Life of Lucille

My grandmother Verna Lucille Evans Shanower Cote died a week ago at the age of 99 1/2.  She hated the name Verna and was always known as Lucille. Her laugh was wonderful.

She was born May 31, 1916, in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

Lucille with her father Joseph Edward Evans.

Her father was Joseph Edward Evans, son of Welsh immigrants to the USA.

Lucille with her mother Adella Cecil Grandy Evans Hundhammer.

Her mother was Adella Cecil Grandy, whose early English immigrant ancestors included Mayflower passengers.

Lucille with her grandmother Bertha May Flora Grandy.

Lucille’s parents divorced when she was four years old. Her father mostly vanished from her life. Lucille was raised primarily by her maternal grandmother, Bertha May Flora Grandy.

Anna Belle Stratton, Bertha May Flora Grandy, Dell Grandy Evans Hundhammer, Elma Helene Grandy, Bruce Grandy, Jessica Stratton Grandy, Lucille Evans.

Lucille Evans and Stanley Shanower.

Her mother remarried and the family moved to Mentor, Lake County, Ohio. In school Lucille met Stanley Raymond Shanower.

Lucille and Stanley.

Mentor High School senior portrait, 1934.

Modeling headshot.

Modeling headshot.

After graduating high school Lucille attended modeling school.

Her modeling career stopped when she married Stanley Shanower on April 17, 1938.

Newlyweds, June 1938.

Lucille subsequently worked at the nursery Wayside Gardens in Mentor. She was her husband Stanley’s partner in all of his business ventures, including the Shanower Overnight Farm, a motor hotel; Shanower Electric which serviced refrigeration and air conditioning; and McGarvey’s Beachcomber, a restaurant in Grand River, Ohio. She raised their three sons.

The Shanower Overnight Farm, Mentor, Ohio.

A son's wedding, 1967.

In the 1960s Lucille went back to school and became a librarian. She took a job at Willoughby-Eastlake Public Library in Willoughby, Ohio.

Lucille and Stanley Shanower.

I'm flanked by my grandparents Lucille and Stanley, Winter Haven, Florida, spring 1983.

She and Stanley retired and moved to Winter Haven, Florida.

March 1984.

Lucille and Stanley with their sons, sons' wives, and grandchildren, December 1986.

Stanley died in 1987. Lucille married her second husband Rene Cote in 1990. Rene died in 2002. Lucille spent her winters in Florida and her summers in Ohio.

Lucille at her 90th birthday party, August 2006.

In 2009 she moved into the Residence of Chardon, an assisted living facility in Chardon, Geauga County, Ohio, near one of her sons and his family. The Residence of Chardon was built on land once owned by the Grant relatives of her first husband Stanley.

The Residence of Chardon, Grandma's final home.

I interview Grandma about family matters in August 2012.

Grandma and I discuss a photo of her great-grandmother Elma Conkey Grandy.

Lucille at one of her favorite restaurants, Red Lobster, March 2014.

The week before Thanksgiving of 2015 she came down with bronchitis. It developed into pneumonia. She died at 12:35 AM on Sunday, November 29, 2015. She had been surrounded by family members all day. Her mind was unimpaired to the end.

Grandma and me in December 2013.

Click here for her obituary.

Click here for an earlier post about the secret marriages of Grandma's parents.

Cousins in Common: The Rathbuns

Are there even more cousins that David and I are both related to? Yep. I don’t find this surprising anymore. Interesting, you bet. Even fascinating. But not surprising. I wouldn’t be surprised to find coincidences like this and line-crossings in the family trees of many couples.

So which cousins in common am I talking about today?

Norton Galard Rathbun (1838-1919) was my first cousin five times removed. Norton's parents were Saxton Squire Rathbun (1813-1895) and Barbara Elizabeth Huss Rathbun (1816-1894). You can see their gravestone in Bakertown Cemetery, Clyde, Ohio, just below. Norton’s maternal grandparents were Noah Jacob Huss (1790-1843) and Mary Burkholder Huss (1789-1849). You can see Noah and Mary's gravestones in the same cemetery about three-quarters of the way through this previous post. Noah and Mary were my five times great-grandparents through my paternal grandmother’s line.

Gravestone of Saxton Rathbun and Barbara Huss Rathbun.

On Christmas Day of 1865 in Sandusky County, Ohio, cousin Norton married Elizabeth E. Hufford (1842-1926). Elizabeth was David Maxine’s second cousin five times removed. Her great-grandparents were Christian Hoffart (1716-1788) and his second wife Anna Catherine Vogel Hoffart (1715-abt 1807). Christian and his first wife, Elizabeth Keim (1723-abt 1763), were the six times great grandparents of David through his paternal grandmother’s line.

The marriage of Norton Galard Rathbun and Elizabeth E. Hufford Rathbun means that all their descendants are cousins to both David and me. Not that they had a great number of descendants. Norton and Elizabeth had three sons, Edward Carlyle Rathbun (1867-1942), Arthur F. Rathbun (1869-1965), and Herman W. Rathbun (b 1867). Edward had two sons, Irvin Noah Rathbun (1899-1988) and Alan Edward Rathbun (1906-1993). Irvin and Alan had seven children between them, seven great-grandchildren of Norton and Elizabeth Rathbun. One, maybe two, of those didn’t make it to adulthood. None of the remaining five has had any children that I can find so far. All of those offspring are cousins David and I have in common.

Dorothy M. Sherrard Rathbun, 1936.

At one point I thought I might find another family connection though one of these common cousins. Alan Edward Rathbun (1906-1993), grandson of Norton Galard Rathbun, married Dorothy Marguerite Sherrard (1910-1994) in Canton, Stark County, Ohio, in 1936. Since my father has had relatives in Stark County, Ohio, for nearly two hundred years, I wondered whether Dorothy Sherrard was connected to me through another line. But I can’t find that she is.

But there is another family connection among these Rathbuns, David, and me. That connection turns these family lines into one big circle.

A while back I posted here about David's and my cousins in common the Colgrove sisters—Victoria Marie “Vikki” Colgrove Young and Rebecca Louise “Becki” Colgrove Siler. They're related to David through the ancestor they share with him: David F. Sellers (1845-1927). So, like David, they're related to Elizabeth E. Hufford Rathbun through David F. Sellers's maternal line.

I’m related to Vikki and Becki through our common great-great-grandfather Matti Juhonpoika Uhmusberg Hietanen (1857-1915), a line going through my mother. But it's through my father that I’m related to Norton Galard Rathbun, so Vikki and Becki aren’t related to Norton, too, just to Norton's wife, Elizabeth.

But just as David and I are related to all Norton and Elizabeth Rathbun’s descendants, so are Vikki and Becki.

Is that too confusing?

It’s easier to visualize, so I’ve created a chart. The names in red are cousins in common. I didn’t want to make the chart any more complicated than it is, so I didn’t put in the children of brothers Irvin and Alan Rathbun--although those children are also cousins in common with both David and me. If you trace the main course of the lines and ignore the offshoots to the red names, you can see that it’s actually a closed loop.

Cousins in Common: The Rathbuns Chart. As with all images on this blog, click it to see a larger version.

Dropping Bombs

Lucille and her mother Dell.

I love my grandma. She’s a calm, matter-of-fact, generally happy woman, who laughs easily. She’s ninety-eight years old, and she plans on making it to one hundred.

Grandma’s not a secretive person. I’ve spent time with her discussing her life and our family. And she’s willing to tell me her stories. Yet not too long ago, when I was asking her about family matters, she dropped a bombshell.

For years I’d known the general outline of Grandma’s early life.

My paternal grandmother, Verna Lucille Evans Shanower Cote—called Lucille—was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1916, an only child. Her parents, Joseph Edward Evans (1884-1943) and Adella Cecil "Dell" Grandy (1888-1974), divorced when she was just four years old. Lucille and her mother Adella moved in with Adella’s parents—Millard Curtis Grandy (1867-1941) and Bertha May Flora Grandy (1868-1942)—at their home in Cleveland. For the next few years, while Adella worked as a telephone operator, Lucille was basically raised—along with her aunt Helene Grandy (1907-1987) and first cousin once removed Elva Flora (1907-unk)—by her grandmother, Bertha.

The Grandy Family, l to r: Clayton Curtis Grandy, Verna M. Grandy Lundberg, Elma Helene Grandy Haylor Humes, Bertha May Flora Grandy, Grace L. Grandy Draper, Millard Curtis Grandy, Inez Irene Grandy Balcomb Kolinski, Adella Cecil "Dell" Grandy McElroy Evans Hundhammer.

So much for the outlines, but I wanted to get some detail out of Grandma. “How much did you see your father after your parents divorced?” I asked her.

Joseph Evans and Lucille, c. 1917.

“Oh, he came by once in a while,” Grandma answered. “He’d send a card at Christmas. But I didn’t see him again after he married his second wife and moved to California.”

Whoa! Hold on! Second wife? Moved to California?

My uncle, Lucille’s son, who happened to be in the room, did a double-take.

Trying to process this revelation, I said, “Grandma, I don’t remember hearing this before. Your father re-married and moved to California? I thought he was buried in Cleveland.”

“They shipped his body back,” she said.

This was news to everyone except Lucille—including my dad, who I phoned to tell soon after. Was this the first time in over seven decades that she’d bothered to mention it?

Maybe. She wasn’t keeping it a secret on purpose. Until I asked, there just hadn’t been any particular reason for her to talk about it.

But what did my great-grandfather Joseph Evans’s second marriage mean? Did my grandmother have half-siblings out there somewhere?

I started research.

Grandma’s information was right. She’s in her late nineties, but her mind is unimpaired. On October 29, 1930, more than a decade after his divorce from Adella Grandy, Joseph Evans married Elizabeth Prosper (1891-unk) in Cleveland, Ohio. I uncovered no children from this marriage, so no half-siblings.

Sarah Jane Hopton Evans and Jonathan Rapier Evans, c. 1940.

It’s unclear when Joseph moved to California. The 1940 census, ten years after his wedding to Elizabeth, lists him living in Cleveland with his Welsh immigrant parents, Jonathan Rapier Evans (1860-1944) and Sarah Jane Hopton Evans (1860-1948). But California death records confirm that he died three years after that, June 12, 1943, in Los Angeles. His body was shipped back across the country and buried in the Monroe Street Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio.

Elizabeth Prosper, Joseph’s second wife, had been married twice before. Before 1910 she married Harry J. Damme (1889-1923) in New York and they had four children. First husband Harry died, leaving Elizabeth a widow. In 1923 she married a second time to Turkish immigrant Steve Totolidis (or maybe Fotolidis) (abt 1894-unk) in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Perhaps Steve Totolidis died, although I suspect he and Elizabeth divorced, leaving her single to marry Joseph Evans in 1930.

That’s all I know about Elizabeth Prosper Damme Totolidis Evans. One of her four children with Harry Damme, Harry John Damme Jr., had descendants, but I can’t find any who might be able to provide further details about Elizabeth.

After learning about the second marriage of my great-grandfather Joseph Evans, I asked my grandmother whether she had any other deep, dark family secrets that she hadn’t told anyone. She laughed and told me that she didn’t, that her father’s second marriage hadn’t been a secret, there’d just never been a reason to mention it before.

No more family secrets. Right.

While doing more genealogical research some time later I came across the marriage certificate of Lucille’s parents, Joseph Evans and Adella Grandy. No surprises there—but, wait! What was that listed with Adella’s information? A previous marriage? Whoa, another bombshell.

I immediately e-mailed my dad and my uncle. What was this about their grandmother Adella’s marriage to a Charles E. McElroy (1888-unk), who she’d divorced before marrying Joseph Evans? Did any of them know about it?

No.

So my uncle asked his mother Lucille about this first marriage of Adella’s. Lucille explained.

After Lucille graduated from high school in the 1930s, a man she didn’t know paid a visit to her mother Adella. Lucille asked her mother who this stranger was. Adella explained that he was her first husband, Charles McElroy. Today Lucille suspects that if Charles McElroy’s visit hadn’t prompted Lucille’s curiosity, Adella would never have revealed to her daughter the fact of her first marriage.

Marriage record of Charles E. McElroy and Adella C. Grandy, May 9, 1911. Charles's first wife is listed as deceased. As always, you may click the image to see it larger in a new window.

My uncle told me that Lucille got a good laugh out of the idea that she’d kept this bombshell a secret on purpose. Actually, she hadn’t mentioned her mother’s first marriage to me simply because she’d completely forgotten about it.

(An aside: I should have discovered Adella’s marriage to Charles McElroy earlier. Another family researcher, a McNaughton cousin, had Adella and Charles’s marriage recorded on his family tree. I’d seen that information there, but I’d dismissed Charles McElroy’s name as being an error.)

Adella Grandy and Charles McElroy had no children together, so Grandma remains a single child. However, Charles McElroy was married both before his marriage to Adella on May 10, 1911, in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and again after their divorce in October 1913.

Lorriane F. McElroy Pecka, 1927.

Who was Charles McElroy’s first wife? I can’t find her name recorded anywhere, but in 1906 a daughter was born from their union, Lorriane F. McElroy (1906-unk). When Lorriane married James Pecka (abt 1901-unk) in Cleveland on June 1, 1927, she listed her mother on her marriage license as Anna Voelker (1886-unk). But Anna Voelker was Charles McElroy’s third wife, not his first wife who was Lorriane’s mother. Charles's first wife was recorded earlier as deceased. But is that true? Was third wife Anna listed on Lorraine’s marriage license as a matter of convenience, since she was Lorriane’s step-mother? Or was Charles McElroy actually married to Anna Voelker twice, both before and after he was married to Adella Grandy? Who knows?

Another question remains. Why did Charles McElroy pay that visit to his second wife Adella after Lucille had graduated high school in 1935, more than twenty years after Charles and Adella had been divorced? Was Charles trying to re-ignite their relationship, despite the fact that his third marriage seems to have been intact? Lucille doesn’t know, so there’s little chance anyone does.

Aloysius "Ollie" Hundhammer.

After marriages to both Charles McElroy and Joseph Evans, Adella Cecil Grandy McElroy Evans married a third time in 1924, just after Lucille turned eight years old. I knew about this marriage to Aloysius “Ollie” Hundhammer (1894-1964), since there had never been any secret about it. Ollie moved his new wife Adella and step-daughter Lucille to Mentor, Ohio.

According to Lucille, Ollie was a mean man. He was also Catholic. My Protestant grandmother Lucille for decades looked unfavorably at Catholics, partly because of her mean stepfather Ollie. Ironically, however, following the death of Lucille’s first husband, my grandfather, Stanley Raymond Shanower (1917-1987), she married a Catholic, Rene Cote (1906-2002), as her second husband in 1990.

After the bombshell revelations about her parents’ marriages, I asked Grandma again whether there were any more family secrets that she was keeping. She laughed and told me no.

But she hadn’t thought her father’s second marriage was any big deal, much less a secret.

And she hadn’t even remembered her mother’s first marriage.

So who knows what other secrets she may hold?

Grandma and me, 2014.

Buckshot in the Backside

Cyrus Hawk and Mary Catherine Franks Hawk gravestone, Dana Cemetery, Green Creek, Ohio.

On November 29, 1872, an interesting tidbit appeared in the "Ohio News Items" column of the New Philadelphia Ohio Democrat:

The season has now arrived when ignoramuses go forth with shot guns and fall over fences and off logs and come home well tattooed with shot. Cyrus Hawk, of Fremont, was the last victim.

This particular "ignoramus," Cyrus Hawk (1851-1944) of Green Creek (near Fremont), Sandusky County, Ohio, happened to be my great-great-great-great-uncle, the younger brother of my great-great-great-grandmother Clementine Hawk Flora (1849-1907). Clementine was my paternal grandmother’s great-grandmother.

I don’t want the photo I’ve posted of Uncle Cyrus’s grave to give the wrong impression—he didn’t die from accidentally shooting himself at the age of twenty. On the contrary, that incident didn’t seem to impair Cyrus much. He lived to reach ninety-two years of age and along the way he had twelve children with his wife Mary Catherine Franks Hawk (1857-1931). A note in the Hawk/Huss genealogical file in the Clyde, Sandusky County, Ohio, public library indicates that Cyrus served with the Union Army in the US Civil War. If that's correct, he was pretty young when he served, since he was twelve years old when the war ended in April 1865. Maybe he was a water boy or something like that.

If you’d like to see a nice photograph of Cyrus and Mary, there’s one here. Mary's hairstyle indicates the photo's from the 1920s. And you can see a more informal one of Cyrus alone here.