The Many Names of Ida

The following post was originally published in March 2014 on my other (currently offline) blog. It was written as two separate posts, which I've merged here.

I can go for a few months between spurts of genealogy research. I find something new, hit a wall after trying to dig even deeper, and finally leave things for awhile. Then I'll come back to my research and focus on a new person, to see where that path leads me. Last weekend I chose my great-great-grandmother, Ida Rich, as my starting point. I knew only a few things about her. She married my great-great-grandfather, Charles Tyrell, when she was very young, if the 1900 Census birthdate and date of marriage she reported is to be believed. According to that census info they were married in 1889, and Ida was born in 1876, so she would have been thirteen when they married! Yikes. They had five kids together, including Viola Ida (my great-grandmother).

Here's where Ancestry helped me out. To the side of the 1900 census record, there was a list of others that Ancestry suggested I might be interested in. One of them was a 1911 Canadian census record for someone named "Ida Wellman." Why was it suggesting this other Ida to me, I wondered. I clicked it, and was immediately surprised and shocked to find that my great-great-grandmother seemed to have taken her children and started a new life in Windsor, Ontario with a new husband! What had happened in those eleven years between censuses? Had Charles Tyrell died? Left her? Had she left him? So many unanswered questions...and it got even more complicated when I found their marriage record. Ida's new husband was named John Wellman and they were married in 1906. But...her name on the marriage certificate was Ida HILTON, not Ida Rich, not Ida Tyrell. Where did she get the surname Hilton? Was she married to someone named Hilton between her marriages to Charles Tyrell and John Wellman?  Did she change her last name to disassociate herself from Charles Tyrell or make it difficult for him to find her? I still haven't been able to determine Charles's death date, which would allow me a more educated guess on why his marriage to Ida ended.

Part 2...

I left off talking about my great-great-grandmother Ida's many marriages, starting with Charles Tyrell and John Wellman. Census records from 1920 and 1930 showed Ida and John living in Flint, Michigan and then Oakland, California with a daughter, Goldie. The five children Ida had with Charles Tyrell (my great-grandmother among them) weren't with them in California. By then they would have all been adults and presumably starting their own lives and families. It all seemed straightforward and simple: Ida married Charles quite young, had five kids, was most likely widowed, started anew with John Wellman and eventually had a child with him. There was still the question of why her marriage certificate listed her as "Ida Hilton" when she married John in 1906, but otherwise the story seemed typical for the times. However, when I started looking things up on familysearch.org, I hit on something that made me stop and go "Wait, what?"

That something was yet another marriage record with Ida's name in it. The marriage record I found was for a 1923 marriage between an Ida Rich Wellman and a Howard J. Potter. How could Ida be getting married to Howard Potter in 1923 in Michigan if she was married to John Wellman and living in Michigan and California between 1920 and 1930?

I know it might not be the "right" Ida Rich Wellman. But her parents are listed in the marriage record, and their names are the same as "my" Ida's parents - James and Eliza. Ida's listed age is consistent with what I know her approximate birth year to be. One thing that caught my eye, though - Ida is listed as being married only once before. I wonder what's up with that - if it's the same person, it should have listed her as being married twice before (Charles, John).

So what could have happened? So far the only explanation I can come up with is that she split up with John sometime after 1920, married Howard Potter, and by 1930 had already divorced Howard and went back to John.

I'm still working on finding death records for Ida and John. I'm hoping Ida didn't squeeze in any more marriages (and name changes) before she died, or I may be searching for that death record for years!