Earl

Another mystery solved!

One of the early surprises in my genealogy quest was finding out that Earl Butler was born three years before his parents, William Butler and Ida Rene [Bryant], were married in 1895. At the same time, I learned that Ida Rene's last name was "Williams" when she married William Butler; she was widowed by age 27 from a first marriage (her children never knew this).  

I concluded that Earl must not have been Ida's son. My question then was, "Who was Earl's mother?"

I contacted someone on Ancestry -  M. Butler.  She had downloaded a photo that I had posted of the three Butler boys, so I figured she was researching that family too. Come to find out, M's husband Scott is Earl's grandson. I jokingly (sort of) said that he should get a DNA test done. Almost a year later, M. writes that they did the DNA test and I am indeed a genetic match with Scott.  

So Earl is Ida's son after all.  

Ok, so... I'm still digesting this new information...

Facts:1) Earl was three years old when Ida and William Butler married. 2) Ida Rene was widowed, age 27 when she married William Butler (her last name was Williams on the marriage certificate).

Why would Ida wait for three years to marry William after having his child out of wedlock? Is it possible that Earl was Ida's son from her first marriage to Williams? Maybe William Butler adopted him?

One question only leads to another and another...

Here is Earl's family tree, showing how my new-found cousin Scott fits in:

 1) William Brown Butler m. (1895) Ida Rene [Bryant] Williams
     2) Earl Charles, b. 1892
         m. Ellen (1911)
            3) Edna 
            3) Helen
         m. Agnes (abt 1925)
            3) William Earl
                   4) William Bryant 
                   4) Robert Scott 
                   4) Charles Earl
            3) Mary Ann
     2) William Bryant, b. 1895
     2) Rawley Martin, b. 1897

Earl Charles Butler, 1892-1962, son of Ida Rene Bryant

Ida Rene Bryant > Jacqueline Abbott > John Beverly Zaun > Teresa Zaun

 

Ida Rene

This post is a continuation of a previous one:  http://descenddance.blogspot.com/2014/01/ida-rene-bryant.html

Ida Rene Bryant > Jacqueline Abbott Zaun > John B. Zaun > Teresa Zaun Austin

There are several unsolved mysteries regarding my great grandmother Ida.  Some of what I have learned from family stories is contradicted by my research.

What I know to be true:

• Ida Rene Bryant was born in 1868 in Southhampton County to Eley and Margaret Bryant.
• She had a twin sister Addie who married Blucher Fletcher and lived in Princess Anne County.
• Ida married William Butler in 1895 and had three little boys, Earl, William, and Rawley. (?)
• She married George Abbott in 1904 and had three little girls, Miriam, Audrey, and Jacqueline, and a son George who died in infancy.
• She died of pneumonia  in 1933 and was buried in Bethlehem Cemetery in Richmond.

Here are the tricky bits:

• Her marriage record to William Butler lists her as Ida Rena Williams, widow.
• Earl Butler was born in 1892, three years before her marriage to William Butler. 
• In the U.S. Census 1900, it say she is the mother of TWO, though it lists all three boys.
• When she married George Abbott, they lived in Richmond even though neither had family there.  The Butler boys did not live with them.
• Some of the facts in William Butler's obituary are not consistent with other records.
• UPDATE (Aug. 29, 2018): Ida was married at age 19 to a man named Llewelen Eley. What happened to this marriage? Annulment? Divorce? Llewelen went on to live a long life in Norfolk, Va, with a new wife and children. 
• U.S. Census 1930 (?) says she was first married at age 16. Her marriage to Llewellyn Eley was at age 19. Who was she married to?

So here are my questions... 

Who is this Williams guy?  How can I find out about the first marriage of Ida's that no one in the family seems to know about?  Was he from Southhampton County or Princess Anne County?  Divorce? Annulment? Death?

Ida's birth year is given as 1868 in every early census (1870-1900), but is 1871 in her marriage record to William Butler. The 1910 census gives her birth year as 1877.   The 1920 census says abt 1869. The 1930 says 1868.  I'm guessing that 1868 is correct, which is what is on her death certificate.

It has never been questioned by the family that Earl was Ida's son. They were close all their lives. Is Earl really her son?  Did Ida have Earl out of wedlock and wait three years to get married?  Who was Earl's father?* Was William Butler married (and widowed) a second time between his first wife Sarah, and Ida?  Where was William Butler between 1874 and 1895?  Could Earl have been from Ida's first marriage to (?) Williams and adopted by William Butler?  Earl's death certificate lists William Butler as his father and Ida as his mother, but I have seen other such errors on death certificates. Earl's children believed, and still believe, Ida was their grandmother. 

*(UPDATE August 29, 2018: DNA results have proven that Earl was Ida's son). 

Where did the three boys live after their father died?  There is a record of a "Raligh Butler" living in Laurel Reformatory in Richmond, though his age and father's birthplace are wrong.  Earl later worked as a "reformatory guard" according to the census, so it seems logical that it was the same facility. Were the boys placed in a boys home or orphanage?  Is this why Ida moved from Lynchburg to Richmond, to be near her boys?  Is it why Ida and George lived in Richmond after they married even though neither one had family there?  Based on the fact that many widowed folks at that time were forced to place their children in orphanages, I am guessing that this is what Ida had to do.  The Methodist Children's Home in Richmond was opened just after 1900 - this is a possibility but I haven't been able to prove it.

Why does William Butler's obituary give his age at death as 55 (he was 61), and why did it say he had only one son (he had three)?  His occupation and death date are correct in the obituary.  His tombstone is correct.

So many mysteries!  

Plain brown wrapper

I received a mysterious package in the mail today from Aunt Teeny.  It was a thick packet of papers, but was addressed to "Leah & John" at my address.  So I called Aunt Teeny and she said that she had found a pile of genealogy papers and put them in the mail for me.  No clue why it said Leah & John.  When I opened it, it appeared to be a random assortment of letters and old typewritten documents.  On closer inspection, I realized that it was years of correspondence between Aunt Miriam and Uncle Herman and a relative in New Jersey named Ray Eggers.  Mr. Eggers had spent years doing research on the family and had published books about it.  He was particularly determined to prove the link with Roger Williams. He did it the old fashioned way, by traveling all over the Northeast doing research using primary documents.   It took more than a decade, but he finally accomplished his mission.

As I scanned the documents to post online, it occurred to me that Ray Eggers was probably a source for the Weismantel family Ancestry research as well.  I have been communicating with Matt Weismantel through Ancestry over the last year.  Ray's connection with Marge Weismantel was the source of many photos and documents, as well as the Bryant family Bible, all of which had already been shared with me by Matt.  We are all descendants of Roger Williams through the Abbott line.  

All of Ray's work and correspondence is now posted in Google Docs and has been shared with my fellow Ancestry researchers.

May Abbott Cowan, half sister of George Wright Abbott > Bonnie F. Cowan > Raymond F. Eggers.
[George Wright Abbott > Jacqueline D. Abbott > John B. Zaun > Teresa Zaun Austin]

In talking with Aunt Teeny this afternoon, more stories came out about the Butler family.  She said that Rawley Martin Butler came home from WWI with syphilis.  He came to live with the Lukhards when Junior (Herman, Jr.) and Dee (Rawley) were young and shared a bed with the boys until the syphilis was discovered. Rawley's wife Hilda divorced him and he eventually died of it in 1944.  Rawley's grandson questions some of these details, however, because Rawley and Hilda had two children in the 20's and she lived to a ripe old age.  He also said that Rawley had been known to have a gambling problem and had lost the family home which could very well have been a reason for the divorce.  The chronology of this story doesn't exactly make sense, but either way, it's a very sad situation.

We're all related...

It is so exciting to find people on Ancestry who share the same relatives.  Email exchanges between one of these newfound cousins has spiced up my research lately!  We share the same great grandmother, but he is a descendant of her first husband and I am from her second.  We have worked together through emails to solve some of the puzzles in our family tree, particularly regarding the Butlers (who are not related to me, but were close to my grandmother).

We knew that William Butler was an engineer and that he and Ida Rene lived in Lynchburg.  Another relative on Ancestry documented William's middle name as "Brown", but we have found no proof of that... yet.  If it is Brown, then there is a 1904 gravestone in Lynchburg that matches his information.  Closer inspection of a census document showed the abbreviations "Cabell, Rmt" and "So Ry".  Curious!  I googled "So Ry" and came up with Southern Railway... he was a TRAIN engineer!  The time and place made perfect sense.  I pulled up Google maps and found Cabell Street in Lynchburg... as I followed it by satellite view through the city, it crossed a main roadway called Rivermont  ("Rmt").  They must have lived at or near that intersection.  These leaps and bounds of discovery took less than five minutes!  So now I am going back and looking more closely at all of the census documents for everyone in my tree, searching for clues that I might have missed.

I spoke with my "Aunt Teeny" (Miriam Vaughan) and asked her what she knew about the Butlers.  She did not know much, but promised to contact some people who would know.  I also realize the urgency to interview certain older folks while they are still around, like Charlie Fletcher who is descended from Ida's twin, Addie.  Interesting that both Ida and Addie married men who were twenty years older than they were.  Both of these women had powerful, far-reaching influence in the family... makes me want to find out more.

Lines crossed

The relatives that I am meeting through Ancestry are helping to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge.  I am communicating with two relatives, both named Matt, who did not know each other except through Ancestry.  One of these newfound relatives is the great grandson of Rebecca Abbott and William Bryant, my great grand aunt and uncle.  The other is a grandson of Rawley Martin Butler, my grand uncle. Common denominator = Ida Rene.

I had always heard that our family line were crossed between Bryants and Abbotts but could not find it in my research.  According to one of these newfound relatives, George Abbott's half sister Rebecca was married to Ida Rene Bryant's brother William.   I may have known this at one time but would never have been able to dredge it up on my own.  Amazing how discovering such a precious nugget of information can make my day.

William Thomas Bryant, brother of Ida Rene and son of Eley and Margaret Bryant, was born in March 1867 in Southhampton County, Va.

Rebecca Godfrey Curtis Abbott, half sister of George Wright Abbott and daughter of Whitfield Barrie and Gertrude Clayton Abbott, b. 28 Jul 1868 in Fort Lee, NJ.

William married Rebecca in 1900. They met when they were coworkers in a hat factory in Fort Lee, NJ. William had probably taken the train to NJ that had recently been extended to Norfolk, VA. William returned to his parents farm in Princess Anne County, but Rebecca (called Bonnie), finding herself pregnant, took the train to Norfolk where William met the train and they were married immediately in the nearest church parsonage. They lived with Eley and Margaret Bryant for about a year before returning to NJ. The baby died soon after childbirth. 

George Abbott married Ida Rene Butler (nee Bryant) in 1904 in Norfolk, VA. 

After Eley Bryant died, Margaret Bryant went to live in Richmond with Ida Rene and George Abbott. She died on a train trip back to Blackwater to visit Addie in 1908.

Ida Rene Bryant

Ida Rene Bryant, my great grandmother, was born in 1868 to Eley and Margaret (Cobb) Bryant in Southhampton County, Va.  Her siblings were Charles, Mary, William, and Gattie Jane, and a twin sister, Ariadne.  I have traced the Bryant and Cobb families back to around 1700 in Southhampton and Isle of Wight Counties.

It appears that Ida was married to a man named Williams, and was widowed before marrying William Butler. (She had an earlier marriage to Llewellyn Eley at age nineteen, possibly annulled). Ida Rene and William Butler (a train engineer) lived in Lynchburg for a time.  They had a live-in servant named Susan Austin according to the 1900 census.  Ida had three sons with William Butler:  Earl, William, and Rawley.  [Earl was 3 years old when they married; William Jr. died at age 19]. The story goes that Ida actually met George Abbott when he was only ten. Her brother William T. Bryant was married to George's sister Bonnie. Anyway, George was only 21 when he married Ida Rene; she was 35.  She and George had three daughters, Miriam, Jacqueline, and Audrey.  They also had a son, George Wright Abbott, Jr. who died in infancy.

Ida, center, with George (mustache) and daughters Miriam, Jacqueline, and Audrey.

"Pops" (?) and Ida

Ida Rene

Ida and grandchildren, including my father,
John Beverly Zaun (front).

Ida's twin, Addie, married Blucher Fletcher and settled in the Blackwater area of what is now Virginia Beach.  Blucher was 20 years older than Addie and fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.  They had a son, Blucher "Bluke", and a daughter, Ruth, who was mentally disabled.  On an interesting note, Addie's and Ida's descendants who live in Virginia Beach today have crossed paths and connected with each other in various ways through business, community, and church.  The family resemblances are uncanny, especially with the redheads.

Addie and Blucher

Addie

Ida died in 1933 at age 65.  George lived another 26 years.  Near the end of his life, George Abbott "Gramps" told his daughters that their mother was "quite a woman."

*postscript:  my newfound cousin, Matt, who I met through Ancestry, is a descendant of Ida from her marriage to William Butler.  This kind of connection is part of what makes Ancestry research so rewarding!