This week marks an interesting anniversary for my family. Some 110 years ago, around April 1st, 1915 my maternal grandfather’s parents were married. Well that’s the story anyway. We don’t have any proof of this. You see Patrick was already married. Let’s go back a bit, it’s an interesting story.
Patrick Henry Carroll was born 16 February 1892 in Minonk Illinois to Henry and Mary (Boland) Carroll, their firstborn was followed by two daughters, Ella and Joanna. At 8 the census shows the family in Minonk, but by the1910 census the family is in Peoria’s Ward 3 and 18 year old Patrick is working odd jobs while Henry is working on street railways. In December of 1910 Patrick married 16 year old Bessie B Cruise in Peoria. On the wedding record Patrick listed his employment as Railroad Clerk. In September of 1914 Patrick enlisted in the Army, though he didn’t report for service until March of 1917. It was during this interim that he apparently met Ruth Taylor.
Ruth Taylor was born on the 4th of July 1897 in Peoria. Her father, James Peter “JP” Taylor was a barber, her mother, Anna (Moeri) Taylor the daughter of immigrants from Switzerland and Germany. The couple’s firstborn son, Roy, died at 11 months, and then Ruth and her sister Margaret were born 14 months apart.
Within a year of Margaret’s birth JP remarried to Abbie Walsh. In the 1900 census the Taylor girls and their mother are living with Anna’s second husband, Frank Owen. Frank is listed as a teamster. Anna’s brother, Rudolph Moeri Jr is listed as a boarder and also a teamster.
Tragedy struck and Anna died in 1902 when Ruth was just 6 years old. Her cause of death is listed as sepsis after an operation. The Taylor girls were then shifted to her father’s house with his new wife, Abby. Abby buried her first son with JP shortly after his birth in 1903 and then in 1906 the couple welcomed a daughter, Hazel. Abby had a daughter, Ethel, from her previous marriage too. The 1910 census shows the blended family living in Peoria’s Ward 1 on Camballin Street, JP working as a barber to support his 3 girls and wife and Abby’s daughter Ethel working as a packer at a corn mill in Peoria, apparently already separated from her first husband at 19.
But the household was upended just three years later. In October of 1913 both JP and Abbie died, 6 days apart, JP of a heart condition and Abbie of Bright’s disease (kidney disease).
The Taylor girls, Ruth just 16 years old and Margaret 15, were orphaned. Abby and JP’s daughter Hazel was sent to live with Abby’s sister in Nameoki Township, near Granite City just northeast of St. Louis. It’s unknown if anyone took Ruth and Margaret in. They apparently stayed in Peoria, and that is where a teenaged Ruth came across Patrick Carroll in 1915.
Ruth and Patrick married, presumably because Ruth was pregnant with my grandfather who was born in December of 1915. The marriage wasn’t legal, which is likely why there’s no record of it. At some point Ruth discovered that Patrick was already legally married to Bessie. We know she discovered this before she delivered John Carroll because she listed a different man as the father of John on his birth certificate.
It wasn’t until my grandfather applied for social security after his retirement that he discovered this quirk in his paperwork. He needed an official copy of his birth certificate to file for benefits and was understandably shocked to see a stranger’s name listed as his father. He knew, of course, that Patrick had betrayed his mother. He had been unaware however of Ruth’s apparent act of revenge in listing a false name on the birth certificate.
We know the name is false because after Ruth remarried, Patrick moved on and had a daughter with another woman in Texas, Marilyn Carroll. I am a DNA match to one of her descendants, so there’s no doubt Patrick is John’s father as Ruth always told John he was. At one point Patrick tried to contact my grandfather, but he had no interest is speaking to his absentee biologic father.
But back to Ruth and Patrick. Ruth was a single mom in 1916 Peoria while Patrick served 2 years in the military, mostly in Texas. She worked as a wet nurse for a wealthy couple while also caring for her son, John. In March of 1919 Patrick was discharged from the Army. and the Peoria directory lists Patrick and Ruth living together on N Monroe Street. But if they were indeed back together after his discharge in 1919 it was short lived as Ruth married Henry Ervin Conard in November of 1919, moving to the farm of Ervin’s father in Deer Creek. Ruth and Ervin remained married until her death in 1958. Ervin raised John as his own. Ervin’s father William Elver identified John as his grandson on the 1920 census. The trials of Ruth’s sister Margaret will be told in another post on another day.
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