Family:Leroy Newcomer and Eleanor Reed (1)

Watchers
Parents: Herman Newcomer and Pearl Brooks
Theodore Leroy NEWCOMER
b. 22 Jul 1913 Jersey Shore, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania
d. 30 Dec 1989 Deland, Florida
Parents: Charles Reed and Ruth Baxter
Eleanor Reed
b. 16 Dec 1913 Penn Yan, Yates, New York, United States
d. 3 Jan 1995 Montoursville, Lycoming, Pennsylvania, United States
Children
BirthDeath
1.
Delroy Newcomer
29 Mar 1933 Pennsdale, Lycoming, Pennsylvania, United States
26 Dec 2013 Muncy, Lycoming, Pennsylvania, United States
2.
Kenneth Newcomer
12 Dec 1937 Lycoming, Pennsylvania, United States
26 Jan 2022 Olympia, Thurston, Washington, United States
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Leroy (Roy) Newcomer and Eleanor Reed were married in the early 1930's. Roy may have been a hired hand (young man) on the farm that Eleanor's parents worked, before they were married. In the 1930's, during the Depression, jobs were scarce and hard to find. Roy had to travel farther and farther from home to find work to support his growing family. The family was split up by 1940.

Roy traveled to South Carolina looking for work, or he may have been with a traveling circus by then, and is in the 1940 Columbia, Richland, South Carolina, U.S. census. He is listed as an inmate in the South Carolina Penitentiary. Roy's son, Ken, remembered hearing that Roy had killed a black man in South Carolina and was in prison around that time. 

Eleanor is listed in the 1940 census as living in Williamsport, Lycoming, Pennsylvania, with her two sons Kenneth and Ronald.

Ken remembered his mother taking him and 1 or 2 of his brothers to South Carolina when he was about 3-4 years old. His mother looked for work there to be close to her husband. Ken wasn't sure how long they stayed in South Carolina but remembered that he and his youngest brother were put in an orphanage in South Carolina during that time. Life was hard in the orphanage and the boys were homesick, depressed and physically abused.

Roy and Eleanor's oldest son, Delroy, was living with his grandparents Charles and Ruth Reed in 1940 in Muncy, Lycoming, Pennsylvania. Delroy (misspelled as Deroy in the census) was 7 years old.

Family lore was that Roy's mother, Pearle Newcomer, wrote to the governor of South Carolina to plead his case and have him released from prison.

After Ken and Ron ran away from the orphanage a few times in a short period of time, they were placed with grandparents. Ken went to live with Charles and Ruth Reed and his brother Del, and Ron lived with Herman and Pearle Newcomer.

There wasn't any contact, or very little, between Roy and his sons after he was in prison. Eleanor divorced Roy and was married to Harry Cohen by the 1950 census.

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