Guinn sent a scan of a letter written, I'm assuming, by Uncle Sally (or is it Sallie; I've seen it that way in Lura's letters, for example]. Here's the text:
National War Work Council of
Young Men’s Christian Associations
Of the
Oct. 26th 1917
Dear father, I received your letter this afternoon but I have not got the [?] yet. Will be apt to get it tomorrow it generally takes about a day longer for a package.
I received that candy and gum you spoke about with those cakes I got some time ago. I got my razor last week. Say those Endless [?] blades would not shave in it but there was a boy in here who sent home for some Endless blades and his folks sent him Keen Cutters [?] so we traded that made it come out just right. I am still well never felt better in my life.
As ever your son
END
Well, that throws confusion over the matter. In the family bible pages that came from Aunt Lura, that I was looking at in the Webb file, with the list of Roy Lee's siblings the name is spelled "Rousal" and there is a notation that says "I suspect that Papa didn't know how to spell Roswell so I don't know which is on his birth certificate--was always called Sallie." So there's a contradiction: he signed a letter as "Roswell" and the family bible seems to indicate that, on the one hand; on the other, the name is spelled phonetically in the family bible as "Rousal" which sounds pretty close to "Rosele" which was his grandfather's middle name. I wonder if he got tired of having to spell "Rosele" and explain it and just went for "Roswell" which is easy enough.
UPDATE: in a later comment, Randall says that he has Uncle Sallie's enlistment papers in which he spells it "Roswell." To me that still doesn't change what I thought above: his grandfather's middle name, from records, was definitely "Rosele." It's likely that he was given that name in honor of his grandfather. However, it's kind of an odd name and especially so for a young man, so he probably changed it to Roswell to avoid having to explain and/or spell it all the time. In a comment to an earlier post, Jimmy says: "Daddy always pronounced it to sound like 'Rosell' [Roz ull]."
Makes sense to me.
Here's an update from a comment from Jimmy regarding Sallie's service in WW I:
"Uncle Sally enlisted in one branch and got discharged because he had mono (I think that's what he had). He then enlisted in the other branch and went overseas. There are pictures of him in both uniforms."
UPDATE: As promised, here are the two photos of Uncle Sallie; thanks Guinn! I don't know anything more about his service, unfortunately.
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Uncle Sally enlisted in one branch and got discharged because he had mono (I think that's what he had). He then enlisted in the other branch and went overseas. There are pictures of him in both uniforms.
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