Everyone Knew About - George William McClain

In the Cherokee Times (Cherokee, Iowa) of March 1899, the illness and then death of Charles Perry McClain was lamented.  He had "la grippe" or influenza, and at 48 seems to have been expected to recover.  He was a renter on the farm he occupied and left a wife and 7 children. His 2 sons, Elmer and Bill were 10 and 4, respectively.

Shortly after Charles' death, his widow moved the family to Sioux City. It is not known when they moved, but it was between the date of the 1900 Federal Census and the birth of the first grandchild in September 1904. While it is also unknown if the McClain family had previously visited Sioux City, it still would have been a significant adjustment from rural Cherokee County life. Also, they had lived near their mother's brother back in Cherokee, including his large family.  There were no aunts, uncles or cousins in the city.

Mother Mary Jane, often called Jennie, worked as a laundress and may have taken in boarders. Her oldest two daughters went to work (at least for a time in South Dakota), and the younger children went to school. Granddaughter Fern was born in the fall of 1904, and Jennie raised her as her own, presumably from birth (daughter Minnie was unmarried at the time). Elmer, the older boy, is indexed as "single, age 16" in the 1905 Iowa State Census. He next appears in the Sioux City Journal at age 21 in 1909. 

What follows is an account of Elmer's seemingly only run-in with the law. Whether he fell in with a bad crowd or behaved badly due to intoxication is unknown, however no other legal trouble for Elmer has been found. He and Lucile had 2 children, Bill and Yvonne. They divorced in 1918. He remarried many years later (1948) to a widow, only a few short years before his death at age 62.

Sept 11 - Oct 4 1909

Elmer's younger brother by 6 years, George William (called Bill) on the other hand, began a lengthy career of law-breaking and legal entanglements, first found in 1919. He had lost his father at 4, likely started school in the city around age 6, and by the age of 14, his older brother had moved on and was starting his own family.  He had several sisters and his niece at home, but no other stories have survived to give a better picture of what he may have been like as a young man.

During the length of his criminal career Bill was added into the inmate roster at Anamosa, Jones County, Iowa in both 1921 and 1924. He also married at least 3 times, first in 1928 in nearby LeMars, 5 years later in Sioux City, and then in 1936 in Washington State. I am unsure what he was doing in the Pacific Northwest, but at this point he had done a fair amount of time in prison and may have been transferred or seeking to turn over a new leaf. He and his 3rd bride returned to Sioux City, but he later died in California.

Roughly 1919 - 1941

Shedding light upon Bill's experience was that his older sister Eva's husband Tony Snyder was also involved in quite the criminal racket, some during the same years. TonEva had been married for some years and had one daughter at this time. I don't know if this was a "temporary hobby" or how Eva dealt with the legal troubles of her husband.

1917 & 1919

Given that these patterns were widespread in this family, I wish I'd known to ask my grandpa different and more thorough questions.  He's been gone 22 years, and my success at tracking down other descendants of any of his aunts and uncles has been abysmal. 

*All clippings are from the Sioux City Journal.