Texas, and his mother died a week after his birth from complications. What became of his father was never clear, but it might be surmised he died within a couple of years as well. Robert was placed with relatives in the vicinity of Bangor, Maine, but, finding him difficult, they put him in an orphanage. There he lived some time before running away. He boarded a ship and lived as a cabin boy throughout his youth, thus cementing his passion for the sea.

I depended on the above story for many years trying to find records of his origins. Several of Robert’s contemporary vital records show his parents’ names as John S. Huntington and Mary A. Murphy, which I considered the best information, in addition to a census record that has his parents’ birthplaces as Virginia and Maine, respectively. But I was still frustrated in every effort to find this couple.

Only with DNA evidence did I eventually learn that there isn’t a grain of truth to any of the above. Where this wild tale came from, or why Robert would change his name and fabricate such an extensive story, remains a mystery.

However, three aspects of family tradition have been vindicated, and thus may be counted as evidence:

His birthday has always been remembered as June 10.
My great-aunt Martha told me that he had a brother named Hubert who was two years older. He does indeed have a brother Hubert, albeit younger.
The name Caleb for Robert’s father did somewhat percolate down. A brief genealogy prepared by my grandmother seemingly tried to reconcile these traditions by giving his name as John Caleb.

Identification

I ordered my first autosomal DNA test on 2010-11-26, and a major goal was leveraging this data to find information about Robert. This was fruitless for quite a while, although a handful of matches in eastern Canada remained unexplained. There were also red herrings, such as evidence linking an unknown ancestor to Cambridgeshire, England, which I thought might be Robert.

The first big break was a large match to a descendant of Frederick Augustus, son of John and Ruth Huntington, which I identified on 2016-05-04. I had looked at this Cape Breton family before, and even noticed the similarity of Henry’s bio to some details of Robert’s life, but dismissed it as an amusing coincidence since I had not contemplated a name change. I began tracing this family in more detail to look for any evidence of emigrants to America, especially Texas, or any kind of naval career. I had supposed that the Huntington family genealogists had lost track of one branch, mine. I considered several theories, such as an illegitimate birth which was not well-recorded, where perhaps the name Huntington was taken from the mother.

Over time, matches to this family accumulated, and I compared sizes of the matches to try to infer which family was closest. I assembled a webpage on 2017-10-06 with a tree of relevant people, which I continued to add to. As the number of strong matches to descendants of Caleb and Emily grew, I began seriously considering what I called the “Henry hypothesis”.

A flurry of additional matches came through my maternal aunt’s 23andMe test and my mother’s ancestry.com test, all pointing to this same family. On 2018-11-23, I declared that the DNA evidence that Henry was Robert was so overwhelming that I ceased updating these charts.

I would still like to find written records that substantiate this name change.

Early life

Robert, like his siblings, was born in Grand Mira. He was likely initially named for his great-grandfather Henry Gesner, perhaps intermediately through his great-uncle Henry Jr. He is found in the 1871^⟮1⟯, 1881^⟮2⟯, and 1891^⟮3⟯ Federal censuses of Canada. He is living with his parents in all of them, and in the last he is listed as a “laborer” (his father is a farmer) and able to read and write.

On 1891-08-17 he is recorded as being Henry G. Huntington of Camden, Maine, so he had already left the country.

The Huntington Family Association book says this:^⟮4⟯

Henry Gesner, born June 10, 1865; came to the United States, and was last heard of on board the U. S. S. Oregon, just before the Spanish American War.

The book was published in 1915, although the entry does not mention his mother’s death in 1906, so the information may have been submitted earlier. In any case, the Spanish-American War started in 1898, and the text indicates that the family had lost track of Henry not long before then, and likely for many years.

The reference to a naval career and the Spanish-American War both tally with what is known of Robert’s life.

As Robert

Here are the earliest records I have found of Robert as Robert:

An 1896-07-31 California voter registration. It shows his occupation as seaman and that he was 28 years old and born in Texas, living at 842 Kearney St., Floor 2, Room 62 in San Francisco.
He is listed on the roster of Company D of the Naval Battalion for the National Guard of California, with an enlistment of 1897-02-02, aged 28 born in Texas. This company was deployed during the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars.
The 1900 Federal census (dated 1900-06-11), where he is aboard the U.S. Fish Commission Steamer Albatross^⟮5⟯, a research vessel^⟮6⟯, then in the port of Hokodate, Japan. He gave his birth as June 1868 in Texas, and his parents as born in Maine.^⟮7⟯
His 1903-11-01 marriage record to Martha Martin lists his age as 37, with him born in Galveston, Texas, and his residence as the U.S.S. Arethusa, then docked in Charlestown, Boston, Massachusetts.^⟮8⟯^⟮9⟯

After this, he can be found on many records, including several passenger lists.

Career

Most retrospectives describe Robert primarily as a “marine educator”. He was principal of the Merchant Marine School of the Seamen’s Church Institute (SCI) of New York^⟮10⟯, which he helped found, from its establishment in 1916 till January 1942^⟮11⟯. The SCI was then a 13-story building located at 25 South Street, New York, New York.^⟮12⟯

He was almost invariably referred to as Captain Robert Huntington.

The SCI said that he had previously been the principal of the Huntington Navigation School of Boston for 12 years.^⟮13⟯ This was presumably a minor outfit as I can find few references to it, but if the duration is accurate, it dates back to 1904. However, other articles date its start only to 1912.^⟮14⟯

Family

Robert and Martha had four children, one of who died young. See Martha Martin for the list. He has three grand-children and six great-grandchildren.

Medico

Perhaps Robert’s most notable achievement was his establishment of Medico, an early telemedicine service that served seamen. Its beginnings were summarized in The Rotarian:^⟮15⟯

One fog-shrouded morning, Huntington, idly listening to ships asking by wireless for a check on their positions, found himself remembering a friend of his. The man had broken both legs in a fall down a hatch. The skipper had set them so badly that the man was a lifelong cripple. If, Huntington asked himself, a master can ask for a radio fix, why can’t he seek medical advice by the same means?
Captain Huntington’s mind went back to his own days at sea, recalling the men he had seen die simply because no way existed to care for them. He decided there was something he could do about the problem. He took his idea to a Philadelphia philanthropist, Henry A. Laughlin, who gave Huntington $5,000 towards establishing a small station atop the Institute’s building on the New York water front. In this manner KDKF was born.

Medico in action, 1920(?)^⟮16⟯

Medico was launched on 1920-11-03^⟮17⟯ under the call sign KDKF. Although dispensing medical advice over radio was not new, this was the world’s first service to provide it systematically. KDKF was given the facetious backronym Kome Doctor Kome Fix it. The service was initially available only 9 to 5 local time, but starting 1921-04-20 it became 24-hour.

Robert also added a requirement that officers be trained in basic first aid. This was needed partly because some seamen were poor at describing symptoms over the radio.

Medico was immensely popular and has been credited with saving many lives, and in turn struggled with its volume and finances. It eventually gained more funding and was able to expand with more transmitters and staff. Over the years, additional such services popped up, all over the world. Another early one was established in Italy in 1935, which appears to have been invented independently.

Today, satellite radio has supplanted traditional radio in maritime usage, and ships are customarily staffed with medical personnel, obviating the need for radio assistance. Thus, such services declined, and the original Medico no longer exists.

On 1989-10-17, the call sign KDKF was assigned to a television station transmitting out of Klamath Falls, Oregon, and it remains so as of 2023.