Solving Mysteries: Annette's Disappearance and Joseph's Name Change

My great grandmother Isabell McAvin, who we called Mammaw, used to tell a strange story.  One day when she was a young married woman living in New Orleans in the 1920s, a woman knocked on her door. She was middle-aged, had red hair, and held a box.  The box held a  birthday cake, and she said she had brought  it for my great grandfather Joseph. Puzzled, Mammaw accepted the cake for her husband who was at work, and then the woman left--she had not wanted to wait for his return. Mammaw later said, "I should have guessed who she was." Perhaps she should have considering what had happened a few days earlier.

My great grandfather, Joseph McAvin was an engineer who worked for the Grinnell Company designing fire sprinkler systems for buildings. One of the architects he met at work was named William R. Burk.  "My mother was named Burk," he casually told the architect, "but she is dead."  "Who was your mother?" Burk asked. "Annette Burk," Joseph responded. "Annette is my sister, and she is not dead." Stunned silence.

Soards' New Orleans City Directory, 1927, p. 1024

Let me back up a bit.

In 1892, Joseph's parents John McAvin and Annette Burk were married at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans, a massive brown brick building, the largest church structure in the South. They had known each other from living in the same neighborhood. Annette was an Episcopalian, but had agreed to the Catholic ceremony to please her new husband. Like many young couples in those days, they moved in with John's family into a humble shotgun duplex on Cleveland Avenue. John worked as a laborer, and the couple had two sons, Burk on September 15, 1893, and Theodore, exactly one year later.

                                                   St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church, 1802 Tulane Ave., New Orleans   Image from Wikipedia

But soon Theodore became sick, with a horrible malady, marasmus, that caused his small body to wither. It can be caused by malnutrition, but also by viral, parasitic, or bacterial causes. The stress on his poor parents as they helplessly watched him fade away can only be imagined, and it may have contributed to the breakup of their marriage, for within a couple years Annette left. She left not just her husband John McAvin, but also her surviving son Burk, who was then about four.

Where did Annette go?  For years, I speculated about this. She must have found a high roller, I thought. Maybe she moved someplace more glamorous, for New Orleans has always been a fairly provincial place. My second great grandmother Sophie Annette Burk was a mystery. But once I started researching her, many decades after these events unfolded, I got my answer, and it was surprising.

I was able to find her fairly easily because in New Orleans women are listed by their maiden names in many records, even after they are married, due to the French influence on their laws and civil administration. Annette had not gotten very far at all. She "married" another man named Frank Klevorn, a manager of a factory that made cloth sacks, and started another family of six children with him in New Orleans. I put married in quotation marks because she was never divorced from John McAvin. I can imagine him saying something like this:" Fine, leave.  But I'm a Catholic, so I'll never give you a divorce. Never. Nor will I ever give you any reason to be able to get one. And you're not taking my son." So Annette had a choice to make. Either stay in the marriage in order to keep her son Burk, or leave and leave her son behind. She chose the latter. The fact that she was not officially married to Frank must have bothered her, because she did try to get a divorce several years later. I sent off for the case file on microfilm through a Family History Center. She claimed a divorce on the grounds of desertion. John McAvin responded, it's not true, and you can't prove it. She couldn't. Case dismissed.

    Annette Burk McAvin is listed in the 1900 U.S. Census with her partner Frank Klevorn and their daughter Sadie. Notice she reported she had been married four years (untrue), and that she had born four children, only one of whom was living (also at least partly untrue).


Wait a minute you are thinking.  What about Joseph? Where does he fit into all this?  I'm getting to it.  After Annette left, John went to talk to the priest at St. Joseph's, the grand brick warehouse of Irish Catholics on Tulane Avenue. He asked the priest to change his son's name in the baptismal register, which the priest did. Burk McAvin was forever transformed into Joseph Ferdinand McAvin. After all, if the boy's name had remained Burk, his wife's maiden name, John would constantly be reminded of the wife who left him. Instead, he chose Joseph, which was the baptismal sponsor's name, and Ferdinand. The reason why he chose this middle name is a mystery because there are no other Ferdinands in the Burk or McAvin families, but it may be that the name change occurred on May 30, St. Ferdinand's feast day, and it was the priest's suggestion.  Whatever the reason, it was an inspired     choice because St. Ferdinand is the patron saint of engineers, young Joseph Ferdinand's future profession. I was able to piece that together because in the church record book, a priest crossed out Burk and wrote in Joseph Ferdinand.

However, John never bothered to change his son's name legally. His civil birth record to this day officially lists his son as Burke [sic] McAvin. But all Catholics know that it's only church records that really count anyway, right?  The other thing John did was to devise a story.  His son was only four, too little to really understand what was going on between his parents. So he told the boy that his beautiful redheaded mother had died and gone to heaven. John's mother Mary, an immigrant from County Cavan, Ireland, and his sister Kate, who both lived with them were in on the fiction. The boy must never know that his mother left him willingly.

                                                         Orleans Parish birth record, v. 105, p. 767--notice that Burk is misspelled.

Joseph, though a motherless only child, grew up with loads of attention and support from his father's relations, in part because he was the only grandchild, which was astonishing in an Irish Catholic family. But his father never married again or had any more children, his Uncle Willie's wife Annie never had any children, his Aunt Mary died in trying to bring her first child into the world unsuccessfully, and Aunt Kate was a maiden lady. They all must have lavished lots of care on him. There is a series of photographs that have survived of Joseph taken every year or two in beautiful dress clothes. Perhaps Aunt Kate the seamstress made these outfits. Gradually, Joseph grew up, married Isabell, and had two daughters of his own. As his career flourished, the couple was able to stop renting houses, and they built a house on Catina Street in Lakeview, a new neighborhood. Life was good.

                                                        Joseph McAvin upon his confirmation, circa 1906. From the author's collection.

But after his surprise encounter with his mother's brother at his workplace, Joseph learned the truth, that his mother was still alive and living in New Orleans. Soon after she would deliver a birthday cake to his house, an attempt to reconnect after all those years.  Joseph's father John had already died several years before this revelation occurred. His grandmother and Aunt Kate were already gone, too. Joseph must have turned to Uncle Willie for an explanation. But he did not have long to either ponder any of this, or to get to know his newly found mother. Joseph had a busy career which caused him to travel. In order to know how to best design the fire sprinkler systems, Joseph would study fires to understand how they spread. On November 6, 1929, he was doing business in  West Monroe, Louisiana, about a four hour drive from New Orleans. The country was still reeling from the stock market crash on October 29. While there, he consulted with the local volunteer fire department. He and Dr. Carney, one of the members, jumped in the doctor's car to go out on a fire call.  While rushing to cross some railroad tracks, the doctor's car stalled. Both men were killed by the Illinois Central passenger train No. 238. Both men left wives and young children. Joseph was 38 years old.

                                                                             From the State Times Advocate, November 7. 1929, p. 7

If he had lived, perhaps Joseph would have had a relationship with his mother and his half brothers and sisters. However, any connection between the family branches died with him, and so my grandmother Dorothy and her sister Mary Bell never knew their paternal grandmother, or her other children. They were never even told their grandmother's married name, Annette Klevorn. She had quietly married Frank Klevorn in 1927 after the death of her first husband John McAvin. The couple took the ferry across the Mississippi River to Gretna and had the ceremony at St. Joseph's Catholic Church there, where no one knew them. I wonder how much of this story Annette told the priest who performed the ceremony? How much did her other family know? That part of the mystery I will never solve.

Finding Mrs. Brown

A few days ago I started thinking about a neighbor who lived next door to my family when I was a child in the 1970s. Her name was Rachel Brown, and she was quite elderly then. She was a widow, and sometimes when I was out playing in the yard she would approach me in order to chat.  I was a good sport and knew it was polite to talk to her, but inside I was thinking rotten things, like how she had trapped me again, and how those curly white hairs on her chin sure moved up and down as she talked.

I only knew that Mrs. Brown would talk a long time, about not much, and that during most encounters she would also insist that I have some of her cookies.  They were curious no-bake creations containing oats, chocolate, and I'm not sure what else. I was not very partial to them, but dutifully ate a couple anyway.  While I did not relish the cookies, I was happy when she also lavished some of her peonies on me.  Mrs. Brown's yard was then quite shady due to mature trees, but at one point must have contained quite a perennial garden, remnants of which remained. The eastern side of her prim, brick Georgian-style house was filled with common orange daylillies, but the backyard was filled with peonies, which she must have divided over and over again throughout the many years she lived there.  The flowers were huge, blowsy, and pale pink, with a strong sweet and spicy odor.  Mrs. Brown would cut me a huge bunch, and then one by one dunk the peonies in an old coffee can filled with water in order to get rid of the ants.  I loved those peonies, and would stick my face into the still-dripping blossoms to take in their scent.

Now that I'm an adult I realize that  Mrs. Brown was quite lonely, and must have been pretty hard up for company to chat up a shy, self-absorbed kid. Now how I wish that I had asked her about her life, where she was from, what she read as a child, and how she ended up in Clarendon Hills, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.  But I never did, and of course it is much too late.  Mrs. Brown died before we moved away in 1982.  Her family members did not come during her final illness, but the very kind neighbors who lived on the other side of her were with her in the hospital when she passed away, holding her hand and praying with her.  God bless them.

A curiosity now seizes me about what her life was about, and I wonder if I can use my research skills to find out now what I never bothered to ask then?  These are the only clues I have to go on:

• Her name was Rachel Brown, middle and maiden names unknown. Sigh.
• She had been a teacher at some point.
• I remembered her husband's name as Clarence.  This I was not sure about because he was already deceased before we moved in to our house in the fall of 1969.
• Mrs. Brown and her husband had built their house on Mohawk Drive in the Blackhawk Heights subdivision. They were the original owners.

This didn't seem like very much to go on, especially considering how common a surname Brown is.  I called my mother and asked what she remembered, which was only that Mrs. Brown's relatives, either nephews or nieces, had lived in Colorado when she died, and that she had a black Studebaker.  Pretty flimsy.

In historical research one works backwards. So I needed to first figure out her death date.  I looked in the Social Security Death Index at www.familysearch.org.  I found a Rachel Brown who had died in October 1977 in DuPage County, Illinois, and who was born 5 January 1890 in Columbus, Ohio.  The death date seemed right. In 1977 I was twelve years old--still too young to appreciate Mrs. Brown and her attentions to me. Also, the birth date meant she had been 87 when she died. This, too, seemed right.  The Mrs. Brown of my memory was a very short, stooped lady with white hair done up in a top knot and secured with a hairnet. She wore sensible shirtwaist dresses that seemed too big for her.  The one feature she had that must have been little changed were her dark brown eyes.

If this information was correct, I should be able to locate her and her husband pretty easily in the 1940 U.S. Census.  However, I did not know where they were living in 1940, because our subdivision was not established until after World War II during the late 1940s on land which had once been the Basset & Washburn Greenhouse and Nursery. I remembered this, and was able to confirm it in the online Encyclopedia of Chicago. I searched for a Rachel and Clarence Brown in Illinois in 1940. Nothing. Either I had the husband's name wrong, or they did not live in Illinois in 1940.

I went to Ancestry.com and did a general search for a Rachel Brown who was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1890.  A few records in, I found indexing for a social security application.  One Rachel Brown, née Rachel Lulu Smith, who was born in Columbus in 1890, had applied in Illinois.  This looked quite promising, but, ugh, why did Mrs. Brown's maiden name have to be Smith?!

Next, I went back to FamilySearch and quickly located her marriage license.  Rachel Lulu Smith, age 36, had married Charles Herbert Brown, age 49, on  21 August 1926 in Columbus, Ohio. All of their parents' names were listed, as were their signatures.  Jackpot! I was on to the right Rachel. And I was ridiculously pleased to learn that her middle name was Lulu, her mother's name.

Now I had multiple possibilities for where I could go next. First, I quickly located Rachel and her husband in the 1940 and 1930 U.S. Censuses now that I knew his name was Charles, not Clarence. They were living in Chicago, and he was an insurance agent.  Then, I was able to locate Rachel in Columbus, Ohio in 1920 and 1910, but not in 1900. Curiously, I cannot find her with her parents, George H. and Lulu M. Smith in that enumeration. She would have been ten years old then.

From the two censuses I did find, I learned that Rachel was the eldest child, and had a sister Frances  who was many years younger than she. Her father was a locomotive engineer, and her mother Lulu disappeared between 1910 and 1920. Her death date on 18 December 1913 was located on www.findagrave.com, and confirmed by an indexed death record on FamilySearch. This left Rachel in charge of her little sister--no wonder she hadn't married until she was 36!

I also located Charles Brown with his family in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. It turns out that he is one in a long line of Charles Browns, and his grandfather garnered fame as the inventor of the automatic cut-off steam engine. He ran a factory called C.H. Brown & Company which manufactured the engines.  Among his clients was Thomas Alva Edison.

                                           from Fitchburg, Massachusetts Past and Present, digitized at The Internet Archive

It turns out that Mrs. Brown's husband had had a first marriage. In 1903 he married Marion Elsie Gorham in his hometown.  The couple is listed in the 1910 U.S. Census living on Beacon St. in Fitchburg. There are no children in their household, and the enumerator recorded that his wife had had no children. Whatever the reason, their marriage did not last, because Charles Herbert Brown is listed as being divorced when he married his second wife Rachel Smith. By the way, he is listed in that 1910 census as "Herbert C. Brown." I find that many individuals flipflopped their first and middle names in records. It may be that he was called by his middle name in daily life to distinguish him from his father and grandfather, both of whom lived in the same town, and both of whom had the first name of Charles.

Mrs. Brown, the second Mrs. Brown that is, also had an interesting family. Her maiden name of Smith had undoubtedly been Schmidt just a couple generations before she was born, for her paternal grandfather Henry G. Smith, a baker was a German immigrant.  His wife Catherine Mary Thomas also had an English sounding surname, but her father also was a German immigrant. Mrs. Brown's maternal grandparents were William Fankhouse and Rachel Bower.  The Bower surname may well have begun as Bauer, one of the many German surnames that means farmer.

Many of the men in Mrs. Brown's extended family, including her father and grandfather Fankhouse, worked for the railroad in Columbus, Ohio. A few different railroads went through town, including the Ohio Central. Until the third train station was built in 1897, the numerous trains arriving daily caused a major traffic problem in town.

                                              
                                                          The third Union Station, Columbus, Ohio from Wikipedia

Mrs. Brown attended her hometown school Ohio State University, which allowed her to live at home and care for both her younger sister and father. She graduated in 1913 at the age of 23. The Makio, the OSU yearbook of that year featured her graduation photo, and reported that she was a member of the College Equal Suffrage League--she lobbied for women's voting rights.  Go Mrs. Brown!

She was also a member of the Literary Society and the Philosophy Club. The following quote accompanied her photo: "Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the wayside."
This was taken from the poem Evangeline by Longfellow. Not all the quotations in the yearbook were that complimentary. And I did recognize those fine dark eyes looking out from a much younger version of Mrs. Brown than the one I remembered.

After graduation Mrs. Brown began teaching at the Fair Avenue Elementary School in Columbus, a position she held until her marriage. The school was housed in a truly impressive structure of red bricks.  Her father died in January of 1926, and then she married in August. A coincidence? I don't think so. Her father died of liver cancer, and so was probably ill for a long time. I think Rachel postponed marrying until her father was gone. She supplied the information on his death record, and must have also grimly made the funeral arrangements. She also waited until her sister was sixteen, and so could be left without guilt, to finish high school perhaps living with another relative, and there was big circle of them in Columbus.

                                                                   
                                                                Fair Avenue School No. 1, Columbus, Ohio

Soon after that wedding, Mrs. Brown moved to Chicago with her husband. They lived at a couple different addresses in the East Beverly neighborhood.  After about two decades in the city, they built a house in the small western suburb of Clarendon Hills. That move may have coincided with Mr. Brown's retirement, as he was about 70 years old then. He died in 1967.

My family moved next door to the widowed Mrs. Brown in August of 1969. She had already been alone for a couple years and needed company. Now I know her story, part of it at least. Everyone has a story. Every story matters.