Born: 1895
Died: 1941
Married: Catherine Eleanor Hoare Scriabine
The following account was compiled by William Brook:
Boris Speshneff was the brother of Alexis Speneff, an Imperial Russian naval military attache in the Hague, Netherlands, who defected to the allied forces in 1918, during the Russian civil war (in which Britain and the USA were also involved), and became a naturalized US citizen a short while later, settling in the San Francisco area. Boris made his living for some years as a Manhattan taxi driver. The Speshneff family seemed to have adopted the name Stafford during the 1920s, presumably to fit in.
Eleanor Speshneff was formerly married to someone named Scriabine (in Russia, 1913) and prior to that was named Catherine Eleanor Hoare, the daughter of an Englishman living in Holland, and his Russian wife. Eleanor/Catherine escaped the Russian revolution initially to the UK, and later to New York City. Her brother, Cecil Hoare was initially imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, but later managed to escape to England, where he became a well known scientist. You can read more about him on Wikipedia. I have recently spoken to his Cecil’s adopted daughter, who is a very bright and capable 89 year old who lives in the United Kingdom.
By 1930, the couple was living in Peck's Corners. The 1940 census reveals that neither Boris nor his wife earned any income during 1939/40, and that she was acting as a 'private nurse’. The Adirondack Research Room has a record showing that Boris was treated for tuberculosis. It is likely that his wife cared for him until his death. He is buried in Pine Ridge Cemetery.
They do not appear to have had children.
After the death of her husband, Eleanor moved back to Manhattan, and the week after the Pearl Harbour attack and the start of World War II in America, she checked herself into a hotel and committed suicide by cutting her wrists. Her death certificate reveals that she is also interred at Pine Ridge Cemetery.
