The Enigmatic Myrtle Boston

Today in 1904, one of the most contentious members of my family tree was born. She would also be wedded on this day in 1923. That person is one of my paternal great great grandmothers, Myrtle Santos, nee Boston. 

Myrtle Boston (1904-1977), ca 1940s

                              

   

Myrtle's life is a classic example of the clash between family lore, documentation and genetic testing. What I know for certain that Myrtle was the mother of my paternal great grandfather, Lawrence Santos Jr. Everything else is contested. I'll start this post off with the lore I was given to by my relatives that I reconnected with.

According to my aunt and cousins, my great grandfather described our family history as such:

Myrtle Boston was an Afro-Puerto Rican either born in Santurce, Puerto Rico herself or her father originated from there. Her family somehow got to the US and assimilated into African-American culture, at least publicly. At home, Afro-Puerto Rican culture was maintained and Spanish was primarily spoken alongside Portuguese (or more likely Cape Verdean Creole, as Lawrence Santos Sr. was from the islands). Their surname was allegedly something along the lines of Bastón, Bastan or Bastian before Anglicizing it and Myrtle's true name was "Myrta". This was generally accepted by my family, and the Puerto Rican identity was strongly harbored in that particular side of my family. Enough so that my grandmother, who only met her biological father on one or two occasions, described him as a "Black Portuguese and Puerto Rican man". My great grandfather, by all accounts of those who knew him in life that I've personally interacted with, was if not fluent in Caribbean Spanish, pretty efficient at speaking it. 

So for a large part of my youth I viewed myself as African American, Afro-Puerto Rican and "Portuguese" which to me was the most dubious to me and I didn't really find much affinity with it, I did not know at the time that it was referring to Cape Verde. As a born and raised Philadelphian, it was much easier to see myself connected to being African American and Afroboricua. All of that would get complicated when I seriously started researching my genealogy. 

In 2022, I began to finally do the in-depth research on my family tree. Through a combination of document based research and genetic testing, I reconnected with my grandmother's youngest sibling and was able to confirm that Lawrence Santos was indeed my great grandfather. I was able to clarify the "Portuguese" side as Cape Verdean in actuality, however the Puerto Rican side remained a mystery much to my surprise. In terms of DNA matches I had many that were of full or partial Cape Verdean descent on Ancestry.com, yet I yielded no meaningful Puerto Rican matches. 

In terms of Myrtle's life on paper, nothing reasonably aligned with what I was told. Through my own research, this is what I discovered:

Myrtle Boston was born on August 6, 1904 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania according to her Social Security Index entry. She first appears on the 1910 census, living in South Philadelphia. Her parents were George Washington Boston (1861-1927) and Mary Ann Shade (1860-1937). Both of her parents are tied to the DMV region, their birthplaces varying on documentation as Washington, D.C., Maryland or Virginia. Myrtle had 3 older sisters, Grace (1884-1945), Elveta/Elveda (1886-1970), and Goldie (1898-1928) and a younger sister Marie (1906-?). The Boston's moved from DC to Philadelphia some time in the 1890s whereafter Goldie, Myrtle and Marie (who I presumed died young) were born.

Myrtle listed with her parents and siblings on the 1910 census

                            

 She again appears on the 1920 census and on her 19th birthday, she married Lourenço dos Santos or Lawrence Santos in Atlantic City. They had 6 children together: Lawrence Jr. (1924-2011), Matilda Gloria (1925-2004), Myrtle Helen (1927-2005), Elveda Francis (1932-2020), Frank "Sonny" (1933-1993) and Charles (1938-2008).

Myrtle listed as a child nurse on the 1930 census 

In 1930, she was living the suburbs of Philadelphia as a live-in nursemaid, now under the married name of "Myrtle Santos". She was again found in 1940, this time living at home with her children and described as unemployed. At some point in the early 1940s, the Santos moved from South Philly to the newly opened Richard Allen Homes in North Philly. In 1950, she was now widowed but again noted as unemployed with Francis and Sonny providing income for their home. From there Myrtle's records are unavailable to me at the time of writing this. She would later pass away in Philadelphia in March of 1977. My grandmother's younger siblings do not recall Myrtle well and have rather fuzzy memories of her. 

Myrtle with her six children in 1940 

                     

Myrtle listed with her youngest three children on the 1950 census

                      

So where does the story of Puerto Rican heritage originate? At this current moment, I'm still trying to detangle the mass of conflicting information about Myrtle and her parents. However, I may have found a lead. George Washington Boston shares a surname and birth place with a family of Black Marylanders known as the Bostons, who over the course of the 1700 and 1800s claimed descent from Lenah Boston, an enslaved woman of color described as "Spanish" or "Portuguese". I'll explore this in a later post! For now, whatever the truth about Myrtle is, I honor her as my ancestor.