The Hyphen Family Lineage

Note: the family history of Bessie Arlema (Brown) Durr

Tracing the history of Bessie, her husbands, and her children has proven fairly difficult owing to gaps in the records I have been able to find, multiple divorces and remarriages, some potential out-of-wedlock births, and even some troubles with the law. The following summary is the most accurate I am able to determine at this time.

Bessie's birthdate has been difficult to accurately determine, due to variances in her reported ages on the records. I have been unable to find a birth record at this time, and most of the information about her age stems from the various US Census records listing her:

- 1900, age thirteen.
- 1910, age twenty-three.
- 1920, age thirty-one.
- 1930, age thirty-eight.

Her death record in 1934 reports her age as 41. Her burial listing on the FindaGrave.com website, along with the photo of her headstone, give her birth year as 1893. I believe her actual age at death to have been forty-seven, with her birth year likely to have been 1887.

In the 1900 US Census, she was counted in her parents' household in Lancaster Twp, Wells Cty, Indiana. A few years later, in 1903, she married Benjamin Durr (a first cousin of her brother-in-law Oliver Durr, married to Bessie's older sister Cora) in Wells Cty. The two of them were counted together in the 1910 and 1920 US Census records in Lancaster Twp, with their growing family counted with them.

Sometime between 1920 and 1930, some event or events occurred that scattered the family and may have led to some definite troubles. While details have not been ascertained as of yet, Bessie and Benjamin appear to have divorced sometime during that decade, and the family became somewhat troubled. Bessie appears to have remarried to Peter Louis Lamoreaux (b. 1891, d. 1976), son of Harlow and Elizabeth Lamoreaux (both natives of Canada); a user-submitted family tree on the FamilySearch.org website places Bessie and Peter's marriage in early 1930, though I have been unable to find a marriage record for them. In the 1930 US Census, the family are counted in various locations and circumstances:

- Bessie and Peter were living in Flint, Genesee Cty, Michigan, with Peter's son Wallace from his first marriage, and Bessie's daughter Helen Durr.
- Benjamin Durr was living with his younger sister Hazel (Durr) Turnpaugh, along with her husband and daughter; Benjamin gave his marital status as "divorced."
- Her son Leon had married in 1927 to Marjorie Bowen; I have been unable to locate him in 1930.
- Her daughter Leoma had married in 1928 to Clyde Crickmore, and was living in Burton, Genesee Cty, Michigan with her husband and infant son Cletus (and was pregnant with her daughter Phyllis).
- Her daughters Edith and Mary were inmates in the Indiana State Girls' School in Wayne Twp, Marion Cty, Indiana, and the Wells County Detention Home in Harrison Twp, Wells Cty, Indiana, respectively.
- Her son Max is unaccounted for in 1930.

Bessie died in July 1934 in Flint, and was buried in Gracelawn Cemetery in Flint. Peter remarried after her death, and he is buried between Bessie and his next wife.

Establishing what happened to the rest of the family after 1930 has been somewhat challenging, and there is not a complete picture for Benjamin Durr and their children as of yet.

- Benjamin, her first husband, appears to have relocated to Flint at some point after living with his younger sister in 1930, though I have not found a record of him in the 1940 US Census, nor a Michigan death record. He is listed as buried in the same cemetery as Bessie (Gracelawn Cemetery in Flint) on the FindaGrave.com website, though without a gravesite photo.

- Leon, their oldest son, married in 1927, but this is the last record I can find directly for him. His wife remarried in 1939, and noted on her marriage license that she was divorced in 1935, suggesting that her marriage to Leon was relatively short. I have not found any listing for him in the 1930 or 1940 US Census records, nor have I found any further marriage records, birth records for any children naming him as the father, death record, or burial record.

- Leoma, oldest daugher and second-born child, married Clyde Crickmore in 1928, and the two of them appear to have remained married until his death in 1970 (followed by hers in 1975). Leoma appears to have had two children and at least two grandchildren, and she is the most fully-documented of Bessie's children in my research.

- Daughter Helen was living with her mother, her step-father, and her step-brother in 1930, but after that I have not found any further confirmed record for her.

- Daughter Edith had her first son, Robert Huss, not long after she was released from the Indiana State Girls' School penitentiary, with a much-older widower named Walter Huss. I have not found a marriage record for them, and whatever relationship they had was short-lived, and Robert remained with his father afterwards. Edith married to Orville Aker in 1936, and the two of them had a son, David, before separating (with David remaining with his mother) before 1940 and divorcing by 1945. I have not found any confirmed record for Edith after 1940.

- Max, the youngest son, is unaccounted for in 1930, when he would have been in his early teens, but in 1940 was counted as living with his older sister Leoma as a young bachelor in his twenties. I have not found any confirmed record for him after 1940, though I will note there is a burial listing (without photograph or supplemental information) on the FindaGrave.com website for Cornelius Maxwell Durr (b. 1916, d. 1968) that may belong to Max. I have no information of any marriages or children he may have have.

- Mary, the youngest child of the family, after leaving the county detention home, appears to have married to a man with the surname of Joseph, and was living in Flint in 1940 with her older sister Edith and Edith's young son David Aker. I have not found any marriage record for Mary, nor any birth records naming her as a mother. I have also not found any confirmed death or burial records for her, though there is a burial listing on the FindaGrave.com website for "Mary Joseph Norris" (b. 1917, d. 1959) in Gracelawn Cemetery in Flint that may belong to her.