Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Did Any of Your Ancestors Suffer the Loss of a Parent at a Young Age?

I have a feeling it would be difficult to find someone who did not fall into the category of tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver.

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.

1.  Do you have ancestors who suffered the loss of one or both parents early in their lives?  Did the surviving parent remarry soon after one parent died?  Was a guardian appointed for your ancestor to protect physical or legal interests?

2.  Tell us about one or two of your "orphaned" ancestors and how this affected their lives.

3.  Share a link to your blog post, or your Facebook Status post, on this post.

I can immediately think of a few ancestors who had a parent die when they were young.  My great-grandmother Jane Dunstan was just shy of 2 1/2 years old when her father died (she was the youngest child).  My great-grandfather Joyne Gorodetsky was about 16 when his mother died (he was the oldest child).  And my paternal grandfather, Bertram Lynn Sellers, was only 15 when his father died.

I think I'll focus on my grandfather, because some parts of that story are particularly interesting.

Let's start at the beginning.  My great-grandmother Laura May Armstrong gave birth to my grandfather on April 6, 1903 without the benefit of a husband.  Even if she had been inclined to name the father (and I suspect she wouldn't have), the registration form actually had instructions that if the birth was out of wedlock, that was what was supposed to be indicated on the line asking for the father's name.  So the socially disapproving "OW" is all that appears there.

Notwithstanding that she brought a 7-month-old son to the relationship, Laura was able to find a husband, and she and Cornelius Elmer Sellers were married on November 7, 1903.  I showed with Y-DNA testing that Elmer was not the biological father of my grandfather, but he was the only father Grampa ever knew.

On January 22, 1916, a little shy of being 13 years old, my grandfather and three other boys were playing in a dirt mound in town.  They had dug out a cave in the mound and, of course, had not reinforced it, because they didn't know better.  On that January day, the cave collapsed on them.  Two of the boys did not survive.  My grandfather did but severely broke his right ankle, which soon after necessitated the amputation of his leg at the knee.

The family had already had its share of sadness.  Elmer and Laura had nine children together, three of whom are confirmed to have died young.  Cornelius Howard Sellers was born about October 1904 and died September 3, 1906.  Harry J. Sellers was born January 9, 1913 and died June 6, 1913.  Birdsall Sellers was born April 16, 1916 and died May 26, 1916, right after my grandfather's accident.  For three more children — Amelia, born after 1904; Elmer F., born January 2, 1912; and Herman J., born June 2, 1915 — I have not found death dates, but I haven't yet found them living after 1915.

And on September 14, 1918, Elmer died of endocarditis.  The family had never had much money (in fact, Elmer's mother was the person who paid his funeral expenses), so this must have put a horrible financial strain on everyone.  There was no estate that needed to be guarded for the children's sakes.

In 1920, Laura and her four surviving children, which included my grandfather, were enumerated in the census as living with her granduncle and grandaunt, Amos and Rebecca Lippincott.  Neither Laura nor any of the children had an occupation listed, and Amos was working as a laborer.  They could not have been doing well financially.

Laura did not remarry at that time.  She did, however, give birth to another child.  Yes, less than three years after her husband had died, on March 6, 1921, my great-grandmother had a daughter, Bertolet Grace Sellers.  And did not state the name of the father for the birth certificate (thanks, Laura!).  We'll probably never know who Bertolet's father was, because she died January 11, 1927, and Laura did not provide the father's name for the death certificate either.

Laura eventually did remarry.  On August 31, 1929, she and John Stephen Ireland were married, and he is enumerated with her in the 1930 census.  The story I heard is that someone told Laura that she really should find a husband to support her, and that's why she married John.  The rest of the story was that soon after having married him she figured out that he wasn't worth the effort and got rid of him.  Apparently they didn't divorce, because when John died in 1949, she was listed as his widow in the obituary.  On the other hand, I don't know who write the obituary.

Before Laura's second marriage, however, my grandfather had moved out.  He married Elizabeth Leatherberry Sundermier on December 18, 1923.  They had three children, but after the Great Depression began, Grampa had moved back in with his mother, and the four family members (the first child died as an infant) were enumerated in four different places in the 1930 census.

I don't know how his father dying so young affected my grandfather, as he never talked about it.  I learned a little about his life during the Depression because I interviewed him for a high school civics class, but he didn't volunteer other information.  I didn't learn details about Elmer until after my grandfather had died.

I do know that losing a leg at age 12 didn't slow Grampa down.  He fathered five children with three different women, only two of whom he was married to (he and my grandmother were never married), and he was married to his third wife before I was born.  He drove a stick shift and worked through the Civil Service for the Army and Air Force as a mechanical and civil engineer.  He worked hard his entire life.

My grandfather was certainly an interesting character.  I suspect he got that from his mother.

Nanny Ireland and her adult children
Back row:  George Moore (Dickie) Sellers, Bertram Lynn Sellers, Sr.
Front row:  Catherine Marie Sellers, Laura May (Armstrong) Sellers Ireland, Nellie Elizabeth (Betty) Sellers