I had another look at Albert A. Sandusky, a rather mysterious friend of Lovecraft. We don’t have a birth date, and only have a c.1934? death date for him. He lived in Cambridge, Mass., and this cutting from the Cambridge Chronicle, 7th May 1910, has him performing in a ninth-grade school play…

It seems that, in America, “ninth grade” in May is likely to mean most of the class will have recently hit 15 years of age? If so then that would put his birth date at c.1895. Update: thanks to Miss Allen in the States for pointing out that it’s more like 14. So c.1896.

The same newspaper has him in the city’s school graduation lists in June 1915, where he is named as Albert August Sandusky (which I think is the first time that Lovecraftians have known his middle name?). Sadly this new middle name doesn’t lead anywhere in the online archives, but it might prove useful to those who have access to commercial geneaological databases.

So when the amateur journal The Torpedo (Sept 1913) called him the “youthful editor and publisher” of his Boys’ World magazine, he would have been aged around 17.

There was a Bertha Sandusky who made her way through the Cambridge school system some years ahead of Albert. She is recorded, on her marriage in June 1913, as “of Elm Street” and the daughter of August Sandusky of Cambridge. I’d suspect — given the name, and the fact that Elm Street was also where the school play (see above) was being performed — that August Sandusky may also have been the father of Albert August Sandusky. If so, then the father has left no other trace online.

Kenneth W. Faig Jr., in the Books at Brown Lovecraft special issue, mentions (p.56) that Sandusky became a policeman.