What a Surprise This Was! (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 6)

One of the first things that beginning genealogists are told is to not pursue their family’s history if they aren’t ready for disturbing surprises. I’ve actually put off the writing and posting of Week 6’s ‘Surprise’ prompt because I knew that it had to be one particular surprise that I would write about, and it is still very emotional for me.

I know that most family historians usually find a number of surprises when researching ancestors from their past; sometimes from their distant past and sometimes not-so-distant. I’ve found many of my own.

However, the biggest surprise that I found while researching my family was the absolutely huge one that involved my own Mother. Yes, that’s right…my Mother.

My Mom and I were very close. I thought I knew everything about her – where she was born, how she grew up, the jobs she had, her marriage to my Dad that sadly ended in divorce. Yes, I knew everything. Didn’t I have her photo albums? You know, the ones that captured much of her childhood and youth? Didn’t I have photos of her with her many friends and even all of her boyfriends?

Well, it turns out that I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did. I actually wrote about this back in 2014. (Please be sure to read that post if you can to get the full story.) I didn’t know about this particular thing until the 1940 Census came out, and it took me that long for it to sink in and actually write about or even talk about it.

My Mother got married at age fifteen – and not to my Dad! This information was given out by my step-grandfather in the 1940 census. She was one of those two people who were highlighted at the bottom of the page for her area. Naturally.

Since the writing of that post, I’ve not been able to find out much. But I did discover that the person to whom I thought she would have married was not the person she did marry.

I was able to find out the last name of the man she married on the Social Security Application on Ancestry.com under “Notes:”

Notes:

Nov 1935: Name listed as EVELYN WALLACE PECK; Oct 1945: Name listed as EVELYNE W LOVE

I suppose that means that she married sometime between October of 1935 and November of the same year. I still haven’t found his first name, and there is not one single photo of anyone named PECK in any of my Mother’s photo albums. It was a secret she obviously never wanted known. She got rid of his pictures and any mention of him.

She almost got away with it.

My Mother - around age 15

@2019 Copyright by Carla Love Maitland