Genealogy Story – Marrying your Sister-in-law

Becoming a widow/widower with children while relatively young then remarrying and having more children with the second spouse is not that unusual. It’s a little more unusual if the second spouse is also a widow/widower and has children from their first marriage as well. But what if the spouses of the first marriages were also siblings? This is the story of one such instance.

 

The Players

In 1900, William Fredrick Ladd was 20. He was working on the farm of the Nelson Webster family in Salem, New London County, CT. Nelson and his wife Belle are in their 40s and their two youngest children, Cynthia and Stanley, are still at home. The census record from 1900 is a snapshot of the situation.

[1900 census]

What the census record cannot show is that William has evidently fallen in love with his employer’s daughter, 15-year-old Cynthia. Two years later, in March 1902, when William is 22 and Cynthia is 17, they get married. They go on to have three children – Leslie (b. 1909), Nelson (b. 1913), and Bruce (b. 1914). In the 1910 census we can see the family, with only one child at the time, living in Danbury.

[1910 census]

Meanwhile, Cynthia’s brother Stanley also grows up. In 1912, when he is 24, he marries Cornelia May Howe who is 17 (a pretty typical marriage age for young women of the time). They go on to have four children – Isabelle May (b. 1912), Dorothy (b. 1914), Nelson (b. 1915), and Durwood (b. 1918).

 

Double Tragedy

In August 1919, at the relatively young age of 36, Cynthia passes away. William is then 41, but is now charged with having to raise his three children, ages 10, 6, and 5. The family are living in Groton, CT. Then just six months later in February 1920, Cynthia’s brother, Stanley also dies at the even younger age of 31. The 1910 census was taken in January that year, so we can see the family just the month before Stanley’s death with the four young children. They are living in Seymour, CT. Nellie is only 26.

[1920 census]

Although living in different parts of the state, the surviving spouses are connected to each other through their deceased spouses. They probably attended the funerals of the two Webster siblings and are both now not only grieving, but having to raise their respective families. Thus, they turn to each other and, after a respectable time of grieving, marry each other – despite the difference in their ages.

 

A Combined Family

Here in the 1930 census, we see the composite family – with a total of 9 of their eventual 10 children. Leslie (21), Nelson (16), and Bruce (15) are the offspring of Williams’s first marriage. Isabelle (17), Dorothy (15), Nelson (14), and Durwood (12) are the offspring of Nellie’s first marriage (as evidenced by the Webster surname). And Irene (7) and Gladys (4) are the children from the second marriages of William and Nellie.

[1930 Census]

In the 1940 census we see that the older children from both first marriages have married and moved out. Irene and Gladys have been joined by a younger brother, William Jr.

[1940 Census]

 William passed away in 1948. Nellie was in her early 50s and still had one child, William Jr, age 13 at home. She married once again, to Jacob Coney, who was nearly 20 years younger than she was. She died in 1961.

[1950 Census]

What Do I Call You?

The composite family leads to some interesting relationships. Let’s label the children in groups as follows:

·       Group A – Leslie, Nelson, and Bruce

·       Group B – Isabelle, Dorothy, Nelson, and Durwood [Webster]

·       Group C – Irene, Gladys, and William Jr.

Then we have the following relationships:

·       The parents, William and Nellie are both husband/wife as well as brother-in-law/sister-in-law

·       Group A are Williams’s children and Nellie’s step-children as well as Nellie’s nephews

·       Group B are William’s step-children as well as his nephews/nieces and Nellie’s children

·       Group C are William and Nellie’s children as well as their nephews/nieces

·       Groups A and B are step-siblings of each other as well as first cousins

·       Groups A and C are half-siblings of each other as well as first cousins

·       Groups B and C are half-siblings of each other as well as first cousins

Certainly, a very interesting household! But I suppose that William and Nellie just called everyone their child and the children just referred to each other as brother/sister.