The Hyphen Family Lineage

Note: Researching Julia Josephine Cayot and family

Piecing together some history for Julia and her immediate family has been difficult, owing mostly to the various phonetic misspellings of the surnames involved along with the persistent gaps in the records that I have encountered.

Julia appears to be among the oldest children of Pierre Caillot (later anglicized to Cayot) and Marie DuPont - possibly their oldest biological child, born in Ohio about ten months after their marriage. She would have been a young girl five to seven years old when the family relocated from Stark Cty, Ohio to the French Catholic community in Allen Cty, Indiana. I have not found any record of her birth, nor any later records that report her birth date; the birthdate and place I have for Julia comes from information from Annette Lynch, though I will note that her age and place of birth as reported in later census records seem to agree with this information.

The earliest record I can find for Julia is her marriage in 1876 to French-born Charles Huguenard in Allen Cty, Indiana, where her surname is spelled phonetically as "Kio." Following this is the 1880 US Census record for their household in Jefferson Twp, Allen Cty where the two of them are listed with their one-year-old son Edward Francis. At this point Julia was pregnant with their second child, William Charles, who was born in late November of that year, and in the summer of 1882, the family's third child and only daughter, Julia Ann, was born.

Sometime in the next few years, Julia's marriage to Charles ended, though whether in divorce or Charles' death I cannot confirm. There is a listing on the FindaGrave.com website for a Charles Huguenard in the Old Saint Louis Besancon Roman Catholic Cemetery in New Haven, Allen Cty, that may apply - this listing does not include a photo, but does include a birth year (1851) and death date (28 Sep 1886). This listing is linked to another listing for son William Charles Huguenard, also without a photo of the gravesite. If accurate, this information would suggest that Charles died when all three children were still young. (I will note that on his daughter Julia Ann's marriage record in 1905, Charles was reported as "dead.")

The next record I can find for Julia is then her remarriage in Allen Cty in 1892 to French-born John Coudret, where she was named Julie Huguenard. The couple was counted in the 1900 US Census living in Fort Wayne, Allen Cty, with John's children from his previous marriage (Edward and Mary) and Julia's two younger children (William and Julia Ann). It appears that Julia and John divorced within the next few months - there is a marriage record for John to Ellen Campbell in Allen Cty on 1 Oct 1900, less than four months after he was counted in the census as Julia's husband.

Like Julia's first husband, I have also not found much information about John. I have not found a listing for him in the 1910 US Census, but in the 1920 US Census there is a household including a French-born John Coudret (where he is listed as widowed) that appears to be headed by his son William Coudret (b. about 1877). I have not found further record of John, including any confirmation of vital dates or a burial location. I have also not found any vital dates for his third wife, Ellen, to confirm that their marriage ended in her death, and I have no information on his first wife at all.

Two of Julia's children had married by the time of the 1910 US Census - Julia Ann (as noted previously) in 1905, and William in 1908 - and at that next census it appears Julia was counted in William's household (with his wife Mary) in Fort Wayne, where she was listerd as divorced, aged sixty-two, and mistakenly reported as French-born. This is the last record I have found for Julia, so I cannot say when she may have died and where she might be buried. It is possible (but seems unlikely) that she may have married for a third time before her death, but I have not found any further marriage records that suggest this.

Of her three children, I can account for the following records and events:

- Edward Francis, the oldest son, was not living with his mother and siblings in 1900; after he was first counted in the 1880 US Census as a toddler, the next record I have found for him is his listing as a boarder in John Menzler's household in the 1910 US Census in Fort Wayne. After that came his WWI draft registration card in September of 1918, which listed his younger brother (William) as his nearest relative. A few months later, in early 1919, Edward married to Helen (McMahon) Jackson, and was counted in the 1920 US Census living with her and her adolescent children in Aboite Twp, Allen Cty. Ten years later, that same household included just Edward and Helen in the census listing (again in Aboite Twp). I have not found a listing for either of them in the 1940 US Census, but in 1942, Edward completed his WWII draft registration card, giving his closest relative as his wife Helen and their residence as rural Fort Wayne. On both draft cards and the 1920 and 1930 US Census forms, he indicated that he was a farmer. I have not found a confirmed death date or burial location for Edward, though I will note that his wife died in Wyoming in 1959, where she had moved in 1955 to live with her son in her later years. Her obituary makes no mention of Edward at all, so I cannot say whether the two of them remained married until either his death or hers.

- William Charles, the middle child, married to Mary Ann Cook in 1908, and the two of them lived in Fort Wayne for the remainder of William's life. The two of them were counted together first in the 1910 US Census (as noted above, living with William's mother Julia) and then again in 1920 and 1930. William reported his occupation on the census forms as various metal-working trades (tinner, sheet metal worker, and metal shop proprietor). William died in 1939, and Mary was counted the following year as a boarder in the Frank Laurent household in Fort Wayne. Her death followed over twenty years later in 1961, and both William and Mary are buried in Catholic Cemetery in Fort Wayne. I have found no indication that the couple had any children, as none appear with them in the census records and I have not found any birth or marriage records naming them as parents. I have also not found specific death dates for either of them.

- Julia Ann, the youngest child and only daughter, was the first of the siblings to wed when she married Charles Sylvester Bowman in Allen Cty in July of 1905. I have not found a confirmed listing for the couple in the 1910 US Census (though there is a listing indexed as "Chas and Julia A Bowen" in Bremen Twp, Cook Cty, Illinois that may be them). In the spring of 1918 Julia remarried (with her name given as Julia Ann Huguenard), and noted on the license application that she had divorced in the spring of 1916. Her second marriage was to Herman Aaron Durnell, a widower over thirty years her senior whose wife had died five years earlier. Julia and Herman were counted in the 1920 and 1930 US Censuses, first in Fort Wayne and then in Orange Twp, Noble Cty, Indiana. Herman died in 1932, and was buried with his first wife Jennie in Lindenwood Cemetery in Fort Wayne. Julia Ann continued to live in Orange Twp, and was counted there living along in the 1940 US Census prior to her death in 1943. Like her brother William, Julia was buried in Catholic Cemetery in Fort Wayne. I have found no indication that she had children from either of her marriages.

By all accounts and records I have been able to find thus far, it appears that Julia Josephine Cayot's line ended with her three children; I am uncertain which one of the family might have been the last living member, though it seems likely that it was either Julia Ann (who died in 1943) or Edward (who was last recorded in 1942, with his WWII draft registration card). Julia Josephine appears to have had no biological grandchildren at all.