April of 1910, James Walter McCarl, age14, was a newsboy on the street. This was the time when he was trying to decide on what to do in life and his father suggested he go to school. His father, Robert Newton McCarl, was a foreman at the Pennsylvania Glass Sand Company in Mapleton, Pennsylvania. His mother, Mary Alice Henderson McCarl, was a homemaker.
Shortly afterwards, James left his Mapleton, Pennsylvania home for Washington, D.C. at age 15 where he could get an education.. His father could not afford to pay for his schooling so he had to work. His first job was selling antiques but he was too clumsy. Then he got a job as an assistant street car conductor and started high school at night at Emerson Institute and finished High School in 1917. He had started working at the Library of Congress in September 1916 and then was assigned as a librarian to the Reading Room in July 1917.
When I, Rebecca McCarl Rogers, was just a young teen, maybe 13, Grandfather began to tell me about J. Edgar Hoover. I thought he was talking about President Herbert Hoover and, since he realized I was confused, he stopped telling me. I have since heard others in the family say that he knew J. Edgar Hoover in Washington.
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Rebecca McCarl Rogers
[roots in North Antrim soil]
