Deaths of a Family

George Thomas Heppenstall on right.

I recently received an email from someone asking if I had any information on George Thomas Heppenstall, the adult man in the photo above. It was a name I was familiar with only because of a ten year struggle to determine the knotted puzzle left behind by my Chicken/Baker ancestors. Before I knew about the name change from Chicken to Baker, I had gone down my family tree looking for clues and thus ran into the story of George Thomas Heppenstall.

After my third great grandfather Joseph Chicken/Baker, the person who did the name change for reasons unknown, his wife Frances Ann Bolton Baker married a man by the name of Thomas H. Heppenstall. Thomas's family were English immigrants much like the parents of Joseph and wife Frances and all three of them had spent time at one point in Colchester, Illinois. Thus I assume they were all acquainted with one another and so not entirely unreasonable for them to marry after Joseph died his untimely death. The marriage between Thomas Heppenstall and Frances Ann Bolton Baker Heppenstall would produce one child, Lena P. Heppenstall.

Back Row L-R: John Henry Baker, France Ellen Baker Osgood, Robert James Baker/Chicken and Charles Webster Baker/Chicken/Baker
Front Row L-R: Lena P. Heppenstall, Frances Ann Bolton Baker Heppenstall, Thomas H. Heppenstall and Mary Jane Baker Rodenberger

Lena P. Heppenstall can be seen above with all her half siblings. (A quick word of note to clarify some of the surnames. Robert James was born a Baker but changed his name back to Chicken. Charles Webster was also born a Baker, changed his name to Chicken and then back to Baker.) When Lena reached adulthood, she married Fred H. Grattan a moulder in the Iowa Dairy. Until this recent email, I hadn't done a lot of research on him but when I noticed he died at age 32, I decided to take a closer look and found the following article of him dropping dead of an apparent heart attack at a train station.

As the article mentions, it was traumatic for all, including their son George Thomas Heppenstall. For young George, another tragedy would follow the loss of his father. His mother would die just four years later after a long struggle with tuberculosis. 

Apparently, she may have married in those four years because of the surname of Wait though I can find no records for Mr. Wait. More on him in a moment. She is buried next to husband Fred and my 3rd great grandmother Frances Ann Bolton Baker Heppenstall in Greenwood Cemetery in Cedar Falls, Iowa and I have visited it a number of times. Frances's second husband is buried next to her and my 3rd great grandfather, and her first husband Joseph Chicken/Baker is buried about 50 yards to the east all by himself.

George Thomas Heppenstall would be adopted by my 3rd great grandmother and her second husband and raised up until adulthood. But I'm sure the tragedies in his life continued to haunt him and I'm told he may have been a bit bipolar. One morning on his way to start the car for a family outing, he shot himself in the head. He was only 27 and not much older than the picture at the head of this post.

George's wife mentioned in the article above would remarry and have another child which is the person who contacted me via email and started this whole trip down memory lane. One of the two sons mentioned above is starting their journey into their ancestry and was looking for more information. Unfortunately, George's wife is a product of a closed adoption so records are inaccessible. George's father Mr. Wait, well he remains a mystery. All I can provide is information on George's mother on back through the Chickens from England and I have done so. I have poked around a bit on Mr. Wait but haven't found a marriage record or really any mention of him. There are a few records for Waits in the vicinity but they are mostly married men. I suspect that the marriage was just a common law marriage or perhaps George was born out of wedlock which is why his surname is always listed as Heppenstall and not Wait. 

The son of George is/has taken some DNA tests so may someday learn the answers to these hypothesis and I hope that he will pass them onto me so I can mark this mystery buried in my family tree as solved.