Russell Earl Shippee was born April 19, 1915, at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the son of Edgar H. and Adelaide (Hopkins) Shippee. He had an older brother named Albert, born around 1906. Their father, Edgar, was a farm laborer who died in 1916. In 1920 the family, consisting of the widowed Adelaide and the two boys, was living on Oak St. in Providence, Rhode Island. By 1930, only Adelaide and Russell remain, now living on Edna St. in Providence, older son Albert having died in 1924 at the age of eighteen. It was perhaps these family circumstances that caused Russell to leave school after the fifth grade (although he later claimed that he had at least one year of high school education.)
Sometime in the late 1930's Russell married a woman named Grace, and the two of them made their home on Columbia St. in New York City. There Russell worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant. The couple had a son, born in 1940- Russell E. Shippee Jr.
In 1944, with the United States in the turmoil of WWII, Russell enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army at Camp Upton in Yaphank on Long Island, New York.
Russell E. Shippee died October 15, 1993, at St. Vincent's- Manhattan, and was buried on Hart Island.
Sources: U.S. Social Security Death Index; U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007; U.S. Federal Censuses 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940; U.S. WWII Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946.