A small family mystery - Stories from the Family Tree

My grandmother Anderson's brother, Lester Starnes - one of the two siblings born in White Salmon, Washington - returned with the family to Texas, and was with them in Indian Territory in Oklahoma about 1905. I posted about that family here. Apparently Lester stayed behind when the family moved on, because in the 1910 census he was married to a Cherokee woman named Mary Payne.

Mary and her father Louis Payne, along with her brothers and sisters, Emma (age 25, Frank (age 17), Albert (age 12), and Fred (age 4) are already living in the Territory in the 1900 census. Mary was 11 at the time. Interestingly, her father and older sister Emma are listed in the census as "white," while Mary and the rest of the children are listed as "7/8 Cherokee." This suggests that either Mary was not Louis' daughter by birth, or that  the census-taker was clueless. Take your pick.

Nevertheless, about 1907, Mary and Lester married and took up housekeeping in Park Hill, Oklahoma, the center of the Cherokee nation, in a state that had just joined the Union. Mary's brother Frank, along with Lester's brother Archie were living with them at that time. Lester and Mary had four children: Frank (born about 1908), Gene Eudora (born in 1911 in House, Quay County, New Mexico), Bertha (born about 1913) and Nancy Ann (born about 1917).

At first, I thought the New Mexico location might have come about because Lester's parents lived in that state briefly and possibly Lester and Mary joined them there. However, I discovered that Gene Eudora was born on a train as they traveled across New Mexico, probably on their way to California. House, New Mexico was simply the town they were closest to!

Little is known about Lester's family after that until the 1920 Census, when we find the children, Frank, Eudora, Bertha and Nancy Ann listed as "inmates" in the David and Margaret Home for Children in San Dimas, California. This institution had been established by the Woman’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church as an orphanage only ten years prior, and it's still in business, though as a group home for adolescent girls in modern times.

What happened to Mary? There's no trace. What about Dad? As far as we know, he was in California at this time, along with his mother and several other siblings, and we can only speculate as to why his children were in an orphanage. There is a family story that Mary became mentally ill, and Lester simply could not care for four children and work for a living, but there's nothing to substantiate that.

We do know that Gene - the name she preferred - married a man named Harold Jack Piatt, had a son Larry and lived in the Los Angeles area until her death in 1985, at the age of 74. I tracked down the son, still in California,  but missed the opportunity to talk to him by mere days; Larry L Piatt passed away Saturday, February 16, 2013.

We also know that Bertha, according to a note in the family records, was "Killed in a motorcycle accident."

We know that Nancy Ann, according to another note in the family history, was “Adopted by Los Angeles family.”

And we know that Frank remained in California and died at age 71 in San Luis Obispo. It is possible that  the Frank Starnes listed as a lodger in the 1940 Los Angeles census, employed as a sheet metal worker, is "our Frank." Maybe, maybe not.

Almost nothing more is known about Lester - the family evidently lost contact with him, or he with them. There is a possibility that he lived in California until his death in 1971, at 82 years of age. But there is another version of the story that's more interesting.

In the 1980's, Virgil, the brother that took off to Canada with his dad, got a tip that a man living in British Columbia near him might be the long-lost Lester. Virgil and Marien visited him, and while many aspects of the conversation suggested otherwise, the man denied being the brother. In spite of his denial, Virgil and Marien came away convinced that he was the brother. Their conclusion was that Lester had lied about his age when he signed up for the Canadian retirement system, and was afraid that if he 'fessed up about being the lost brother it might get him in trouble with the authorities.

So how did Lester and Mary's kids end up in an orphanage, and what actually became of Mary and  Lester? It likely will always be a small family mystery.