When you are looking back through your family tree it’s not always simple.
Besides the difficulty of finding the records for all your ancestors, there are
many cases where you encounter more than just a mother and father for an
individual. These things called step-father and step-mother crop up from time
to time.
Sometimes the original couple get divorced (although that’s not as
common in the past as it is today) and one or both of the couple get remarried
to another person. Sometimes one of the original couple pass away and the
remaining spouse remarries. The step-parent may or may not have had children
themselves previously, and the newly created couple may or may not have more
children. Thus we introduce step-siblings or half-siblings.
While I’ve commented on many such situations during the course of my
own genealogical investigations, I’d like to bring them all together in one
place and note some of the consequences of such situations. This will not be an
exhaustive list, but I’ll mention a couple of incidents on each leg of my
family tree and a few on my wife’s family tree.
My Mother’s Pierpont Line
My grandfather’s mother, Annie [Merrill], passed away in childbirth when
my grandfather, Harold Pierpont, was born (*1) (*2). Feeling unable to care for
such a young child, his father, Wilson, arranged for him to be bought up by
some family friends in the next town. Wilson remarried a few years later, but
never brought my grandfather back to live with he and his new wife, Anna [Root]
[Hall]. The consequences were that my grandfather grew up without much contact
with either his father or his older brothers and sisters.
My great*7 grandfather, James Pierpont, had three wives (*3). The first
passed away only a few months into their marriage, the second passed away after
only two years of marriage, but the third lived a full life. There was one
child by his second wife, but the rest of James’ nine children were by his
third wife. Thus, there was fairly minimal impact on his children, although it
can not have been pleasant for James to lose his first two wives.
My grandmother’s brother (and my great-uncle), Stanley, desired to get
divorced from his first wife. Divorce was not easy to obtain in those days, so
he drove all the way to Reno, Nevada, where he could get residency in just a few
days, then get a no-fault divorce (*4). He even brought his new love with him
as she also needed to get divorced from her first husband. Both of them had
children from their first marriages. While this second marriage evidently
lasted, the shame of getting a divorce in this fashion caused a rift in the
family and contact between Stanley and the other members of the family was
quite limited for the rest of his life.
My Father’s Russell Line
My father’s parents, Erskine and Vera, got married when they were both quite
young and neither seemed to be ready for marriage (*5) (*6). Even though they
had two children together, they got separated when my father was a preschooler
and divorced just a few years later. Both later remarried – but to individuals
who were considerably older (30 years in the case of my grandmother!) so they
had someone to care for them. As a result, my father had a very nomadic
existence – moving from place to place, living first with two parents, then
one, then two again, then one, then with his mother and very much older
step-father, then with his grandparents. This impacted him in later life in
ways that I can only imagine since he seldom talked about it.
My father’s paternal grandfather, Louis Russell, had six children with
his first wife, Anna (*7). Anna passed away when their last child was only four
months old. The family was split up for a while with the younger children “given
away” to relatives as Louis did not feel up to taking care of them. Louis
eventually remarried, to a lady named Helen who had two previous marriages (and
two divorces). She brought three more children into this marriage (*8). Since
her children were older, they were no longer living with their mother and thus
did not live with their new step-father. About the same time Louis moved to
another city, so his children and his step-children were living several miles
from each other. There were connections, but visits were not frequent. As a
result, I never knew that these step-great-aunts and step-cousins even existed
until I started doing my genealogical research – although I have now connected
with one of my previously unknown second cousins.
My great-great-grandfather, Walter Russell, was married to his first
wife, Lois, for several years and they had six children together (*9). Lois
passed away at the age of 28. Walter remarried again to Cornelia and they had
four more children. But just 12 years after the death of Lois, Walter passed away
at the age of 43 and Cornelia just two years later at the age of 39. The older
children were living on their own by then, but the younger ones were put into
an orphanage. Even so, all the ten siblings managed to remain in touch with
each other in the following years. As the offspring of the oldest of the 10, I
have even managed to located and visit with some of the offspring of the
youngest of the 10.
My Wife’s Mother’s Wright Line
My wife’s mother’s mother, was Cassie [Cincush] [Eaton] Wright. Cassie
was first married to Adolph Eaton. They had five children in the seven years they
were married, but Adolph passed away at the age of only 28. Five years later,
Cassie married again to Frank Wright, who was 17 years her senior, and she and
Frank had an additional five children together. However, Adolph’s mother blamed
Cassie for the death of her son, removed the children from Cassie’s care, and
forbid any contact with Cassie or her eventual second family. The children eventually
decided on their own to ignore this edict, and there made contacts with their
half-siblings when they got older.
My Wife’s Father’s VanDeCar Line
My wife’s VanDeCar line is so complicated that I’m not going to try an
unravel it here. All the details are in an earlier posting (*10). Suffice it to
say that (1) her grandfather, Archibald, divorced and both he and his wife
remarried and had more children; (2) Archibald’s father, Dennis, had also
divorced and remarried, and (3) Archibald’s mother, Alta, also remarried. Thus, at one time while growing up, my wife had
six “grandmothers” just on her father’s side – a grandmother, a step-grandmother,
two great-grandmothers, and two step-great-grandmothers. It was not until after
we were married that I was able to unravel this complicated mess of
relationships, including step-siblings, half-siblings, and former step-siblings
(what do you call a step-sibling if the marriage that makes them related to you
breaks up again with yet another divorce?)
Conclusions
Divorce or early death and remarriage is not easy on any of the parties
involved. Trying to unravel a family tree that includes any of these events is
the least of the problems. It’s the impact on lives – of the parties, their
relatives, and especially any children involved – that can be especially
tragic. You can see how estrangement from other family members happened in a
number of the above examples.
I’m happy that both my parents and my wife’s parents remained married
for nearly 60 years. And I’m blessed that my wife and I are quickly approaching
our own 50th anniversary in just a few years. But even in our
blessed position, we can still feel the impact of the broken relationships in
our ancestors lives, and we also have a number of siblings and others close to
us who have gone through divorce or early death of a partner.
Notes:
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