Isabelle's Life

Having found Isabelle in the 1910 census, and not seeing her in the same household in 1920, I began to search for her and her family.

The place to begin was Norwalk. The family had been centered on Norwalk for 40 years if not longer. Norwalk is a small city in Fairfield County next to Darien. Fairfield County was homebase of virtually every ancestor in the Adams lineage going back to before 1800, the exception being the Fagans.

The 1920 US census record did not show a John Gilbert family, nor an Isabelle Gilbert, living anywhere in Fairfield County.

I decided to look for one of the daughters. Marion Gilbert is a unique enough name so that I could go through the candidates presented by ancestry.com one by one to see if they offered any clues.

What caught my eye right away was a Marion F Gilbert living in New Haven. New Haven County is the next one up the coast from Fairfield County, and New Haven itself is about half an hour from Norwalk on today's highways. But I didn't know of any reason for a New Haven residence, especially since this Marion Gilbert was living as a niece in the home of someone named John Fenner.

It seemed unlikely, but I took a look anyway. It turned out that John 'Fenner', as the indexer interpreted the census record, was actually John Tanner.

The Tanner name couldn't be a coincidence! Isabelle was born a Tanner, and now someone with her daughter's name was living with a John Tanner.

This Marion F Gilbert was 11 years old, just the right age. The rest of the household consisted of John's wife Clara, his in-laws (the Nicholses), and another niece Sarah E Gilbert, age 8.

No John Gilbert, no Isabelle, no Ida Gilbert...

Where was the rest of the family?

I looked for John Gilbert again in Fairfield County. I found one living in Ridgefield, an inland Fairfield County town north of Stamford, a place where I lived for 11 weeks when I was 6. This John was living as a boarder with a family. He was the right age, and he was listed as a widower.

I think this was Isabelle's husband John, and I think he was indeed a widower - that she had died.

I think that Sarah was her daughter, and that possibly she had died at the time of Sarah's birth.

John Tanner and Clara appear not to have had any children of their own. I tried to find John in earlier censuses, but have not been successful. If Isabelle died it would not have been unreasonable for a family member to take her children.

Two mysteries remain: who is John, and where was Isabelle's oldest daughter, Ida?

As for John Tanner, I believe he is an older brother of Ida May and Isabelle Tanner.

Going back to the 1900 census, I noticed that Mary Jane was listed as having had 7 children. This is something I had missed entirely before. It also said that 4 of her children were currently living.

We knew not only of Ida, and now Isabelle, but Mary Jane's son Charles Ernest, my dad's Uncle Ernie. These were born in 1883 (Ernie), 1886 (Ida May), and 1888 (Isabelle). John's age listed in the 1920 census indicates he was born in 1881, so he could have been an older son.

I have no proof that he was, but a further indication is that in the 1920 census he states that his mother was born in CT and his father in England. That is true for the other three of Mary Jane's children: their father Charles Tanner was born in Calne, Wiltshire, England.

(The three children who had died could have been from Mary Jane's supposed first marriage.)

In looking at Charles Tanner's record, we see that he had been married for 19 years at the time of the 1900 census, or in other words late 1880 or early 1881, which is compatible w/ having the four children of the ages listed.

You may recall that Mary Jane listed herself as a widow in 1900, but she wasn't: she and Charles were separated and Charles was living in Wilton, a town carved out of the northern part of Norwalk, with Charles Ernest, now 17, at the time of the 1900 census.

From all this I conclude that it is most likely that John Tanner was the eldest of the family that included Isabelle and Ida May.

So what about Ida Gilbert?

I didn't find her until I searched for her independently. She was actually hiding right under my nose, enumerated in the 1920 census with her grandmother Mary Jane, her aunt Ida May Adams, her uncle Chris Adams, and her cousin Christopher A Adams. In other words, she grew up with my father. He was her first cousin, she was just somewhat older, and in fact I believe I have a photograph of her:

In my father's trunk is a photo of an old lady sitting in a chair, with my grandmother Ida standing protectively behind her. Certainly this old lady is Mary Jane. To the left in the photo is my father, about age 10. He is standing next to a girl who looks somewhat like him and was of a similar age. I had asked my mother who that was, though unfortunately by the time I found the photo she was already blind. I described the scene but she had no idea. She just said that my grandmother had taken a lot of people in and this could be one of them.

In fact it was. My grandmother and great grandmother were raising Ida Gilbert. My father grew up with his cousin but never mentioned her in later talks about family.

My guess is that this photo is a birthday picture of Mary Jane. I need to get the photo out to check how old my father might have been to see if I can pin down which birthday.

So what happened to Isabelle's girls? I lose track of Marion F and Sarah E Gilbert. I would need a marriage record, and haven't found one so far.

But as usual, that big multi-generational house they all been living in in Norwalk furnished another clue: In the 1930 census we find Ida, Christopher, Ida's new husband Ben Porter (Chris Adams, her husband - known to us better at Christopher J - had been killed in 1921 in an automobile accident), and some boarders: Ida Champagne and her husband Edward. I had little doubt this was Ida Gilbert.

Ida and Ed were 29 and 23 at the time of the census, and had been married for 3 years. At this point they had no children, and the 1940 census is not yet available (not till 2010).

But in checking the Social Security Index records, I find that Edward Champagne, born July 4 1900, died in August 1977 (the same month and year as my father), and Ida Champagne, his wife, born August 5 1906 in CT, died May 9, 1994. Both died in Covina CA. In the Social Security record, Ida's mother's maiden name is given as Tanner, and her father as Gilbert.

That's the end of the trail for now. It means that while we were here in Tucson my father's first cousin, who knew him as a child and my grandmother and great grandmother as her caretakers, lived a day's drive away in CA. How I would have loved to meet her! All I can do now is to make sure she gets sealed to her parents and sisters, which I know is something Mary Jane wants for Isabelle.