2024 #52Ancestors, Week 18: Love, Marriage, and Divorce

Something that you hear frequently is that "divorces just weren't that common back in the day."  As I have researched various family lines, I have found this to be distinctly untrue.  I tried to come up with a unique spin for Week 18's Love and Marriage prompt, but it just seems to make the most sense to link to some of my previous posts where love leads to marriage...and then to divorce.

Nettie M. Pearson (divorced in approximately 1915, 1916, 1917, 1933, 1939, and 1945)
Nettie wins the prize for marriages/divorces with a grand total of six husbands. The link above only mentions five of them, but I have recently uncovered a marriage to Ansel Gus Hursey in May of 1917. This brief marriage occurs between her marriages to Roy Hudson and Walter Miller. While I do not have divorce documentation for each marriage, I do have divorce dates for "The Two Walters." I also know that none of these marriages ended due to the death of the husband.

Jennie Grace Terpinitz (divorced in 1936 and 1941)

Jennie was a highly educated and independent woman, but she was married three times and divorced at least twice. As I don't know what happened to her after she returned from World War II, it is possible her third marriage ended in divorce as well.

Dora Isabelle Green (divorced in approximately 1882 and again before 1895)
This sister to my great great grandmother was married and divorced twice, and her third marriage ended with the death of her husband.

Ann Elizabeth Echols (divorced in 1869)
My great great great grandmother is my earliest documented divorce. She and Thomas Green divorced in 1869 after she could no longer handle the changes in his personality caused by his Civil War service.

And if you're looking for a divorce record, I recommend checking out Dade County, Florida.

#52Ancestors, Week 50: You Wouldn't Believe It

I feel like I've written any number of posts that might fall under this particular theme.  When trying to describe the stories of Horace and Nettie to one of my students, he stared unbelievingly at me and said, "That is literally stranger than fiction." 😆  I can't say as I disagree with his assessment.

One phenomenon that I found particularly surprising when researching the Pearsons of Pulaski County was how common divorces actually were.  Nowadays, people like to say "divorces didn't happen back then like they do today," but I am here to tell you that's not true. 

Let's take my great great great grandmother, Ann (Echols) Green Pearson, for instance.  In 1869, she divorced my great great great grandfather, Thomas Green.  In Thomas's Civil War pension paperwork, there is an affidavit from Ann that reads, in part, "After he came from the army, he got to drinking pretty hard, and that is the reason we separated."  A quick search on divorce laws in Illinois revealed that Illinois passed its first divorce laws in 1819 and that Abraham Lincoln frequently represented divorce litigants!  Aside from the typical grounds for divorce (cruelty, adultery, and abandonment), habitual drunkenness was also considered an acceptable reason to file.  It is interesting to note that, unlike other states, Illinois granted divorces to women and frequently awarded them custody of minor children.  In the 1870 census, Ann listed her daughters, Emma Kate and Dora, as living with her.  Thomas listed Dora as living with him, so it's uncertain what the custody agreement was.

Ann's case and reasoning seems fairly cut and dry, but let's take a look at her daughter, Emma Kate.  Emma Kate, born in 1855, married her step-brother, John Winston Pearson, in 1874.  Based on their children's birth places, it seems that John and Emma Kate went to Virginia at the beginning of their marriage (John's father was a native Virginian).  By the mid-century, Virginia's divorce laws were becoming more liberal. Starting in 1853, grounds for absolute divorce in Virginia were "adultery, impotency, confinement in penitentiary, conviction of an infamous offense prior to marriage, willful desertion for five years, pregnancy of the wife at the time of the marriage by a person other than the husband, and a wife working as a prostitute prior to marriage without the knowledge of the husband." Like Illinois, Virginia also granted divorces to women. Still, my guess is that when John and Emma Kate decided to divorce, they returned to Illinois.  At any rate, by 1883, both of them had remarried - Emma Kate to my great great grandfather (and John's cousin) George William Pearson, and John to Zana Coble.  Again, it is uncertain what the custody arrangement was.  In the 1900 census, William and Rosa Pearson (John's children) are listed as living with Emma Kate.  However, another 1900 census lists William as living with John Winston.

And then, of course, we have Emma Kate's youngest daughter, Nettie, for whom divorce seemed to be a hobby.  No documents exist (that I have found) for her first two marriages, but as her first two husbands were from Illinois, I imagine divorces were procured there - most likely in 1915 and late 1917/early 1918.  She also maintained custody of the son she had with her first husband.  Nettie's next two marriages were dissolved in the state of Michigan.  Both times, her husbands charged her with cruelty.  Walter Miller divorced her in 1933, and Walter Reed divorced her in 1939.  She next married a man by the name of Johnson, and while I haven't found definitive proof, all signs point to another Michigan divorce before 1950.

So, we have three generations of women, living from 1839-1968.  Between the three of them, they were divorced a total of seven times.

Sources:

"The History of No-Fault Divorce in Illinois," Nottage and Ward, 17 Apr. 2020, www.nottageandward.com/blog/divorce/the-history-of-no-fault-divorce-in-illinois/.  Accessed 15 Dec. 2023.

Riley, Glenda. "Legislative Divorce in Virginia, 1803-1850," Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 11, no. 1, 1991, pp. 51-67, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3123311. Accessed 15 Dec. 2023.

#52Ancestors #Week47 - This Ancestors Stayed Home (Mostly)

 My Fourth Great Grandmother Martha Echols Hughes is a bit of a nemesis to me - read, she is just this side of a very large brick wall. I know who her siblings were, and I know the name and few details regarding her father, and I have reasonably concluded that her mother's name was also Martha (maiden name unknown. I do realize, of course, that I'm entirely fortunate to have this information at all, many have to research much harder than I have in order to build a tree with this many generations.

The point of this post, though, is to document which of our ancestors were more inclined to have "stayed home" for whatever reason.  I have no documentation or stories of Martha's adult life, just a few census recordings, and she probably did go to church, to market, and to visit neighbors and grandchildren. She did however, stay home on the farm in Southern Illinois and keep the home fires burning while all three of her sons went off to fight in the Civil War.

Having had my husband in a war zone, I know something of the dread and anticipation this creates in those who wait. Her her two older sons were well old enough to sign their names to the rolls and did, and her youngest son, my 3rd great grandfather wasn't eighteen years old until the middle of the war, but off he went as well. Unfortunately, there are several William Hughes from the immediate area, and it is as yet undetermined which service record is his. 

Martha surely remained busy, and she appears to have still had her husband (also WIlliam Hughes) still living. It's possibly he served as well, but he was nearly 60, which was fairly old in those days. With her sons gone and none of them yet married, she would have had a great plenty of both home and farm chores to keep her from having idle time on her hands to sit and worry. Her only sister had died (her sons were soldiers as well), so she would have relied on extended family and neighbors for news and companionship. She was indeed literate, so I can imagine her sitting at her table with sewing or knitting, pausing to read a letter to her husband, or to read for a neighbor who couldn't. She may have watched anxiously for battle news in the papers.

Since her sons were literate as well, I hope Martha received letters alerting her that they were on their way home. During war time, resources were scarce, but there would have been extra reading of the house, perhaps additional baking or obtaining and preparing favorite dishes. The absolute joy of reunion - all three of her sons came home, married and built families. She may have been the envy of many neighbors who weren't so fortunate.

In 1880, she lived with her youngest son, the aforementioned WIlliam, who is enumerated as "sick" in the appropriate column in that census. He is married to Mary Jane (formerly Pearson) and they have one daughter, Florence, age 4. I hope Martha was a kind mother in law and affectionate grandmother, as Mary Jane clearly would have been in need of assistance with an ill or disabled husband and small child. There is no further record of Martha, nor a known grave. It was common to have been buried on the farm, still.  She is likely at rest, at home.

#52Ancestors #Week43 Dig A Little Deeper

Belknap Community Church, Wikipedia

The Search of genealogy, the frustrations are a given. However, that doesn't stop the title of this week's challenge from feeling like a challenge, or perhaps a criticism! 

In regard to the large Pearson family, all descendants of the Commonwealth of Virginia, it's a set of in-laws in those Southern Illinois counties that are my greatest nemesis. As I've written previously, Mary Jane Pearson married William A. Hughes, and despite digging as deep as I know to be able and spending a fair amount of money in fees and travel, I have been unable to get much information beyond just the names of William's parents, and those people's fathers. Not much further than names, and the fact that they were early settlers of Southern Illinois. Few siblings, and no further biographical information, leading to several dead ends.

I do know that the above William Hughes was the youngest of three men, 3 generations with the same name. His grandfather, the senior William, appears to have arrived in Illinois sometime in the mid to late 1810's with a son and daughter, perhaps a widower as I've never found trace of a wife, or any other relations in the area. There is another family of Hughes' but there doesn't appear to be a connection.

A few years ago, I spent a fair amount of time looking for his 2 known brothers. It appears possible that all three of them may have served in the Civil War, which killed too many and scattered more as young men saw much more of the country than they perhaps would have otherwise. John and Francis "Frank" were several years older than Wiliam III (who according to some records was likely called "Alex", his middle name, probably to differentiate from his father and grandfather). John Hughes is much too common of a name to pin him down definitively, but I have a probable wife and 8 children attached to him, and squinting closely to see if the descendants of same are showing up in my DNA matches.

As for Frank, there is an abundance of information in the community of Belknap which is barely across the Pulaski/Johnson county line. Descendants of this man do appear to be noted several times in DNA shared matches, making Frank a probable uncle to me, if removed!

Frank was born to William H and Martha (Echols) Hughes in Pulaski County, Illinois. He was the middle of three brothers, unknown if there were additional siblings that did not survive long enough to be recorded, or for whom records are lost. He farmed for his entire life, although the 1880 census enumerates him as an unemployed laborer. He enlisted in 1861 with the 11th Illinois Infantry from Villa Ridge, which is the closest community to his family's farm, with the 11th out of neighboring Union County. He was mustered out after only 6 weeks. He married first in 1873 to Delphinia Narcissa Huffman, but he is listed in this record as "ZT" Hughes. They had 8 children, and he is recorded as "FM" in one birth and "ZT" in another. After puzzling over this and making sure (as much as I could) that Dela hadn't married twice, found that this man's name is Francis Marion Zachary Taylor Hughes, to be affectionately referred to as FMZT. Frank and Dela's last child was born in 1894 and lived only 9 days. It can be deduced that the mother died due to complications of childbirth, certainly not long after, as Frank marries in the spring of 1895 to Theresa Arisa. No further information has been found on this couple. 1900 census does not appear to record them in Illinois or elsewhere. Arisa is an unusual surname and not found in the area, so likely a transcription error. Frank's youngest son lists a "foster mother" in his WWI Draft Registration, leading me to assume from all (missing) facts that Frank and Theresa died shortly after their marriage. Regardloess of their fate, the minor children were seperated.

These Hughes' will continue to be a deep dive, as I tell myself that I WILL find them. Where there's a will, yes?

#52Ancestors, Week 39: Surprise! We're related! ...Again.

Initially, Cuzzin Heather and I met through our Pearson connection.  Her great great great grandmother was Elizabeth (Pearson) Chamberlain, and my great great grandfather was George William Pearson.  Their parents were Joseph Allen Pearson and Nancy Ann (Fields) Pearson, which makes Heather and I *checks notes* 4th cousins, once removed.

Together (and separately), we combed the records of Pulaski, Alexander, and occasionally Union County, Illinois.  Anything one of us found on the Pearson line would be of help to the other.  Frequently, we would help each other out even when it came to non-Pearson relations (or so we thought).  I don't remember exactly how we discovered our double connection, but I believe it had to do with my great great great grandmother, Ann Elizabeth (Echols) Green Pearson, and went something like this:

I was researching Ann's first husband, Thomas Green.  I wasn't getting very far with him - with a surname like Green, that's not surprising - so I enlisted Heather's assistance.  Would she, I asked, help me look for a divorce record for Ann and Thomas?  Naturally, she inquired as to the maiden name of his wife. "Ann Elizabeth Echols," I typed.  And then I watched as those three little dots indicated Heather was typing a reply.  "Echols?" she responded. "I have one of those!"

What my lovely Cuzzin Rachel didn’t include in the above becomes my segue into this week’s post. I am also descended from Mary Jane Pearson, slightly younger 1st cousin of Elizabeth, and the daughter of Joseph’s brother Benjamin.

Mary Jane appears to have come to Illinois with her father shortly after her step-mother’s death in Virginia. Once in Illinois, Benjamin married Ann Elizabeth Echols (see above), and Mary Jane married William Alexander Hughes a few weeks before Christmas, in a double wedding ceremony with John W. Pearson and Emma Kate Green (John and Mary Jane were siblings, and Emma Kate was Ann Elizabeth's daughter). Yes, John was marrying his new step-sister. Not that uncommon, at all. Is your head spinning yet?  It gets even more entangled, because Mary Jane Person Hughes’ brand new mother-in-law was Martha Echols Hughes, cousin to Ann Elizabeth!

I believe that after these discoveries came the Christmas that Cuzzin Rachel made me a laminated diagram showing our relationship to one another - we have joked that we need to divide “4th cousin” in half. Going back one additional generation, Martha’s father (John) and Ann’s grandfather (Jesse) are brothers and very early settlers of Illinois, a third brother involved in the early politics of the Southern Illinois counties. We are reasonably certain that these brothers descend from a family in Georgia with some very well-documented history, but we haven't (yet) been able to attach Jesse or John to the appropriate parents.

The frequent intermarrying of southern Illinois families makes it quite possible that we may find we are related in more ways than these two!  We'll be sure to keep you posted.  In the meantime, click to read more about some of the key players in this story: Thomas Green and George William Pearson, Joseph and Benjamin Pearson, Nancy Ann Fields, and Ann Elizabeth Echols.

#52Ancestors, Week 33: Strong Women

I feel like this post might be something of a cop-out.  I've tried my best to come up with a "new" idea about the strength of my (Pearson and other peripheral) ancestors, but I've discussed that very trait in so many of my previous posts!  Specifically, strong women seem to be first and foremost in many of my musings.  Of course, men had to be strong - physically, at least - but women bore (and lost) children, kept their households running, and sometimes had to accomplish tasks more typically left to men.

For example, I would consider Ann Elizabeth Echols Green Pearson a strong woman. She raised her two daughters alone while her husband fought in the Civil War.  She attempted to coexist with her husband after he returned from the Civil War, but when she discovered that was impossible, she was strong enough to accept that divorce was necessary. It is clear that she did not have a replacement in mind when she and Thomas Green divorced, as she did not remarry for almost 4 years, so she was once again raising her daughters without a husband.

Ann's husband remarried, and he produced a few strong women, as well - his daughter, Leona, and her daughter, Jennie Grace. Leona married and had a daughter with Charles Terpinitz, but when that marriage ended, Leona did not remarry (as was the case with so many women who depended on their husbands to support them).  Leona boarded and worked nearby while Jennie Grace pursued a degree at the University of Illinois.  After Jennie Grace married, Leona pursued a career on the East Coast as a corsetiere.  Jennie Grace, an obviously strong-minded woman, pursued a career in music, and performed overseas.  With the arrival of World War II came the need for women to enlist to serve their country. Jennie Grace did that, too.

Someone else who fits the bill of a strong woman is Nancy Ann Fields Pearson.  In a time when infant mortality was extraordinarily high, Nancy had the misfortune to lose 4 of her 10 children in their infancies.  Not a single one made it to his/her first birthday.  The strength it must have taken to bury those babies and then go about her business is something I cannot comprehend. Also, not long after her husband's death, there is a story of Nancy being assaulted in Cairo, Illinois. (Cuzzin Heather wrote about this incident in one of her previous posts.)  While the report says "grave fears are entertained of her recovery," she did recover, and she ended up outliving one (possibly two) of her remaining six children.

Finally (although I'm sure many more deserve the title of 'strong'), my great grandmother, Lena Pearson, falls into this category for many reasons.  In 1923, after only 7 years of marriage, she lost her first husband to (I believe) tuberculosis.  He left behind not only his wife but a young daughter, Lois. Lena remarried to my great grandfather, Daniel Benton, and had 2 more children.  In 1937, Lena was instrumental in saving both her young son (my grandfather) and Lois (now married with a child of her own) from a fire!  In her later years, Lena survived stomach cancer.  Can't get much stronger than that.

If you've read to the end of this post, I encourage you to click on the link to each woman's story. What I have written here is simply a precursor to a much more detailed account...just to whet your appetite.  ;)

#52Ancestors, Week 14: Begins with a Vowel

This prompt seemed like a no-brainer. Every part of Ann Elizabeth Echols’s maiden name begins with a vowel. Her two married names connect mine and cousin Heather’s families. Ann’s first marriage was to Thomas J. Green, the father of my great great grandmother, Emma Kate Green. Ann’s second marriage was to Benjamin Everett Pearson, one of Heather’s direct line ancestors. He also happens to be my great great great grandfather’s brother.

Ann Elizabeth Echols, born 1839, was the eldest daughter of Benjamin F. Echols and Sarah Rebecca Arter. According to Thomas Green’s Civil War pension file, he and Ann were married in 1854. She and Thomas had two daughters, Emma Katherine and Dora Isabella, before Thomas answered the call to fight in the Civil War. Unfortunately, like so many others who had experienced the grisly realities of Civil War combat, he returned from service a changed man. By 1869, he and Ann had divorced. Ann’s deposition given for his pension request described the deterioration of their marriage. “After he came from the army, he got to drinking pretty hard, and that is the reason we separated. The fact is he was never like the same person after he came home."

After the Civil War and the death of his second wife, Theodosia, Benjamin Everett Pearson (who had fought for the Confederacy) moved from West Virginia to live near his brother Joseph Allen Pearson in Pulaski County, Illinois. On August 28, 1873, he married Ann Elizabeth (Echols) Green in Alexander County, Illinois. This union was likely a contributing factor to the marriage of Benjamin’s son, John Winston, to Ann’s daughter, Emma Kate in December 1874. Ann inherited quite a few stepchildren when she married Benjamin, but they also added a child of their own to the mix. Virginia M. Pearson was born April 13, 1876, in Olmsted, Illinois.

In 1880, Ann Pearson and family were still living in Pulaski County, Illinois. It is unknown exactly when Benjamin decided to move back to Virginia. Perhaps the catalyst was his mother’s death in Franklin County, Virginia, in 1881, or maybe he left Illinois after his brother, Joseph, died in 1882. Regardless of the motivation, in 1886, when Ann gives her deposition regarding her ex-husband’s pension, her address is Pearisburg, Virginia. Ann lived her whole life in Illinois, so I have to imagine it was difficult to leave behind all she had known.  I think it’s fortunate she had a young child of her own to raise when her husband decided to pull up stakes. Emma Kate remained in Pulaski County, Illinois, and Ann’s other daughter, Dora, was living in northern Illinois.

Ann Elizabeth (Echols) Green Pearson died in Pearisburg, Virginia, on New Year’s Day 1896.