January 11, 1921. Fractured and Rescued Russian Lives, 1921 Wyoming Legislature, Work.

Six of the seven Russian children adopted by Admiral Newton A. McCully, with their "governess" Eugenia Z. Selifanova, photographed on January 11, 1921.  

On this day in 1921, a press photographer photographed most of Admiral Newton A. McCully's adopted Russian children together with their governess who was a teenager herself.

McCully was a southern born American naval officer who had been embedded in the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo Japanese War.  In 1914 he returned to Russia as a naval attache and he was elevelted to commend of the U.S. Navy in northern Russia in 1918.  Following this he was sent to appreciate the military situation of the Whites in 1919.  He adopted these children in 1920.

McCully obviously appreciated the East due to all of this service.  A bachelor until 1927, he married Olga Krundycher, an Estonian, in 1929 on the claim that this would provide a mother for his children, and perhaps that was his reason, although I suspect that there was more to it than that.  She was later listed as their mother on census forms, even though the McCully adoptees were not all related and came themselves from varying regions of the former Russian Empire.  She was 29 years old at the time and the marriage took place in Tallinn, Estonia at which time McCully was still a serving naval officer.  He would live until 1951, dying at age 83.  She would live until 1968 and returned to Estonia for reasons of which I am not aware (or am I aware of when that occurred).

Eugenia  Selifanova was 18 or 19 years old when this photograph was taken. She later married another Russian immigrant, about 20 years her senior, and lived the rest of her life in Dearborn, Michigan. She had two children by the marriage and died in 1952.   She's already left the family, and probably had married, but the time of Admiral McCully's marriage.  Indeed, at that time McCully's mother was tasked with minding the children when he was away on duties.

It's easy to see what became of some of the children and that they had long American lives.  I wonder if anything of their early origins and culture was retained at all, or if anything of it remains in their ancestors.

On January 11, 1921, the United States severed all further participation in foreign councils, including the council that made up the Allied powers during World War One.

Also on this day in 1921, Wyoming's legislature convened for the 1921 session, as we reported in Today In Wyoming's History: January 11:  1921.   The 1921 legislative session for Wyoming commenced.

And, in an era before Social Security, this elderly gentleman was photographed at work.

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