Alberta's Secret

         
          On Saturday, 8 April 1939, Earl Bagley of Macon County, Illinois, and Alberta Rankin of Perry County, Missouri, took out a marriage license. They were married the same day by Judge Homer J. Graff. There was a sense of urgency.

           Alberta was six months pregnant. 

          Just five days after their marriage, something terrible happened. Alberta went into labor. Her infant daughter was born three months early. 

          The baby did not survive.

          The death certificate names Alberta as the mother, but the father's name is shown as "unknown." The baby, Ann Marie, was buried in the Perry County Poor Farm Cemetery.

          The death record suggests that Earl was not the father of Ann Marie. Had he been, there would have been no reason to conceal the identity.  

          Earl appears to have been a good husband to Alberta. They soon left Missouri and moved to Decatur, Illinois, where Earl had grown up. They had no other children. Earl passed away in 1985. 

          Alberta died three years later, taking her secret to the grave.


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DEATH OF MRS. DILLON

          Mrs. Bridget Dillon, aged 57, died last evening at 5 o'clock at the family home, 402 Hazle avenue. She was hurt, it was said, about ten years ago while alighting from a street car. Complications developing caused her death. She is survived by the following children: John, Thomas, Joseph, Daniel, Elizabeth and Mrs. Paul Haydt, and one brother, John Gilroy of Scranton.

          The funeral will take place on Saturday morning at 9:00 with a high mass of requium in St. Mary's Church at 9:30. Interment at St. Mary's Cemetery at Hanover.


The Wilkes-Barre Record
Thursday, 29 February 1912

A TWISTED FAMILY TREE

My 3rd great-grandfather, Lewis Thorp was a pioneer. He was born on 19 March 1798, in North Haven, Connecticut. Lewis was just a year old in 1799 when his family left Connecticut and headed into pioneer country in the Western Reserve of Ohio. Later they lived in Buffalo, New York. 

His father died in 1813, massacred by the Indians. Without a father to provide for them, the five youngest children were placed under court appointed guardianship until age 21. All the children stayed up north, either in New York or in Michigan. 


All except Lewis. 

He went to Missouri, which had just become a state. In 1821, Lewis married Ann Preston. Ann was the daughter of Jonathan and Mary Preston from Virginia. They had been in Missouri since 1803. 

Ann Preston had five children with Lewis Thorpe. Then she died. 


Lewis did what any man with young children and no wife would do. He remarried. His second wife, Elvretta Phillips, was the widow of Joseph Sadler. She had two children. 

Lewis and Elvretta had six more children, and the second-eldest was my 2nd gg-grandfather, Joel Calvin Thorp.

Here's the twist: 

Because Ann Preston died, she is not my direct ancestor. 
But her younger sister, Sarah Preston is.

Sarah Preston was married to Joseph Massey. Joseph was from a French Canadian family. They had four children.

Their daughter, Mary Venicia Massey married William Kline, and they had a daughter, Ellen. Ellen married Samuel E. Rankin and eventually had twelve children. Their son, Sanford, was my great-grandfather.

And even though Ann Preston is not my ancestor, her children are my half-cousins. 


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