The older I get, the more I realize, I just love history, and as is evidenced by the Addie blogs, I have a special passion for the story of the women in my family.

My beloved mother died about 13 years ago, and not a day goes by that I don’t think about her. She was beautiful, funny, enchanting, quirky, honest, brilliant and loved very deeply. She did not suffer fools gladly, and she spoke her mind bluntly. I so admired that about her. She was a lot of fun in so many ways, and she also shared so many stories with me about her own mother (Flossie Appleby Brown).

Mom (Betty Brown Fuller) adored her mother but she didn’t have a very high opinion of her own father (Edward William Brown) because – according to Mom – he divorced Flossie when Mom was about 14 years old (about 1935), after 27 years of marriage and ran off to marry a younger woman named “Elsie.” Flossie would have been 50 years old at the time.

Flossie was devastated and never got over the divorce.  Compounding the difficulty was the fact that Edward would drop in at Flossie’s apartment regularly for a visit and a meal “with his three girls” (Flossie, Betty and her sister, Engie). Even after Engie and Betty left to serve in the WACS and WAVES, Edward continued to visit Flossie. Mom said these visits made it harder on Flossie, because each visit left her reeling; it was a reminder of how much she still loved him.

As Mom said, “Mom and my father clearly loved each other very much; they just couldn’t live together.”

Flossie’s health went downhill in the 1940s and she died in 1951, after a prolonged illness and institutionalization (in a primitive convalescent home).

These last few weeks, I’ve been working diligently (as in 8+ hours per day) to finish this manuscript on Penniman. It’s been slow going, and when I was ready for a respite, I went digging around on Ancestry.com for more information on Flossie and Edward William Brown. It was a welcome distraction and so very entertaining, but I hit a number of dead ends. That’s when it became more than a lovely distraction; it became a quest. I contacted fellow history buffs and researchers Milton Crum and Mark Hardin, and I also contacted a professional genealogist, Lori Jackson Black.

All of us came to the same conclusion: There wasn’t much to be found on Edward’s second marriage to Elsie.

And there wasn’t much to be found on the divorce of Flossie Appleby Brown and Edward William Brown. In fact, the 1940 Census shows that they were living in the same house as man and wife.

Unfortunately, I don’t know Elsie’s last name (her marriage to Edward Brown was her second marriage), and I don’t know where or when she died. I do know that my mother had a low opinion of Elsie and did her best to tolerate her step-mother when she came for a visit in 1959. And – thanks to Lori – I know that Flossie categorized herself as “the widow of E. W. Brown” in the city directories of the 1940s.

Did Edward ever legally divorce Flossie? Was he legally married to Elsie?

There are plenty of folks who will say, “what does it matter?” but it matters to me. It’s these very questions that make family history so utterly captivating. In learning about the trials and travails of our mothers and grandmothers, we can learn more about ourselves.

To visit Lori’s wonderful website, click here.

To read about Addie, click here.

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Thanks again to Mark Hardin, Milton Crum and Lori Jackson Black for their help!

To visit Lori’s wonderful website, click here.

To read about Addie, click here.

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