A grab bag of miscellaneous information on the AuBuchon line

Frank AuBuchon

My mother's father, Frank David AuBuchon, died shortly after my second birthday. I have no memory of him, of course. Prior to working on my genealogy, I also knew very little about him. I knew he worked for a railway company, which allowed his family to ride for free or at least at great savings. And I knew that during my mother's childhood, when there wasn't a lot on the dinner table, (it has been said that) he used to have first dibs on the meat.

I learned from my mother's copy of the family tree that he worked for the Frisco Railroad, aka the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway. Succumbing to a sudden whim, I googled this and soon came to a website devoted to the line's history.

A little bit of digging here brought me to an online copy of my grandfather's employee card, which I have downloaded and present to you below.

The card gives his occupation as "Fireman". I'm not sure what the fireman's duties were. I think I remember being told that he was an engineer—perhaps on June 12, 1942 he started as a fireman and the card was never updated? When I mentioned this to my mother, she said that, late in his career, my grandfather wrecked one of the company's trains in an accident. She didn't think anyone had actually been hurt, and seemed to recall that he was consequently demoted.

Also, he was 33 when he started at the Frisco—what had been his job prior to 1942? Did he get hired because there was a shortage of young men just then, due to the war? These are all interesting questions.

Here's another one: The file name for the card was originally "FEC_98367.jpg." It might be interesting to explore what this means. FEC can't refer either to the Florida Eastcoast Railway or the Federal Election Commission.

Finally, notice the "Color or Race" box, and its antiquated three options of WHITE, NEGRO and IF OTHER, SPECIFY.

On the Frisco website linked to above, I found two of its magazines, and I performed a few very un-thorough searches for mentions of him there. This line of research should be explored a little better before being abandoned.