Who is Aunt Grace?

Family histories are remarkable things.  They get reshaped over time, modified for comfort.  And since no two of us are the same, no two of us will have the same family history even if we have the same family.  It's been wonderful to talk with my brothers again after many years apart.  But I learned things... well, it'll probably be that we ALL learn some things.

Take, for instance, the identity of Aunt Grace.  This was a relative on my mother's side that I'd never heard of while growing up, never heard of until a week ago.  Aunt Grace was the woman who raised my mother and Uncle William after they'd been orphaned for the second time. (That's a long story — Mom's parents died within days of one another when she was 15 months old and William was a week old.  They got sent off to live with her mother's parents, who then died within a few months of one another when she was about 10.  I thought they'd gone into the foster-care system... but no, there's Aunt Grace.  Who knew?)  When my brothers were young, they used to get birthday cards and a Christmas box from Aunt Grace out in Pasadena.

But there's some problems here.

• First, my mother's mother's parents never lived in Muskegon.  They lived a hundred miles away in Berrien County.
• Second, my mother's mother's parents lived until my mom was nearly 40 years old.
• Third, my mother's father's obituary says that the grandchildren Gloria (my mom) and William lived at home with them. 

So she never did go off to live with her maternal family; her claims of rejection by the paternal family were maybe a little overstated.

So who's Aunt Grace?  One brother says it was Mom's mother's sister, truly her "aunt Grace."  But Mom's mother's obituary notes three surviving siblings (Martha, George and Rex, all of whom I'd known of).  No Grace.  And another brother says "She wasn't nobody.  She was a housekeeper who took care of the kids.  And she got a chance to do some education or something out in California, and she took them two kids with her."

The family dynamics are tangled at best.  A third brother says that my grandparents met because grandma was a maid in grandpa and great-grandparents' house, and that there was a huge scandal when blueblooded Mort married Melba the maid.  But they were married in 1916, never moved out of the family home, and didn't have their first kid (my mother) for six more years.  So was there an unnamed pregnancy/miscarriage/adoption that forced a shotgun wedding between Mort and Melba?  (I shouldn't use the term shotgun loosely with regards to Mort, given the events of years to come...)

There'll be a diagram later, and a test.  Suffice it to say that almost every 19th century male on my mom's side (the Averills) was named either Mortimer William or William Mortimer.  But I can now go back with some assurance through Mortimer to Frank to William to Daniel to Samuel to Paul Sr. to Ichabod to Thomas to William Jr. to William of Ipswitch, the guy who showed up in Massachusetts from Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, in 1635.  At least on one side.  The other side kind of falls apart, given that Childress was historically a surname given to anonymous orphans (from the Old English cilder-hus, or children's house).

I never thought of myself doing geneaology.  I'd rather play pool.  But this set of mysteries landed in my lap, and now the storyteller in me can't let them go.  I think we'll take our honeymoon in the Muskegon County archives of wedding and death records...