Finding Lillie Mae Dukeshier

The first time I see her is when she married my great-grandfather on 28 Jan 1869:
http://joedeshon.smugmug.com/photos/370163116_vLJsp-X3.jpg

Notice that he is listed as O. N. Deshon (or maybe Dishon). It is common to see our last name misspelled Dishon, which is wrong. There is some disagreement in our family how it actually should be spelled, though. Most people spell it with an upper-case "S". Some put a space in it ("De Shon") and some spell it CamelCased ("DeShon"). That's a whole different topic. I spell it "DeShon".

I know his name was Oliver. I have never been able to discover his middle name, other than the initial "N".

Notice that her name is spelled "Lillie M. Dukeshier". (She'll be "Mae" later.)

Also notice that she was only 17, so her father had to sign for her. I can't tell if his first name is supposed to be "Wentworth" or "Wintworth" or "Wintsworth". I've seen it just about every way. I stick with "Wentworth".

That was apparently not a happy marriage. I know that my grandfather, William Roy DeShon, was born on 22 Dec 1890. For many years, I thought he was an only child. Until recently, I never knew what happened to him.

The epiphany of my research happened when I stumbled on this census record:
http://joedeshon.smugmug.com/photos/370163537_mWVQM-X3.jpg

Oh my God. It showed my grandfather as a 9 year old boy living in Joplin, Missouri in 1900. I had no idea!

His name had been misspelled as Wm R "Dishon". That's why it never showed up in any indexes until I dug deeper and deeper. There he was, listed as a step-son of David Bigley. I had never heard of him. The dates for "Lillie M" line up. And it shows her being born in Iowa and her father being born in Canada. I knew I had found the right person.

But who was "Ralph" DeShon? Apparently, he was a second son of Oliver and Lille Mae. And this is the only record I have of him. I can only guess that he died before the 1910 census.

That led me to this marriage license for David and Lillie Mae on 25 Mar 1897 in Steelville, Missouri:
http://joedeshon.smugmug.com/photos/370176563_KLTh7-X3.jpg

My guess is that Oliver and Lillie Mae split up right around the time Ralph was born (1895). She moved to Steelville to be with her father. Somehow, she hooked up with David, who already had some children from a previous marriage.

Armed with that data, I started writing to some people in the Bigley family. (I found them to be much more cooperative than the DeShons.) Several of them remembered "Grandma Mae". Nobody remembered little Ralph DeShon, which leads me to believe he died soon after 1900.

Here's the family in the 1910 census:
http://joedeshon.smugmug.com/photos/370162436_oiJh6-X3.jpg

My grandfather, William Roy DeShon has moved out. Knowing him, he probably moved out the day after his high school graduation. Ralph has disappeared. (He would have been about 15.) It says that "May" (as she is listed here) has given birth to 9 children and 6 of them are still alive. One of the missing ones is Ralph. I haven't been able to account for the others. A few more children have been added.

Addie Crow is a sister-in-law living with them. So is a boarder, C. H. Nieswinger. I found out from other family members that Addie was a Lillie Mae's sister. But she was known to all the family as Addie Nieswinger. So she must have already married a "Crow" who had died (she is listed as a widow) and then married this guy right after the 1910 census.

David died in 1915. The Bigley family tells me that Mae and her sister Addie moved to Kansas City to live the rest of their years, although I have never found any records of them living together.

I haven't found them in the 1920 census. But I know she's living in Kansas City by 1923, because that's when I found this:
http://joedeshon.smugmug.com/photos/374224195_N8unB-X3.jpg

It's a marriage license that she signed for her under-age daughter. She lists her address as 716 W. 10th Street in Kansas City. She signed it "Mae Bigley".

I found her in the 1930 census in Kansas City:
http://joedeshon.smugmug.com/photos/370162562_CVM6A-X3.jpg

She's apparently living in a boarding house. They spell it "May" here. And this time she says her father is Canada-French (not English). And it also says her mother is Canada-French, which isn't correct. But perhaps that can be excused because of all the people in the boarding house.

And I already sent you her death certificate. Here it is again:
http://joedeshon.smugmug.com/photos/370162970_WV6KU-X3.jpg

To summarize all this, I have attached a descendant chart that I just dumped from Family Tree Maker. There's still more work to do on it, but that's what I have so far.

I can send you a gedcom file, if you'd like that. (I am a computer geek, after all.)

As far as I know, I'm the first person to ever trace Lillie Mae to this degree. Pieces of this exist in other place, but this is the only place you can get this much. (I doubt that she wanted to be traced!)