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- Also spelled Roselia, Rosalie, Rosella, Rosslie, etc.
We do not know her exact date or place of birth. The record of her 1924 marriage to John Q. Myers says that she was born in in Howell, Michigan and that she was 19, implying a birth year around 1905. The record of her 1945 marriage to John B. Squier says that she was born in Lansing, Michigan and that she was 39, implying a birth year around 1906. Both marriage records confirm that she was a daughter of Elbert Freeman Allen and Marion Van Wort, and the 1910 and 1920 census records of that couple list a daughter of the appropriate age named Rosalia or Roselia. Elbert Freeman Allen was born in Howell in 1873 and married Marion Van Wort there in 1892. Finally, Rose M. Squier's 9 Apr 1985 obituary in the Battle Creek Enquirer, says that she was born in Lansing and gives her age at death as 79, implying a birth year of 1905. This obituary correctly identifies its subject as the mother of "Barbara Fitzgerald of Dayton" and, while it makes no mention of her first husband, it also correctly says "Her husband, John B. Squier, died in 1963."
She is a subject of extreme confusion in various user-submitted trees on ancestry.com and listings on Find a Grave. Her second husband was not John McGowen Squires (1903-1972), a son of Albert E. Squires and Ruth May McGowen. Nor was he Walter R. Squires (1892-1973), a son of William Rosecrans Squires and Laura Belle Myers. Walter R. Squires did marry, on 14 Feb 1931 in Mason, Ingham County, Michigan, a woman named Rose M., but she was Miss Rose M. Erbe, 25 years old, born in Mantador, North Dakota, a daughter of Albert Erbe. Walter R. Squires died in Lansing on 9 Feb 1973 and, acccording to his 11 Feb 1973 obituary in the Lansing State Journal, was survived by his wife Rose. Walter and Rose are interred together at Resurrection Cemetery in Wyoming, Kent County, Michigan, under a plaque that gives his birth and death dates as 26 Nov 1892 and 9 Feb 1973, and hers as 20 May 1905 and 11 Mar 2005. She is beyond any possible doubt not the Rosalia M. (Allen) (Myers) Squier who was a daughter of Elbert Freeman Allen and Marion Von Wort and the mother of Barbara Ann (Myers) Fitzgerald.
Out of the dozens of user-submitted ancestry.com trees in which she appears, several of the less obviously confused give our Rosalia's birth as 8 Oct 1905 in Howell. None of them give a source for this precise date or place, but a birth in October 1905 is exactly consonant with the ages given in both of her marriage records, and with the age (79) given in the Battle Creek Enquirer's report of her death on 4 Apr 1985. Further, her father was born in Howell, her parents were married in Howell, and Howell is the birthplace given on the earlier of her two marriage records, all of which facts suggest that Howell, rather than Lansing, was her actual place of birth. But failing a truly stunning coincidence, she was not born there on 20 May 1905, because we know this to have been the birthdate of Rose M. Erbe, wife of Walter M. Squires.
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