It Can Be Complicated

26 April 1919

It is tough at times to remain impartial when researching one's ancestors. So when a newspaper search pulled up this article of one of my great grandfathers, it was initially a bit dismaying. Who wants an ancestor known for cruelty, even if the acts themselves were never defined? Before finding this, I knew my great grandfather had been married prior to marrying my great grandmother but didn't know any of the circumstances of why the first marriage didn't last. I only knew, the one child he had through his first marriage, grew up in my great grandfather's household so I guess I assumed an untimely death. That turned out to be correct but not in the manner I had been thinking. 

In preparation of writing up a set of research notes for this set of great grandparents, I decided to look a little deeper into first wife Iva's life and see what I could find. I was not disappointed and it certainly shows that things can be complicated.

3 Aug 1920

Shortly after the divorce was granted, my great grandfather's first wife Iva remarried and according to the articles I found, kept custody of her son Vernon. But after reading the above article, I can't help but wonder how much of the divorce was the fault of my great grandfather and how much was hers. She obviously wasn't very stable if she attempted to commit suicide. Apparently she lived through that though because the next article was even more shocking to me.

7 Jun 1925

It isn't the best quality to read but in essence, Iva got into an argument with her landlady over her son which ended up with punches being thrown and Iva falling and hitting her head on a bathtub. 

11 Jun 1925

Four days later, the above announcement made the newspaper indicating she indeed didn't survive the fight and blow to the head. Iva was only 28 years old at the time of her death. By then, my great grandfather had already remarried my great grandmother and they presumably remained happily married for the next 49 years until his death. So if my great grandfather did exhibit cruelty to Iva, he didn't exhibit to his second wife nor to my grandmother. He either changed or what I would like to believe, it was blown out of proportion in order for the divorce to be granted with custody of Vernon. Those sorts of things happen all the time. After Iva's death, son Vernon went to live with his father again and the family uprooted and moved back to northeast Missouri to be closer to Lee Roy's family who lived just across the state line in Iowa. 

23 Sep 1925

Curious as to the fate of Iva's supposed killer, I kept looking and turned up the above article which has definitely a different tone. In it, they used the word "alleged" when describing the assault and go on to say that the landlady was released essentially for lack of evidence. My reading of the tea leaves is that probably there was an altercation and perhaps some pushing involved but that Iva accidentally fell, hitting her head on the edge of the bathtub, and that caused her death. 

Just to add some faces to this story, above is a multigenerational photograph of this branch of my family tree with my great grandfather in the upper right and Vernon, the boy over which the argument that lead to the death of his mother in the lower right. In the lower left is my great great great grandfather Jesse and in the upper left is my great great grandfather David, both of whom I have yet to get to in my quest of writing research notes and in the process, understanding the lives of my ancestors a bit better.

Above is an unconfirmed picture of Iva Odell Luther, her grandfather Lucas Odell and an unnamed individual, perhaps James Newton, her second husband. I found it online on a genealogy sight and is the only picture of her that I can find.