The only Australian aboard our Heintzelman voyage, Edna Davis (1906-1985)

Updated 20 November 2023

There was one Australian aboard the November 1947 voyage of the Heintzelman from Bremerhaven, Germany, to Fremantle, Australia.  She was Edna Davis, described by the West Australian Newspaper on 29 November 1947 as 'formerly principal of a school for young children in Melbourne'.  Miss Davis had been in Europe since August 1945, working with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, known as UNRRA, and the International Refugee Organization, IRO, in the US Zone of occupied Germany.  

Her return to Australia on board the Heintzelman had been arranged by the IRO, responsible for organising its voyage to Australia.

'These people are a very good type,' she told the West Australian reporter.  'I have been working with various people in Europe for the past two years, and I am of the opinion that the Baltic people are more like the English than those of any other country that I have met.'

Another Perth newspaper, the Daily News, reported on 28 November that Edna Davis had run onboard classes in English, since the Baltic refugees mostly spoke German among each other.  The classes were held three times a day, for elementary, intermediate and advanced students.

She told the Daily News that most of the men were rural workers, a fact that Australians would have welcomed even more then than now.  She added that others were 'engineers, chemists, architects, watchmakers and musicians'.  She advised that, 'They were specially selected by the Australian Commission in Germany. All had been separately interviewed and had undergone a strict medical examination. The Balts were pleased with the friendly and sympathetic treatment received from the Commission'.  The Commission was Australia's immediate post-War representation in Germany, run by the Australian military.

Source: Perth Daily News, 28 November 1947

We are fortunate in having had the Daily News publish a photograph of Edna Davis, above on the right, with her name spelled 'Davies' this time.  She is together with one of the Lithuanian passengers who actually preferred to be known as Birute and whose last name usually was spelled Tamulyte.  Birute was sent to Canberra to work, stayed, married and raised two sons.  She died in Canberra in 2016, aged 83.

When I first posted about Edna Davis, in April this year, I wrote that, 'I have been told that the Australian woman on the voyage married one of the men on the same trip.  Who that was I have yet to find out.  That information might help in the discovery about more of Edna Davis' early and later life.  Do you know more?

The community of people who, like me, are descended from passengers on this Heintzelman voyage or very interested in it came to my immediate aid.  Peter Pildre knew that Edna Davis had married Elmar Rähn, who was part of the 1924 Estonian athletics team at the Paris Olympics.  In Australia, Elmar became a teacher at Trinity Grammar, Kew, in Melbourne — specialising in athletics, of course.  He had organised a Trinity scholarship for Peter on the basis of his athletic ability.  I hope to make Elmar Rähn's life the subject of a separate entry.

Jonas Mockunas turned up an issue of the Journal of the Holocaust Survivors '45 Aid Society which included a mention of Miss Davis' role in Germany.  Writing about his life there from April 1945, Salek Benedikt described how his group were looked after in an UNRRA children's home in the village of Winzer, near Deggendorf, in Bavaria.  UNRRA Team 182, consisting of 15 volunteers from 11 countries, ran the home.  Among them was Edna Davis from Victoria, Australia, who he recorded as a nurse.

All 15 members of the Team are in this photo, so Edna Davis is in there somewhere,
perhaps third from the right. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

Source:  Holocaust Survivors '45 Aid Society

Edna Davis was one of three Australian women recruited by UNRRA to perform welfare work in the immediate aftermath of the War.  They were packed, ready to leave, when they were told that the Australian Government had refused them passports.  

The official explanation was that the Government had a policy of preventing persons who could assist in relieving the Australian 'man-power' shortage from leaving Australia if the work they were to perform could be done by persons available on the spot.  The Government stated that it had been told that if the Australian women could not leave by 6 August 1945, others from the US would fill their places.  The Government could not allow them to go 'while there remained an acute shortage of woman-power for the care of patients in repatriation, military and other hospitals and the dire need for women for textile and other industries'.

When I first read this, I thought, hang on, two of the women were teachers.  What did they have to do with the care of patients in hospitals or woman-power in the textile industry?

The two teachers were Edna Davis and Valerie Paling, both from Lauriston, a private girls' school in Melbourne.  Ms Paling was described as bitter about the Government's decision.  'As there was no ban on male UNRRA appointees going abroad it seemed to her like sex prejudice', said some reports.  She clearly was a woman ahead of her time.

Not only were the women packed, but they had resigned from their work, gone to a great deal of trouble arranging for necessary documents, and each had received 13 injections.

The Government backed down and the Prime Minister himself, Ben Chifley, announced on 3 August that the women would receive their passports.

In case this initial refusal to issue passports seems way too restrictive by modern standards, we must remember that World War II still raged in Asia.  The 6 August deadline above happens to be the day on which an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  While the Germans had signed their unconditional surrender on 7 May, Japan did not announce its surrender until 15 August.  World War II in the Pacific did not end until 2 September, the day that the Japanese Foreign Minister signed its instrument of surrender.

For a comparison, think of how the Australian Government restricted overseas travel in the early days of the COVID-19 regime here.

Jonas Mockunas also turned up an online issue of a periodical called Lauriston Life, which had an article confirming that Edna Davis had resigned from the position of principal of Lauriston's Junior School.  She is known to have not only worked at the UNRRA children's home in the village of Winzer, but to have been in charge of the Wartenberg Children’s Centre, also in Bavaria.  Unaccompanied children received care here while efforts were made to find family members for them.  She also made several journeys across Europe returning groups of children to their homes.

Apart from her marriage to Elmar Rähn, we know little about what happened to Edna after her return to Australia.  The Australian version of Ancestry gives access to death indexes

advising that she died in 1985 in East Melbourne.  A search on the Victorian Government's Births, Deaths and Marriages Website gave a date of 22 November 1985.  

The death certificate then purchased shows that the cause of death was 'alveolar cell carcinoma of lung', which she was thought to have had for about 6 months.  Might this be air pollution in the immediate aftermath of World War II in Germany catching up with her?

The death certificate also confirmed her 1947 marriage — in Western Australia.  Edna and Elmar had met in Germany but had another four weeks to get to know each other on board the Heintzelman.  Now that I have a copy of their marriage certificate, I can report that no time was wasted once their ship docked.  They were married 3 days later, on 1 December 1947.  Both were living in the Graylands Camp.  There were two witnesses to the Church of England ceremony, O Pilais and E Pabeel, both unusual family names by English or Estonian standards:  perhaps they had been among the hundreds of Perth and Fremantle locals who came forward to entertain the new arrivals. There were no children of the marriage.  

Edna was 79 years old when she died, born in Newtown, Tasmania, to David Manton Davis, an inspector of schools, and the former Alice Mary Whitham.   A separate search through the Libraries Tasmania Website provides a birthdate of 16 April 1906.  Some family trees on Ancestry show that she was the middle child in a family of 5 children, the older of the two daughters. 

Electoral rolls and rate books give us some more information about Edna's life after her marriage in Perth in December 1947.  As Edna Mary Rahn, home duties, she was paying the rates on a property on Curraweena Road in the City of Caulfield, Melbourne, in December 1949 and December 1950.  It was a 5-room, weatherboard house said to have a 'population' of 3 people.

We know from a probate notice published in the Melbourne Argus of 27 January 1950 that the third person was Edna's mother, Alice Davis, a widow formerly of Kempton in Tasmania.  Perhaps Edna had been engaged in 'home duties' because she was providing care for her mother.

The Melbourne Weekly Times newspaper of 10 October 1951 has Mrs Rahn employed as the social worker for the War Widows Guild of Australia (Victoria).  She certainly was doing social work with young refugees in Germany.

In 1954, an electoral roll shows her having moved to South Road, Brighton, but again gives her occupation as 'home duties'. 

The first Olympic Games in the Southern Hemisphere were held in Melbourne between 22 November and 8 December 1956.  To make these the "friendly Games" and perhaps because hotel accommodation would be taxed by the influx of visitors, Melbourne residents were asked to offer homestays.  The Melbourne Argus newspaper of 29 September 1956 had a 3-page spread illustrating the offers.  Melbourne Opens Her Homes and Hearts included 'Former Olympic athlete Mr. E. Rahn and Mrs. Rahn, of South road, Brighton' who would 'have as their guest a visiting Dane'.

Elmar appears to be inspecting the roses in the front garden of the Brighton house.
This double-fronted brick veneer with roses lining the walk to the front door would have been
a far cry from the housing Elmar knew in his home country.

The living room of the Rähn household,
captioned by the Argus, 'A fire for a cosy room'

Source: The Argus, 29 September 1956

By 1963, Edna had moved to High Street, Armadale (now Prahran), declaring her occupation to be 'teacher'. Elmar Emil Rahn, also a teacher, was at the same address.

On the 1967, 1968, 1972 and 1977 electoral rolls, she remained a teacher but her address had changed to Illawarra Road, North Balwyn.  Elmar is absent from these rolls, having died as early as January 1966. On the 1980 roll, when she was aged in her 70s, her no occupation was stated and her address had changed to Dixon Street, Malvern.

There are no rates records digitised for these addresses, so perhaps the property on Curraweena Road was sold and Edna returned to renting her accommodation with Elmar.

Australia at this time had laws requiring retirement age of 65 for all, although women could retire and claim an aged pension at the age of 60.  Edna reached that age in 1966, but clearly continued teaching.  In 1977, she was aged 70 or 71, but continued to give her occupation as 'teacher'.  Either this was an oversight or she was still able to work at this age in a private capacity.  It certainly does suggest a love of teaching, just as her life exemplifies service to others.

Sources

'843 'Splendid' Balt Migrants Arrive', The Daily News (Perth, WA), 28 November 1947, p 8, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article79814996, viewed 5 November 2022.

Ancestry.com.au, All results for edna mary rahn, https://www.ancestry.com/search/?name=edna+mary_rahn&event=_australia_5027&count=50&event_x=_1-0&location=5027&name_x=p_p&priority=australian

Bars, Jenny, 2014, 'Miss Paling and Miss Davis: Humanitarian workers in post-WWII Europe', Lauriston Life, edition 3, October 2014, https://www.lauriston.vic.edu.au/.../downloads/page0032.pdf, downloaded 10 April 2022.

Benedikt, Salek, 2002, ' "Wir Fahren Nach England"', Journal,  Holocaust Survivors '45 Aid Society, Issue 26, Autumn, p 4-6.

Blandford, Nick, 4 May 2018, 'Material on Elmer Rahn', email.

'I Hear on my Rounds ... Australians with UNRRA', The Argus (Melbourne, Vic), 4 December 1945, p 7, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12156653, viewed 5 November 2022.

Libraries Tasmania, https://librariestas.ent.sirsidynix.net.au/client/en_AU/names/search/results?qu=edna&qu=davis&qf=NI_INDEX%09Record+type%09Births%09Births, viewed 6 November 2022.

'Melbourne Teacher Aids European Children', The Herald (Melbourne, Vic), 3 August 1946, p 5, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article245542437, viewed 5 November 2022.

Mockunas, Jonas, April 2022, post to General Stuart Heintzelman/First Transport Facebook group.

Pildre, Peter, April 2022, post to General Stuart Heintzelman/First Transport Facebook group.

'Pretty Girl Migrants', The Daily News (Perth, WA), 28 November 1947, p. 1, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article79814870, viewed 5 November 2022.

Public Record Office, Victoria, Rate Books 1855-1963, digitised by Ancestry.com.au.

'To Their New Land', The West Australian, (Perth, WA), 29 November 1947, p 6, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article46819538, viewed 5 November 2022.

'Unaccompanied Children, Work of Melbourne Women with U.N.R.R.A.' The Age  (Melbourne, Vic), 7 September 1946, p 7, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article206366640, viewed 5 November 2022.

'War widows want higher allowance', The Weekly Times,  Melbourne, 10 October 1951, viewed 14 December 2022.

'Workers for UNRRA: Passports Refused to Nine Persons',  The Riverine Herald, (Echuca, Vic; Moama, NSW), 1 August 1945, p 6, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article116615757, viewed 5 November 2022.

Wikipedia, UNRRA  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Relief_and_Rehabilitation_Administration for more details.

IRO Escort Officer on Heintzelman, Vladas Zibas (1910-2001), and his assistants

Updated 23 January 2023

A Lithuanian refugee himself, Vladas Zibas was the International Refugee Organization's (IRO) Escort Officer for the first group travelling to Australia on the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman.  His family name appears to be a contraction of Zibinskas, used by his parents and siblings.  Here are his life and views as summarised in the Souvenir Edition, 1st Sailing to Australia. 

Profile sketch of Vladas Zibas from the Souvenir Edition

Vladas Zibas was born at Palanga, Lithuania, in 1910. He finished a Teachers' Seminary and worked as a teacher for two years, In 1931 he was enrolled in the Lithuanian Army and sent to a Military school. He remained in the Army until 194O. Last rank Captain. In 1944 he was forced to go to Germany and to work there as agricultural worker. After liberation in l945 he has been connected with Displaced Persons' Operations all the time. 

When interviewed, the Escort Officer who is the representative of IRO aboard this ship and has to hand over the transport to the Australian Government expresses his full contentment with the voyage. Bound to the same task, he has been on two similar trips before: once to Brazil and the other time to Canada. This is his third passage, the longest and the finest (and his first to Australia) — we have not met rough weather and only comparably few cases of seasickness have occurred. It is the first time that there are no families and children on the transport and the first time when there are (sic) a homogeneous group of people on the trip consisting only of Baltics.

"This makes a great difference in my work", Mr Zibas says. "It is much easier to cope with single persons, I have met very good co-operation and the passengers self-government has helped facilitate my job too."  The Escort Officer wishes to offer many thanks to all the fine co-operators who have voluntarily endeavoured to carry out the administrative work and to turn the life on board the ship pleasant. In general I wish my Baltic countrymen all the very best and a good fortune in the new country.  Start your new life and be happy.

Since Vladas Zibas, his wife and one son resettled in America in 1950, Ancestry.com provides access to public information about their later life.  Again, I have used this information to compile a family tree which interested visitors can view, perhaps after they become Registered Guests of Ancestry first.

As the home port for the Heintzelman was New York City and Vladas appears to have been attached specifically to this ship as part of its crew, Ancestry's collection of digitised Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists for the port of New York shows something of his movements between 1947 and 1950.  The first trip to Canada did not involve calling in at New York, but the first trip to Brazil has him departing Rio de Janeiro for New York on 3 September 1947.  The Heintzelman reached New York on 15 September.  There's no record of whether or not Vladas was allowed shore leave but at least he got to view the skyline of the city where he was to resettle three years later.

Four months later, he was in New York again on the Heintzelman after a voyage to Halifax, Canada.  A third visit occurred in July 1948, after the Heintzelman took refugees to Peru and Chile.  This time, the passage through the Panama Canal on the return trip to New York was recorded also.  November 1948 saw his fourth visit to New York after a voyage from Bremerhaven to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In January 1949, Zibas visited New York for the last time as an Escort Officer, on a voyage which had originated in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.  Who knew that Europe's Displaced Persons were resettled on Caribbean islands as well as in Australia, New Zealand, and various countries of North and South America?  Or did the ship call at Port-of-Spain to re-provision for the trip to New York?

The Crew List for his 1947 trip to New York from Brazil shows an Assistant Escort Officer named Anna R Van Der Loeff.  Her name also appears on a crew list for Heintzelman trip to Australia held by the National Archives of Australia.  While the sketch of Vladas reproduced above shows a smile, I have heard nothing good nor bad from his passengers about the Escort Officer.  The women passengers, in contrast, hated Van Der Loeff for her daily inspections of their cabins and her behaviour if there was anything out of place, such as spilled face powder which had not been cleaned up.  At 5 feet 10 inches, she probably towered over most of the female passengers too.  Hate is not too strong a word for the descriptions I heard about her 50 and 60 years later!

There might have been feedback to Zibas and his employers because, on what was probably the very next voyage of the Heintzelman, to Halifax and New York in January 1948, her name had been crossed off the crew list.  It was overwriten by the name of an English woman.  The IRO may have had a preference for providing employment to the refugees because subsequent crew lists show the Assistant as an Estonian man, Herman Malvet.

Sailing the world or, at least to Australia via the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and Colombo in what is now Sri Lanka, plus Canada, the United States, South America, the Panama Canal and even the Caribbean, must have been a dream job.  Dreams disappear as the reality of mornings take their place.  In this case, Zibas had left a wife behind in the Wentorf Displaced Persons Camp outside Hamburg in Germany.  Kazimira, known as Kaze, was looking after their son, Algirdas, only 10 years old when Vladas started his Escort Officer job but now perhaps more in need of his father's guidance as a 13-year-old.

The entrance to the Wentorf Camp
Photograph supplied to DPCamps.org by Bogdan Karasek of Canada

There's a gap in Vladas' records between the January 1949 trip from the Caribbean to New York and an August 1950 Wentorf Camp record, available through the Arolsen Archives, showing that the family of three was about to leave for the United States.  Their sponsor was the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC on the records).  

They were leaving for a known address, 103-41 106th St, Ozone Park in New York City.  This may have been an apartment in a building owned by the Catholic Church and used by the NCWC for initial reception.  The former Captain of the Heintzelman, Cort M Pedersen, had lived in the suburb of Ozone Park also.  Sad to say, he had been dead for more than 20 months by the time his former crew member with family set out on a sister ship to the Heintzelman, the General WG Haan.

By 1951, the family had moved from New York to the neighbouring state of New Jersey.  As noted in an earlier entry to this blog, New Jersey was also the home state of the US Army offier who was Commander of the Heintzelman, Captain Valentine Pasvolsky.  You might have thought that they got back in touch but contacting people who have been in your life is so much easier in the 2020s than it was 70 years ago.  At least a switchboard operator in the 1950s would be willing to find someone's telephone number for you, but homes did not always have their own phones.  A search for someone's phone number was likely for business reasons or an emergency only.  You could not write a letter to someone unless you already had their address or, at least, a rough idea of it.  At the time of the 1950 Federal Census, New Jersey already had a population of 4.8 million, a bit behind Melbourne's current population.  Searching out someone for social reasons was like hunting for the proverbial needle hidden in hay.

Instead, we have Vladas Zibas becoming an evening student at Fairleigh Dickinson University.  Perhaps he was studying subjects related to his previous employment or subjects making him immediately more employable in New Jersey.  No, he was studying astronomy.  Maybe evenings on board the Heintzelman had been employed in star-gazing, especially when there were no passengers on board to be administered.

He was a good student too, making the Dean's List every year but one, which mean that he had a B average grade.  The year he wasn't on the Dean's List was when he was on the University's Honors List, meaning a B+ or better average.

Meanwhile, the only publicly available information on his employment in the United States lists him as a 'dyewkr' in New Jersey in 1956.  There is nothing on the Web to suggest that he actually worked as an astronomer after his graduation.  At least his studies meant that his photograph appeared in the Fairleigh Dickinson Yearbook for 1963.

Vladas Zibas as an astronomy student, Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1963

Algirdas had beaten his father to graduation from the same institution, with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1961.  Again, and thanks to Ancestry, this means that a Yearbook photograph is available.

Algirdas Zibas, BS in Electrical Engineering, Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1961

Algirdas at this time was living at 53 Courtland Street, Paterson, probably his parents' address.  We know that Algirdas married another young Lithuanian who had been in the Wentorf Camp also and continued to live in New Jersey until perhaps the mid-1990s.

His mother, Kaze, died in August 1987 in Florida.  A public record indicates that he too had moved to Florida by 1995.  By then he was aged in his 60s and perhaps thinking of keeping his widowed father company.  Vladas had been living in Palm Beach, Florida, since at least 1985.

Two years after Kaze died, Vladas re-married to another Lithuanian-born refugee who, for her part, had been widowed for more than 30 years.  Vladas' death occurred more than 11 years later, in June 2001.  He had reached the impressive age of 91, outliving his three siblings by at least 15 years.  His only know employment in the US, in a factory where threads or fabrics were dyed, does not seem to have had a negative impact on his health.

Algirdas may well be still living and the Web indicates that there are more descendants.  We wish them all well, since their forebear, Vladas, looked after our family members well on their trip from devastated Germany to Australia.

Captain Wayne H Stockdale (1919-2005), Heintzelman's Surgeon

Updated 23 January 2023

The third Captain, and the most junior in age, was the ship's Surgeon, Wayne H Stockdale.  Here is how the authors of the Souvenir Edition, 1st Sailing to Australia described him.

Captain Wayne H. Stockdale, M.C., was born near Zanesville, Ohio, on 13th September 1919, educated in public schools, attended Muskinguve (sic) College, New Concord, Ohio and received Medical Degree from the University of Louisville in 1945.  Interned at Grace Hospital, Detroit Michigan.  Entered Army in July 1946.  Married — no children.

Captain says: "The health of the passengers has been far above the average.  The main complaint has been the heat which has been hard for us to bear, especially those of us who prefer and are used to cold and snow.

"This is my first contact with the peoples of Europe.  I am very impressed with the Baltic people.  I am sure, if the rest of the peoples of Europe were of the same quality and character as those which are aboard this ship, the world would be a much greater place.  This is my first trip across the equator and I am anticipating my first visit to a foreign country (port of Bremerhaven excluded).

"I wish to express my appreciation to the passengers for their co-operation in every respect.  They have kept the ship exceptionally clean and neat.  I am sure you will find Australia a hospitable place and success will be yours within a short time."

A drawing of Captain Stockdale, MD rather than MC, accompanied the written profile.

Most of Captain Stockdale's earlier and later life is summarised in an obituary which appeared in the Raleigh, North Carolina, News and Observer on 29 November 2005.

He grew up in Philo, Ohio, a village 10 miles along the Muskingum River from the city and Muskingum County seat of Zanesville.  His education was as reported in the Souvenir Edition.  His internship at Grace Hospital not only ensured his medical qualifications, it also led him to his wife.  Rita Bernice Truesdale, who preferred to use her middle name, was a graduate of the School of Nursing in Detroit and worked as an anaesthetist at the Grace Hospital.

Wayne H Stockdale in 1945
Source:  Times Recorder (Zanesville, OH) via Newspapers.com

His medical education appears to have been sponsored by the US Government in return for his joining the military after graduation.  Having been commissioned as a First Lieutenant in the Army upon graduation in June 1945 and married in March 1946, Wayne Stockdale embarked on his Army life in July that year.  Children would have to wait.

We know nothing about Wayne's Army career apart from his trip to and from Australia on the Heintzelman, and his discharge in June 1948.  We do know that his medical career continued, with surgical residencies at two hospital followed by his own surgical private practice in Smithfield, North Carolina, between 1952 and 1970.

He gave up his private practice to run the Emergency Department of the Wayne Memorial Hospital in Goldsboro, Wayne County, North Carolina for more than 20 years.  Even after his retirement in 1990, he continued to offer his services to the Wayne Memorial Hospital as a physican's consultant.

His wife, Berenice, and he had three daughters, born between 1951 and 1955.  Sadly, Berenice died in 1991 at the comparatively young age of 70, leaving him a widower for the next 14 years.

An older Wayne Stockdale
Source:  Ancestry.com

We have to hope that he told his daughters about his trip to Australia in 1947 with the first group of World War II refugees to travel there, and that now they can realise that he played a role in part of Australian history. 

SOURCES

Once again I have created an Ancestry tree for Wayne Harrop Stockdale and his immediate family.  You may have to be a Registered Guest at Ancestry.com to see it, though.  I hope not.  The sources I have used come from Ancestry and two of its affiliates, Fold3 and Newspapers.com.  They can be accessed there, although the obituary is available publicly online in two places.  The link to one is above while the second is here.

Transport Commander, Captain Pasvolsky (1898-1980)

Updated 16 January 2023

The Souvenir Edition, 1st Sailing to Australia, tells us that, while Captain Pedersen sailed the ship, another Captain, in the US Army, ran life for its passengers.  He was Valentine Pasvolsky of Lakewood, New Jersey.  The Souvenir Edition has this to say about him:

Captain Valentine Pasvo1sky has been in the US Army for quite a long time and plans to remain for some time more. He has been with the USAT "General Heintzelman" since it was assigned to the DP program, prior to that he was on troop transport duty, Although a registered Civil Engineer, at the present time his job is Transport Commander, a position comparable to that of Army Post Commander, the (USAT) “General Heintzelman" his military post. A resident of Lakewood, New Jersey, he is married and has four children, two boys and two girls. The Captain is quite familiar with all the States and many foreign countries. For Australia, however, in common with passengers, he is heeded for the first time. On frequent occasions the Captain has been in close contact with Baltic people — Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, and speaks most highly of them. In speaking of the group now aboard, he is highly pleased with the co-operation shown in maintaining order, cleanliness, and everything (else) that makes for an all round pleasant trip (and) extends his best wishes to all in your new endeavours and new homes.

Valentine Pasvolsky as portrayed in the Souvenir Edition

Captain Pasvolsky was the man who supplied the headline for the West Australian newspaper's report on 29 November 1947 of the arrival of the Heintzelman. "'The Pick of the Bunch' from Europe" led the report.

Captain Pasvolsky explained that the ship had been under US Army discipline:  he was in charge of the passengers and a US Army staff of 12.  This was the fifth trip the Heintzelman with displaced persons from Europe, the other trips being to Brazil and Canada.

"These people are the pick of the bunch", Pasvolsky said. "Their conduct has been excellent, their discipline has been remarkable, their physique is good, they are clean, and generally their educational standard seems high."

Once again, it's Ancestry.com which provides much more information about Captain Pasvolsky.  Rather than detailing Ancestry's multiple sources below, I have created a Pasvolsky family tree on Ancestry.  This tree should be accessible at https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/180672966/family/familyview?cfpid=362349000400, although you may need to set up a free Ancestry.com Registered Guest account to view it.

Valentine Pasvolsky on 20 November 1948,
at the wedding of his younger daughter, the first of his children to marry
Source:  Ancestry.com

Valentine Mikhailovich Pasvolsky had been born in Ukraine in 1898.  His parents had migrated with their 8 children in 1905, reaching New York the day before Valentine's seventh birthday.

His family had lived in New Jersey from at least 1917, with Valentine marrying there in 1922.  In contrast to his immigrant status, his wife was a Mayflower descendent.  She was Ellen Isabel Stoughten, known as Nellie.  Together they actually had 5 children, with one of the 3 girls dying in infancy.  Although the children were described as "two boys and two girls" in the Souvenir Edition, the oldest was already aged 24 at the time of our Heintzelman voyage, while the youngest was aged 18.  That is to say that they were of a similar age to many of the refugee passengers of whom Valentine was in charge.

Captain Valentine Pasvolsky (standing, centre) with his family,
probably at home in New Jersey, possibly taken in 1944
Source: Ancestry.com

Captain Pasvolsky's wife Nellie with their oldest child, Dick,
probably taken on the same day as the previous photo,
with Nellie perhaps in Red Cross uniform;
the background may well be their New Jersey home
Source:  Ancestry.com

Valentine did stay in the US Army for another 12 years, in fact, retiring at the age of 60 in 1959, with the rank of Major.  It was then that his second career as a collector could flourish.

He had been collecting North American Indian wumpum and medals since early in his Army life.  In the course of this, he had acquired related coins as well.  A New Jersey tercentenary exhibition in 1964 earned him first prize for his display of early American money.

He was highly regarded by fellow numismatists for his willingness to help them organise and to share information.  In 1974, Val Pasvolsky received a Numismatic Ambassador award from the American Numismatic Association. 

In 1975, the Utah Numismatic Society awarded him a plaque in recognition that his display for them marked the 50th American State in which he had exhibited.  Also in 1975, the cover of the first issue of the Garden State Numismatic Association Journal honoured him (Garden State being the nickname for New Jersey as well as the Australian state of Victoria).  Current and past officials of the American Numismatic Association attended a testimonial dinner organised in his honour that year to present him with a medal of merit.

His collecting extended to North and South American Indian art.  Val began exhibiting his collection at his home, calling it the Indian Village Museum and Trading Post of Lakewood. The Museum occupied three rooms on the ground floor.  Val enjoyed sharing his vast knowledge with his visitors. He also exhibited select items from his collection at various events, often giving presentations donned in full Indian regalia.

Inside the Indian Village Museum and Trading Post of Lakewood
Source: Heritage Auctions Website

After his death in 1980, the collection was shared between one of his sons and a daughter.  The daughter sent her share of the collection to auction in 2013.  The son's share of the collection is on sale as I write, through a Texas company called Heritage Auctions.

This Sioux boy's beaded shirt from the Pasvolsky Collection
was sold for USD 75,000 in 2013
Source: Heritage Auctions Website

Of Val's 4 children, the eldest, Richard, became notable as a parks, environmental and recreation educator who worked in a number of the northern States of America. His brother worked in real estate and one sister worked as a nurse for much of her life.

Val's father is recorded as working as an editor, perhaps of Russian language publications.  Another son, Leo, was an economist, journalist and public servant.  As a personal assistant to the then US Secretary of State during World War II, Leo Paslovsky is credited with writing the final version of the Charter of the United Nations. 

ALL SOURCES listed on my Ancestry.com pages for members of the family.

USAT General Stuart Heintzelman's Master, Captain CM Pedersen (1884-1948)

Updated 16 January 2023

The man responsible for getting the Heintzelman from Bremerhaven to Fremantle was the ship's master, Captain CM Pedersen. The Souvenir Edition, 1st Sailing to Australia, contains both a drawing of the Captain in profile, and a profile in words.  

When I first published this blog entry on 2 October 2021, I had been unable to find any more information on Captain Pedersen.  This was despite numerous searches in what would normally be reliable sources.  The block was that I could use only his initials, not his given names.  There was more than one CM Pedersen enlisted in the US military at the same time as him.

The way through the block was provided by the West Australian of 29 November 1947, which had been kind enough to print Pedersen's first name and middle initial.  He actually was Cort M Pedersen.  The West Australian had misspelt the family name as 'Petersen', another impediment to the search.  My thanks here to Jonas Mockunas for providing the hint which got me through the block.

Let's start with the two portraits from the Souvenir Edition.

Captain CM Pedersen

Captain CM Pedersen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1884. He started to go to sea in 1901 on a Danish ship, then sailed on Norwegian, British and American sailing ships. In 1907 he started to sail on steamships from San Francisco. When the First World War began Captain Pedersen went in the US Navy active service and since the end of the war he has been sailing with the New York-Cuba mail SS Co for 22 years. Since 1941 he is attached to the US Army Transport Service. 

 

The Master says that we have enjoyed a quite pleasant trip, the weather is fine and everything is very good. It is a long passage, but he has been on much longer trips. In l904 he sailed from Hamburg to Newcastle, Australia, around the Cape of Good Hope and it took him 200 days. 

The Master is very pleased with the passengers. He has had to deal with many Baltic people before and some of his best friends are Estonians. The Master says: "Your people are very fortunate to go to Australia. I know Australians, all of them I have ever met had been very wonderful people. I can only say that you will be very happy there. 

"Thank you for all the co-operation I have got from the passengers aboard this ship."

Numerous documents on Ancestry.com, once it was told to look for Cort M Pedersen, provided his full name:  Cort Mathias Pedersen.  He was born in Copenhagen on 17 November 1884.

In the 1910 US Census, he was a 24-year-old lodger in a San Francisco household of seven others born in Denmark.  All six Danish lodgers gave their occupation as seaman.  He had arrived in the US in 1905.

He married another Dane, Inge Mortensen, in California in August 1910.  They had two sons:  Cort Edward, born in 1912 and Paul Lawrence, born in 1917.

He was in New York City, applying for a Seaman's Certificate of American Citizenship by the summer of 1919.  He had been naturalized in San Francisco on 17 June 1912 and had arrived in New York as the Master of a vessel called the Imperator.  Fortunately for us, the application includes three photos of the ship's master, two taken around the time of the application.

Two photos of Cort M Petersen from 1919, aged 34

Cort Pedersen served with the US Navy during World War I, having the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade.  He was discharged in July 1919 but is recorded in the 1920s as being in the US Merchant Marine Naval Reserve.

Cort was indeed 'sailing with the New York-Cuba mail SS Co' between the World Wars.  The actual name of the company employing him was the Atlantic, Gulf & West Indies Steamship Inc, known as Agwilines.  New York Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists show Cort in and out of that port with great frequency during the 1920s and 1930s.  He generally was sailing to and from Havana, but sometimes Mexican ports were visited also.  The lists have been digitised by Ancestry.com, which has identified 382 entries for Cort M Pedersen between 1920 and 1948.

The amount of public detail on Cort's life and movements available through Ancestry.com is so great that I have set up a separate family tree for him there, rather than trying to reference individual items here.  This tree is accessible at https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/180127428/person/282345658226/facts, although you may need to set up a free Ancestry.com Registered Guest account to view it.

Cort Pedersen reached the national headlines in the United States in January 1935.  He was then the Chief Officer of an Agwilines cruise ship called the Mohawk, which veered suddenly across the path of a Norwegian freighter called the Talisman.  The Mohawk sank within an hour, despite the Captain's attempt to beach her at Sea Girt, New Jersey.  By then, the Captain had locked himself in his cabin to go down with his ship.  None of the officers on duty on the bridge survived:  Cort was the only officer of the watch to survive.

A board of enquiry commenced within days of the fatal incident, which had led to a loss of 45 of the 163 passengers and crew.  Cort testified that he was in the chart room writing reports when he heard warning blasts from his ship.  Returning to the bridge, he was advised by the Captain that the new automatic steering gear had failed along with the telegraph to the engine room.  The Captain wanted the ship stopped and managed to convey this to the engine room by telephone.  Meanwhile, Cort was an additional messenger to the engine room, as well as being the officer trying to organise lifeboats.

A board of enquiry concluded that the collision was due mostly to mechanical malfunction or human error on the Mohawk's part. Some suggested that the Mohawk's navigation lights also had failed before the collision.  The damage inflicted by the collision should not have been enough to sink the Mohawk, but it seemed that she had been modified to carry bulk cargoes for extra revenue during the Depression. These modifications had opened up the ship's watertight bulkheads for easier cargo handling. 

Cort was back at sea soon after this fatal drama.  Between 1930 and 1940, he was sometimes the Captain of Agwilines' voyages but often the Chief Officer.  As he advised the Heintzelman passengers' Souvenir Edition, he joined the US Army Transport service in 1941.

Passenger and crew lists for the port of New York, digitised by Ancestry.com, show Cort as the captain of USAT Thistle, a hospital ship travelling to and from Scotland.  After the War, he travelled across the Pacific for at least one voyage of the Thistle between the island of Leyte in the Philippines and Honolulu, Hawaii.  He returned to the Atlantic, captaining voyages to and from Marseilles, France, and Leghorn, Italy, but mostly to and from Bremerhaven, the starting point of the voyage of the Heintzelman to Australia.

Seven months after he started the voyage to Australia, on 31 May 1948, Cort took the Heintzelman from Bremerhaven again, but this time she and the refugees were bound for Peru and Chile.  We know this because the last page of the List or Manifest of Aliens Employed on the Vessel as Members of Crew, required under US law and surrendered in the port of New York, was stamped and signed by US consuls in both Lima and Santiago.

Our ship's master died only one year after safely delivering his charges to Australia on the Heintzelman, on 5 December 1948.  He died in the St Albans Hospital, Queens, the East Coast referral centre for respiratory disorders in the US Navy.  As the Hospital specialised in tuberculosis, this might have been the cause of his early death.  One way or another, he cannot have been a well man during his last voyages.

It is worth looking at the stories of his two sons, since the elder disappeared in dramatic fashion in 1954.  Cort Edward worked in the transport sector, like his father, but on land as a Greyhound bus driver.  He enlisted in the US Army in 1943 and, after the War, continued to serve in the National Guard.  In his youth he had been active in the Boy Scouts.  All of this meant that a sudden disappearance in the early morning of 12 November was quite out of character.

His abandoned bus was found on a South Boston, Massachusetts, street with its headlights on and Pedersen's hat, shoes, jacket and waybills scattered inside.  A canister usually above the driver's seat was on the floor also.  However, with forensic skills typical of the times, the bus was driven into the nearby Greyhound garage rather than being left as a crime scene for police investigation.

Cort Edward and his wife had three daughters, born between 1933 and 1944.  The family advises on a FindAGrave Webpage for his wife that his body was never found and his wife had to arrange for him to be declared legally dead.  

The younger son, Paul Lawrence, seems to have had a much quieter life than his father or brother.  At the time of the 1940 US Census, Paul was working as a bank clerk in New York City.  When he enlisted in the US Army in May 1942, he was recorded as having received a college education (whereas his older brother had left school after eighth grade). 

Paul was discharged from the Army in July 1946.  There is little about him on public record from then on, apart from a couple of residential locations near Los Angeles, on the other side of the country from where he grew up.  We know, however, that he died in Summerville, South Carolina, in 1996, on his 79th birthday.

His first wife had died in Queens, NY, in 1968.  We know from her military headstone that her husband had reached the rank of Lt Colonel in the US Army Reserve.  Given that Paul also was entitled to a military headstone, it is strange that there is no public record of his 1996 burial, just as his brother has no known grave.

Their father, however, has been buried with a military headstone in the Long Island National Cemetery at Farmingdale, New York.  The headstone reveals that he must have been promoted two ranks from Lieutenant (jg) to Lieutenant Commander during the course of his WWI service.  His wife was buried with him after her death 25 years later.

Cort M Pedersen's headstone

Source: FindAGrave.com

There were two other captains aboard this ship but, fortunately, they neither spoiled the cooking (the broth, you know?) nor the voyage.  They were the Transport Commander, Captain Valentine Pasvolsky, and the Transport Surgeon, Captain Wayne H. Stockdale.  Fortunately for us, Ancestry.com has more to say on them, and the fourth man profiled in the Souvenir Edition, Lithuanian-born Escort Officer, Vladas Zibas.  Their portraits follow.

Sources

'Cort Mathias (born Kort, aka Curt) Pedersen', Ancestry.com, https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/180127428/person/282345658226/facts.

FindAGrave, 'Cort Mathias Pedersen', https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/82625444/cort-mathias-pedersen, accessed 2 February 2022.

Põder, RV, E Dēlinš, and R Maziliauskas, 1947. Souvenir Edition, 1st Sailing to Australia, published at sea aboard the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman, 26 November 1947.

Wikipedia, 'Army Transport Service', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Transport_Service, accessed 2 February 2022.

Wikipedia, 'List of ships of the United States Army', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_United_States_Army, accessed 2 February 2022.