The Hyphen Family Lineage

Note: The marital and family history of Earle Walter Stults

Despite being the youngest son, Earle seems to have left his parents home quite a bit before his older brother Joseph, and possibly even prior to the marriage of his older sister Estella; he's absent from the family's household in 1920. I can't confirm that this record applies to him, but there is an "Earl Stultz" resident as an eighteen-year-old boarder in the household of May Musgrove in Indianapolis, Marion Cty, Indiana in the 1920 US Census.

Earle then married in spring of 1924 to Neta Berniece Decker in Allen Cty, Indiana. Interestingly, their marriage record is the only reference I can find that gives her birth year as 1905, while her later marriage record gives her birth year as 1908 (with the same date) and all the US Census records I can find for her report her age as ending in "1," suggesting her birth year was almost certainly 1908. This would indicate that she lied about her age on her first marriage license, making her fifteen when she married the twenty-one-year-old Earle.

Earle and Neta remained married for about eight years - Earle's next marriage license gives his divorce date simply as 1930, while Neta actually specified the date of 12 Jun 1932 on her next marriage license. Earle and Netta had two sons that I can confirm. The two boys (Marion and Ira) were living with Neta (with her marital status given as divorced) in the 1940 US Census. Five years later and using the name Neta Berniece Decker Stults, Neta remarried to Joseph F. Smith, himself twice divorced. I can find no further records for Neta after her second marriage, so I'm uncertain as to whether she and Joseph remained married. I also do not have information on her potential death date and burial location.

Earle's second marriage occurred in 1935 to the eighteen-year-old Mearle Margaret Corville; he was thirty-two. The two of them had at least two sons, though one (Glen Wayne) was an infant death of unspecified age. The other son, Lyle Eugene, presumably lived with his mother Mearle after her divorce from Earle in June of 1941. Mearle remarried to the widower Gerald Marshall Aspy in early 1943. Gerald died in 1974, and his headstone bears Mearle's name and birth date, though the death date engraving is incomplete for her - suggesting that they two of them remained married until his death. I've found no further records for Mearle, including any further marriage records or a death record. While unlikely, she may still be alive as of the time of this writing, though she would be nearly a century old. It's also possible that she remarried in the years following Gerald's death, and perhaps is buried elsewhere under a different surname.

Earle himself appears to have died just a few years after his second divorce at the age of forty in 1944. I haven't found a third marriage record for him at this point, so I think he died prior to remarrying again. At the time of his death, I believe he had three surviving sons - two from his first marriage, and one from his second. Of those three, I've found very limited information:

- Marion Berdette Stults enlisted in the Marines during WWII, and afterwards served in the Army Airborne during the Korean War. He was flown on an Honor Flight in September 2012 to commemorate his service, and had been living in Arizona for some years. I haven't found information to confirm but I believe he did marry and have at least one child. Marion died in 2013, and is buried in Southern Arizona Veterans Memorial Cemetery.

- Ira W. Stults also served in the military during WWII, but after his enlistment the next record I can find for him is a death record in Fulton Cty, Georgia in 1989. I have not found confirmed information for a marriage or children born to him, but some unconfirmed information I've found suggests he married in 1950 and had three children while he was a career military man.

- The only record I can find for Lyle Eugene Stults after the 1940 US Census listing for his parents' household are divorce records from California in the mid-1970s. I have not found a death record for him, nor any marriage records that might have preceded the divorce records. I have no information on whether he had any children.

Both of Earle's ex-wives remarried young enough that they may well have had additional children from their later marriages, but I have not found information to confirm or deny this speculation at this point. It's also possible that Earle had other children beyond the three sons I've discovered, but there doesn't seem to be any indication of that at this point.