Today, July 15th, is the anniversary of the day the sister of my Grandpa Carroll, Marilyn Carroll, died in 2006. As far as I know my grandpa Carroll never knew he had a sister. He always insisted had no interest in speaking to or about his biological father, Patrick Carroll, who abandoned his mother when he was a baby.
Patrick Carroll first married Bessie Cruise when he was 18 years old in Peoria Illinois in December of 1910. He was working as a railroad clerk at the time. In September of 1914 he enlisted in the army. He “married” Ruth Taylor, my great grandmother, in April of 1915 while home on leave. It wasn’t legal of course, as he was still married to Bessie legally. Ruth raised my grandpa as a single mother for a time, working as a wet nurse in Peoria. Patrick served in the army in Texas until March of 1919. According to a directory entry he and Ruth briefly lived together in Peoria before she married John Conard in 1919. John raised grandpa as his own from the age of 3.
By 1923 Patrick is back down in Texas where he was discharged from the army and he married for the third time, to Myrtle Lee O’Barr.
Myrtle’s father Thomas O’Bar died when she was only 3. Her mother Lillis and stepfather A Phillips raised her and her 3 half sisters in San Felipe, Austin County Texas. In 1913 she married William Vollbaum Jr. 9 months later their daughter Willie was born in Brazoria, Texas. Just 18 months later William died of typhoid fever at the age of 25. Myrtle returned to her stepfather’s house with her baby and in 1923 she met and married Patrick Carroll. 9 months later Marilyn Carroll was born in September of 1924 in Galveston, Texas.
Like all of Patrick’s marriages it didn’t last. By 1935 Myrtle remarried to Luther Bruner and Marilyn was raised in Luther’s house with his 3 daughters and one son from a previous marriage in Houston Texas.
At the age of just 17 Marilyn married Mitchel “Mike” Smiland- born Milevo Milan Smiljanic. They married in Cotton, Oklahoma, but lived in Texas. Mike was the son of Yugoslavia immigrants who came to Minnesota before he was born. Just after their marriage he joined the army and served until 1945. Their son Dwight was born that year. Mike received his Bachelor’s in Economics at the University of Minnesota. They moved to Oakland California where he did his graduate work at Berkely and Marilyn worked as a typist clerk while raising her son. Mike became a professor of Economics at California Institute of Tech. Marilyn had another son, Philip. Mike also taught at Colorado State University and then the University of Dallas. He began working for the US Treasury and then the State Department where he worked for USAID in Austin. In Austin Marilyn was an active member of the Travis County Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. She was also a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group that glorified the confederate cause. She had a small business providing genealogical information to clients in Texas and around the country.
After retiring from the federal government Mike worked for the Legislative Budget Board of the State of Texas in 1984. Mike died in 2003, Marilyn in 2006, both in Austin Texas.
