In Genetic Genealogy the Hard Way I finally had a close Elmore relative walk right up and bite me. After the invisible hand of fate did me a solid and showed me his last known Elmore, I was left with couple of questions. I have focused on the Elmores in Peoria because of their proximity to my great grandmother in 1924. In that search I came up with two families, one was a very large family related to Halsey Orton Elmore and the other was a single man who was related to Elmores in Kentucky. Ultimately Halsey’s family went back to our Y DNA matches in the Elmer family in New York and Connecticut and the Kentucky Elmores did not.
In our research, my friend Peg and I ran down through all the generations we could put together, looking for possible Elmore sons. Why then hadn’t we (or anyone else) found Maurice J. Elmore born in Peoria in 1906?
Secondly, I had a Halsey Orton Elmore related person tested at AncestryDNA and although my first cousin and I are a match to her, Mr. Elmore, suspected half second cousin, did not appear to share that match. Was our match to the Halsey relative coincidence? Were we then related to some other unknown Elmore family?
Where Luck and Effort Meet
Let’s have a look at those Peoria Elmores in 1924 again. From the Peoria city directory:
There’s Athel..he runs back to Kentucky and Guy M and his wife Lula Becker..Guy’s son Louis is down the list there. No Maurice Elmore listed in 1924 which is the target time before the birth of my grandfather in February of 1925. For a refresher here is my great grandmother Orvetta Finks. She’s a waitress in 1924:
Alright then, time to track down Maurice.
Having found Maurice in Chicago in 1940 with an existing family and two sons born in the mid 1930s, I then searched ancestry family trees and gleaned some more directory information about him. Although when I searched there were only two family trees and both were hidden private trees, one of them (not the one belonging to my match) for some reason just displayed his information. More dumb luck on my part. From that tree I found out that he was married a second time, served in the military and died in Riverside California.
If he’s born in Peoria in 1906, can I find him in the 1910 Census? The answer is…sort of.
He’s transcribed incorrectly and not living with any other Elmores. I had to search for him by last name only. He’s listed with his grandmother Mae Babot and her son Frank. Here’s the image:
Skipping to Maurice’s Grandparents to Find his Mom
Babot is not a name of any of the secondary families in the Elmores I’ve gathered from Peoria. They must be Maurice’s maternal grandparents, so where do the Babots come in? Babot sounds French to me..or seems like a misspelling. So I went to the Peoria directory for 1910. Here is Mae Babbitt widow of Freelin:
Freelin must be the father of Frank. Frank seems a bit old to be the son of Mae. Mae could be Freelin’s second marriage. Mae is from Iowa, Frank is from Iowa. Freelin may be from Iowa too along with Maurice’s mother who is not listed in the 1910 census. A search for the 1900 census in Iowa produced this family from Leon, Decatur Iowa:
An ancestry family tree search lists Freelin Babbitt/Bobbitt along with Mary (Mae) Bobbitt and Iona Lee Carr with a source of a book on 100 years of Bobbitts. Ima or Iona lee Carr is listed as a stepdaughter of Freeland Bobbitt. So that means Mary was Married before to someone named Carr most likely.
Above is Mary Carr’s marriage license from Missouri. It’s dated 1899 so her marriage to Freelin is pretty close to that 1900 Census. Carr is Mary’s married name, so what is her maiden name and who was her husband? I got some help from Jasper L Carr and his birth record in Iowa.
Daniel Carr and Mary Smith…Carr…Bobbitt. Thanks to Ima’s brother Jasper we have a target Carr family. Here is the Iowa listing for a daughter who would be 15 in 1900:
Daniel B. Carr. Here is their marriage record from Iowa that gave me their parents names. This was an excellent trail:
This is one of the few times where it has been easier for me to track a maternal family than a paternal family. Maurice living with his grandmother in 1910 really opened the door to this discovery. As I’m gathering this evidence, my thoughts are that Maurice’s parents may be dead which would explain why he’s living with his grandmother in 1910. I decided to try to find him in 1920 as well. Again it wasn’t so easy.
This time he’s indexed as Maurice Elmoe a boarder with Mae Eichorn. A 13 year old Boarder seems kind of young. Perhaps John Eichorn did not want to claim him as a grandson. 1920 is going to be a rough year for Maurice I imagine, Mary (Mae) dies in 1920.
Her death record does list her parents so I can tie her back to Daniel Brimmerman Carr’s marriage well enough and that does make Ima Carr Maurice’s most likely mother, but who was his father? For this, I went back to the city directory in Peoria.
Getting Mom and Dad Together
I know that Ima is with Freelin and Mary (Mae) in 1900 and therefore likely in his vicinity in 1906 when Maurice is born. Here is Freelin/Freeland in 1906:
Here are the Elmores in 1906:
Nothing much out of the ordinary, but then take a look at 1907:
With this one I needed a little help from a friend. I had noted that Guy Elmore lived on 628 Matthew and in 1906 the Bobbitts were at 638 Matthew, but I was interested in Emma Elmore who seemed to appear out of nowhere. I also noted Mrs. Ina L Elmore down near the bottom but..I wasn’t sure if Ina was Ima..or maybe Emma was Ima. Then my friend Peg pointed out that Ina L. Elmore was living at 628 Matthew with Guy M. Elmore.
That was all wrong. Guy M. Elmore was married to Lula Becker and in 1907 had two sons with her, Harold and Louis according to all the family trees and census records I’d seen. Why would Maurice be living with his grandmother instead of with Guy Elmore and family in 1920 and 1910?
I ordered Maurice’s death record from Vital Check to see if this trail was really leading where it looked like it was leading, that Guy M. Elmore had a first wife and that she was Ima Carr.
On the heels of that I ordered a genealogical search for marriage records in Peoria and was sent the 1906 marriage record for Ima Carr and Guy Elmore.
Peg made a trip to Peoria Illinois and also found Ima Carr’s headstone (featured image at the top) and death notice in a newspaper.
That means that Imogene is the most likely mother of Louis and Harold Elmore as well as the mother of Maurice. Guy Elmore appears to marry Lulu in 1910 three years after Harold and Louis are born. For some odd reason Maurice did not live with his father and step mother Lulu in 1920. Here is Lulu’s marriage index record:
The Missing Elmore
The reason then that I didn’t find Maurice is that in 1924 he’s missing from the list, in 1920 he’s not living with his brothers, father and step mother, in 1910 he’s mis-transcribed and his parents were only married for three years before his mother died. They don’t appear in a census together and they don’t appear on the same line in the Peoria Directory in 1907. We basically had to build this one from scratch.
Maurice is conspicuously absent in 1924 where Orvetta Finks is listed as a waitress in the Peoria directory, but he is listed in 1922, 1923 and 1925 as a chef/waiter and a cook.
In 1930 I believe I find him in Joleit, although I am not absolutely certain of it. By 1940 he’s married to Goldie Scott and living in Chicago with his two sons. Later, after the war I believe he marries Margaret Jacobs and lives out his days in California.
The Recap
Y DNA ties my Thompson family to Hezekiah Elmer in 1686. In Peoria Illinois where my great grandmother lived in 1924 there is a family of Elmores related to Halsey Orton Elmore who run back through James Walsworth Elmore to Peru, New York and then still farther back to Hezekiah Elmer 1686. Autosomal DNA connects my Dad (through his father), my first cousin and I to a descendant of Goldie Elmore (the now ironically named but no relation to Goldie Scott) daughter of Halsey Orton Elmore. Autosomal DNA also ties us more closely to Mr. Elmore at AncestryDNA, probable half second cousin, who is related to Maurice J. Elmore. Standard documentation ties Maurice J. Elmore to Guy Milford Elmore brother of Goldie and the son of Halsey Orton Elmore. Maurice J. Elmore is the most likely candidate for my great grandfather…even though or maybe because he RUNNOFT in 1924. Orvetta Finks was already pregnant when she moved to Cadillac Michigan and met Ray Bishop Thompson.
All the ducks have lined up.
As nice as tying that whole thing together was, it was the Carr family and previously discovered DNA evidence from my Dad at Family Tree DNA that sort of brought it all home.
Next:
https://wanderingtrees.com/2016/06/the-carr-family-and-dna-triangulation
Previous:
https://wanderingtrees.com/2016/05/genetic-genealogy-the-hard-way