A little obsessed

Why, WHY did Julius Rutabega change his name to Julius Camel? Seriously, I'm ready to give up the pseudonyms and attract anyone to this blog via Google who might, just might, be able to answer this burning question for me.

Today I went to the Special Collection Archives at my local university, which happens to have the autobiography of my famous relative, Uncle Charlie Camel. Uncle Charlie was the one who got things named after him. The archives are kind of cool. You have to check in, and you can enter the actual archives only with loose-leaf paper (no notebooks) and a pencil. No books, no laptop, and no ink pens. They did let me bring in my eyeglasses, thankfully. Then you tell them what you want to look at and they bring the materials to you. It all made me feel very special. Like having to go through the decontamination chamber on Star Trek.

Here is what Uncle Charlie has to say about his father Julius's name change (as I transcribed it on my sheet of looseleaf paper with my pointy pencil): "His name at that time was Julius Stewart Rutabega, which however he changed for family reasons to Camel, taking his mother's maiden name, about the time I was born." In the winter of 1876-77, Julius made a 2500-mile snowshoe trip from Fort Liard, Canada to Crow's Wing, Minnesota, and then on to New York and England. "It was for the purpose of having his named changed in London that he made this long trip. He started from the Mackenzie River as Mr. Rutabega. He returned the following summer a Camel."

But why? What were the "family reasons?" I think I have learned from English census records that in fact Julius was the second of four children born to his parents in Ceylon. The 1851 census finds his widowed mother living with his three siblings and working as a music teacher (Julius allegedly being in military prep school of some kind at this point). So my romantic idea that Julius and his mother were abandoned in Ceylon by his shiftless father to fend for themselves, casting off his ignominious name in the process, seems improbable. And the idea that perhaps Julius simply hated his father for some reason - Well, the father must've died before Julius was 10 years old. Can you really develop such hatred of a parent by the age of 10 that you'd travel 2500 miles by SNOWSHOE to legally expunge their name from your life?

Meanwhile, the Mormons, who have a bizarre yet handy obsession with genealogy, have microfilmed birth, marriage and death records from churches in British Ceylon for the 1800s. I could have them sent from Salt Lake City if I want. Maybe that would shed some light on what went down in Ceylon with the Rutabega family.

Seriously, this is driving me nuts. But, I may never know. The secret may have died with the Rutabega name.