S1c Samuel Adolphus Abercrombie

Samuel Adolphus Abercrombie faced terrible loss in his short life. Born on March 18, 1919, in Leggett, Texas, Samuel’s mother, Maud Rice Abercrombie, died less than three months later. His father, John Thomas Abercrombie, a farmer, was left with their five children. Then John died when Samuel was 11.

By the time of the spring 1940 Census he was living in Houston with a brother and the brother’s wife. The Census said he was a grocery clerk. When Samuel applied to the Navy on July 5, 1940 he said he’d been a clerk at an A&P market for six years and completed 10 years of schooling in 1938. He wrote that his reason for enlisting was Next “to provide for myself.”

He enlisted in August 1940 and was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. 

At least one of his brothers, Richard Edwin, also served in WWII. He was a Marine from August 1942 until November 1945.

Sources:  Census records, grave markers, Navy enlistment records and muster rolls.  This profile was rewritten on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.

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