A Family Link Not Forgotten

I never knew much about my maternal grandfather. By the time I was born the relationship between my mother and her father had become estranged.

My mother’s parents were divorced when my mother was very young. She had one older sister that was about 12 years older. Unfortunately her older sister, Betty Lee, died from appendicitis when my mother was only about 6 months old. Her father moved out west to California from Branson, Missouri. My mother and her mother stayed behind in Branson. Her mother moved to Kansas City to work, and my mother went to live with her maternal grandparents.

I only remember seeing my maternal grandfather once when I was very little and my parents and my siblings and I lived in Monterey, California. My dad was training at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. I was only about 4 years old at this time. I remember my grandfather had a wife named Helen or maybe it was Ellen.

We moved back east when my father had finished his work. Our life moved on and I don’t really remember asking much about my grandfather. When I did ask my mother she always gave some vague response. When you look at my parent’s wedding pictures, you will see that it was my mother’s Uncle Gilbert Hughes that had walked her down the aisle and gave her away at her wedding.

I remember when I was in high school my mother was notified by her father’s wife that he had died. Now that I think about it, I am not even sure she referred to this woman as his wife, but she was a woman that had cared for her father in his old age. I just learned today that he lived to age 89. I don’t remember whether my mother even went to his funeral. I do know that she told the woman notifying her of his death that she wanted nothing from her father’s estate.

Life moved on and I had long accepted that I only had one grandfather, my father’s father. I did not really think about my second grandfather until my own mother became interested in her father’s family history. My mother was much older by this time, and I guess any hard feeling she had about her father had been set aside. She had a cousin interested in genealogy that was able to find out some information for her.

Soon before my mother died she made a big point of passing along all her family’s history to me. She knew I was her only child that might be interested in pursuing any of it. I have to tell you it took me many years before I really had the time or interest in looking through all the information that she had gathered.

Still there was not a lot of information about her father Ernest Eugene DeVall, so I began to do a little online searching. This was when I began to get a little upset. When I would locate him on an ancestry site, it would list his marriage to my mother’s mother. However, it would state that he only had one daughter, Betty Lee DeVall who had died when my mother was very young. I found only one daughter listed at more than one website. I began to think that someone had attempted to wipe my mother’s paternal lineage from the record books. She had been disavowed in some way.

Finally this evening, not only did I find online evidence of their connection, I also found a picture of my mother with her father. I had never seen this picture before this evening, however, my mother is clearly identifiable to me, and I have many pictures of her where the resemblance cannot be denied. She looks to be around the age of 13, give or take a year or two. The memorial listed under my grandfather does list my mother as his daughter. I cannot explain how this made me feel relieved. My mother was not being forgotten at his grave memorial. Thank you Sharon for providing the picture and the family history. I can begin to understand why my mother and her father became estranged, though I will never really know the spoken words or actions that created this family fracture.

The website is : https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/196971576/ernest-eugene-devall

I now know where my maternal grandfather is buried. I don’t know whether my mother ever visited his grave. I do know that after she had lived through her own divorce and broken trusts, her view of marriage and family connections certainly changed.

It is sad when family connections become disconnections, in need of reconnection somewhere down the line.