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Robert and his wife immigrated to the United States in 1890, the same year they married. They lived for a time in Holgate,
Ohio, then in 1900 in an area north of Crown Point, Indiana known as Miller Station and Miller Village, a stop on the Lake Shore
and Michigan Railway. (The town was later annexed to Gary, Indiana and today is known as
Miller Beach. Robert worked then as a towerman, probably for the railroad. By 1901 they'd moved to Chicago where Robert worked as a
cigar maker, possibly working out of their home, a common practice then.
In February of 1900 Robert's wife, Maria Sophia Wright Coutts (1863–1900) had died
from a tragic accident at their home. While
cleaning, she knocked a kerosene lamp off a fireplace
mantle onto a stove. The resulting flames
caught her clothing on fire and she died from
burn injuries. Not the first such kerosene home fire I've come across while working
on Iroquois victim stories.
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Both Robert and Maria were from large families in Ontario,
Canada with a Scottish heritage. At the time of his death, their
children were seven and eleven years old. They were Kathleen Coutts Pridham (1892–) and Kenneth Robert
Coutts (1896–).
The children must have been taken in by one of Robert's or
Maria's siblings because both grew up and married in
Canada — Kathleen in 1914
to Edward Vance Pridham (1891–1925) and
Kenneth to Elsie Mae Arkle
(1908–1990). Kathleen's two children died
before their second birthdays and her husband died
at age thirty four.
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Discrepancies and addendum
In many period newspaper lists
Robert's last name was spelled Coults but the coroner
spelled it as Coutts. One newspaper list spelled it as Poults. At Kathleen
Coutts' 1914 marriage, her last name, and that of
her parents, was recorded as Caretto, though her
parent's first names were stated as Robert and
Maria. Possibly Caretto was the name of
Kathleen and Kenneth's adoptive parents but Edward
Pridham did not know the last name of her birth
parents.
* Family name appears as Cutts
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