The Other Other Woman

Trying to locate the full name of someone accustomed to representing himself in public only by his initials can be frustrating. But it is possible—at least, if the person's initials do, in fact, stand for something.

I generally have all sorts of tricks up my sleeves for flushing out stubborn records—and believe me, I tried them, bouncing between databases at FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com. I tried uncovering death records by leaving blanks in the search terms for the individual, adding only surnames for both the father and mother. I tried assuming that there might have been a mistake in the indexing for that 1920 census with the Rowell family intact in one household—after all, the entry for dad as "O. C." was rather unclear.

In the hopes that perhaps—on the theory that fathers generally tend to name their sons after themselves—the father's name should actually have read "E. C.," I tried searching for just that father-son duo in the census records. No results.

Desperate, I turned to the various marriage record collections available online for the state of Florida. Perhaps the solemnity of marriage might inspire the formality of a full name there.

So I went looking for Miss Fannie Belle McClellan's marriage record to Mr. Whoever-he-was Rowell. I knew it had to be in there somewhere, between the 1910 census (when she was still living with her parents) and the 1920 census, when the couple and two sons were listed together in Sumter County.

It was there that I made not one, but two discoveries. Well, actually three.

First was the groom's full name. And yes, those initials for the dad should have been exactly what they were for the son: E. C. Apparently, they stood for Elisha Cleveland.

Yes. Use the initials.

The second discovery was that Fannie McClellan and E. C. Rowell were married in Fannie's hometown in Suwannee County on July 27, 1919. Since the sons in the 1920 census were born before that date, that meant this matrimonial ceremony was number two for the groom.

Finding Mr. Rowell's actual given name opened up quite a few other confirmations. For instance, his World War I draft registration card—where it showed that, if not handsome, at least he was tall and dark—revealed that he was born in Fair Bluff, South Carolina, on October 30, 1887. Curiously, for the 1917 document, he declared himself responsible for the care of "mother + two children," yet claimed he was single. I guess that "mother" was meant literally.

Knowing his name also led me to his whereabouts for the 1930 census, showing his residence still in Sumter County. With his two oldest boys—"Harris" turned out to be Horace—he also turned up in various Florida state census records.

But those records also turned up one other detail. Not only was there a first bride—mother of the oldest two sons was Edna Collier of Sumter County—but there was also a third bride, Flossie Urquhart, over twenty years his junior and mother of his youngest son, Jack.

Somewhere, Fannie and her two sons were sandwiched in the middle—at least from the point of the 1920 census until the unclear indication in the 1930 census that her husband might have remarried by 1924. While E. C. Rowell, senior, undoubtedly went on with his life—subsequently divorcing Flossie in 1932—I have yet to locate him in the 1940 census, nor Flossie and her son Jack, either. While there is a "Jackie" Rowell buried in the same cemetery as Elisha Cleveland Rowell, I haven't been able to determine whether that was one and the same as Jack.

Delving into these details so starkly exposed as we finger old governmental documents, it somehow sterilizes the turmoil through which people dragged their lives. Yet perhaps, having now seen all this, it is easier to understand why, with her two sons with her for all those years she played the "widow" back at her childhood home, not a word was passed down concerning how, exactly, things turned out the way they did for the woman known by generations as the family's story-teller, Aunt Fannie.


Above: Record of the Rowell household in the 1920 census courtesy of Ancestry.com and record of the Suwannee County marriage license courtesy of FamilySearch.org.

Slipped Through the Cracks

When finding someone of note while researching one's family history, it would supposedly be a discovery to put proudly on display. After all, there are countless genealogy enthusiasts out there, more than happy to trumpet their connection to Charlemagne. Or the royal family. Any royal family.

When I stumbled upon the details of just who E. C. Rowell was in Florida state history, of course I was interested. But I wasn't exactly sure he belonged to my family.

There were reasons for this. Not anything solid, like documentation, of course. That would be too straightforward. It was just a gut feeling—a hunch that something didn't seem to line up right, at least from what I could find at the time.

Even with E. C. Rowell's connection to state politics, and despite my mother's stories about our McClellan family's keen interest in politics, that wasn't enough to assure me of the connection. Yes, I did find my grandmother's Aunt Fannie—a McClellan who married a Rowell—conveniently listed in a Rowell household in the right Florida county (Sumter). But something just wasn't lining up right.

By the time of the 1920 census, Fannie McClellan—now Rowell—would have been thirty eight years of age. By contrast, the Fannie in the O. C. Rowell household was listed as being thirty. Granted, people do tend to hedge on their age when they feel the need; if she were older than her husband, perhaps in that time period, that would have provided enough incentive. But that wasn't my main concern.

Along with Fannie in the O. C. Rowell household were—as I've already mentioned—two boys: five year old E. C., and four year old "Harris." Together, they presented a believable package: the dad, being thirty two, his wife at thirty, with two young boys. What could possibly be the problem with that?

For every mention I had seen, in the past, of Fannie Rowell, she always did show up with two sons. The problem was that those two sons had vastly different names than the two in the 1920 Rowell household: Norman and Justin.

Norman, in fact, was born in 1920. And yet, he was missing from this 1920 census.

This is where data may have fallen in the proverbial cracks. Norman was born in June—in Sumter County, in fact—but it just so happened the 1920 census was enumerated in January, months before Norman would have made his premiere on the stage of life.

Rather than be a satisfactory explanation for why my information wasn't jibing with government records, it was only the start of signs of problems. If we trace the records forward through the decades, we can find Fannie and her two sons—Norman was joined by brother Justin in September, 1922—but they were never listed with the elusive Mr. Rowell. In fact, the 1930 census showed Fannie and those two boys—no sign of E. C. or "Harris"—back in Wellborn in her oldest brother's household; for the 1940 census, the same family grouping appeared, still in Wellborn, under the roof of Fannie's widowed mother, Emma McClellan.

In fact, in both censuses, Fannie declared herself to be a widow. If that was so, where were the two oldest boys—the four and five year old listed with Fannie in that 1920 census? Had they died also?

Taking a look at the McClellan family cemetery—actually, a sizeable place with nearly two hundred burials—while I can find Fannie buried there, along with Norman and Justin and each son's wife, there is no sign of the elusive Mr. Rowell, Fannie's husband. Nor those two boys from the 1920 census.

To verify—or at least disprove—my unfounded hunch, my usual tactic would be to follow the two older boys' documentation forward to a point where I could locate a death certificate. Or, barring that option, rewind history until I could find an earlier record of the intact family constellation.

The only problem, in this case, was that the boys showing in the 1920 Rowell household were too young to have been found in the previous census record. Neither would I have found Fannie in the Rowell household in the 1910 census—she was clearly listed as a single woman, still living in the home of her parents. Without access to a birth record for either E. C. (and who knows what those initials might have stood for) or his unfindable brother "Harris," I had no way to resolve that hunch.

Unless, that is, I could make the effort a presumptive close and look for a marriage record for "O. C." and someone else as his wife.

But to do that, I first needed to figure out just who "O. C." might be.

Wildwood and the Family Tree

There are threads of our own history embedded in the stories that will someday be told about our children. Likewise, when we seek the secrets of our ancestors' lives, we may find them revealed in the catalogs of their children's accomplishments.

I remember stories my mother told me of her childhood memories, succumbing to the drowsy summer twilight's heat, lapsing into fitful slumber punctuated by incessant droning of adult voices. It was always politics they were discussing—Florida politics. Why it never occurred to me that that scenario might have been generational in her family, I'm not sure.

Nevertheless, now pondering the family story of my maternal grandmother's Aunt Fannie, I'm not sure why my discoveries about the Rowell family took me by surprise. As I grasped at straws, attempting to trace the lines of the two boys in the Rowell household, the only viable hint came from the child with the least amount of promise provided in the clue of his name: E. C.

As it turned out, researching the "O. C." given in the 1920 census as Fannie's husband's name led me nowhere. Likewise, the "Harris B. Rowell" entry for the younger of the household's two boys. But turning to search for clues on "E. C." lit up the board for those Google hits. And yes, that clue of politics woven into our McClellan family history seemed to resonate once again.

The search didn't start out in a promising way. I usually make my first stop Wikipedia, where I can gain a rough overview of the subject I'm about to delve into. In the case of E. C. Rowell, however, there wasn't much to be found. He was included in a long listing of state politicians who had risen to the rank of Florida's Speaker of the House, but unlike the others, flush with lengthy bios and ornamented with photographs or portraits, his was a click that led only to what Wikipedia calls a "stub" of an article—an entry that needs a volunteer contributor to step up and fill in the blanks.

There were ample other resources with which to paint the portrait of who this E. C. Rowell might have been. With just a few quotes, the picture began taking shape.

Shortly after his death in 1992, the Orlando Sentinel provided the most straightforward—and least compelling—statement about just who E. C. Rowell was.

Rowell, a Democrat from Sumter County who served [in the Florida state legislature] from 1956 to 1970, was speaker in 1965. He later was chairman of the powerful Rules Committee. After leaving the Legislature, Rowell became a lobbyist for the trucking industry.

It was in commentary from other politicos that I gleaned the more succinct flavors of his personality. Attorney and Central Florida Ag News columnist Michael Martin pegged him as "one of the most feared former Speakers of the House" and reflected on his

cigar smoking, concise words, no bull...La Guardia of New York would have shivered.

Likewise, Florida political commentator, Bob McKnight, echoed the Democrat legislator's characterization as "cigar chewing," and noted that after his tenure—and even into the 1970s—

His legacy was still felt and his record was well established as a legislative leader during very turbulent times.

As sometimes happens with public figures, E. C. Rowell eventually rated a building named after him. Despite being lumped together with the "Pork Chop Gang," the former state legislator lived to see his name planted on the façade of a public library—not in Wildwood, home of the former Florida Speaker of the House, but in nearby Webster, where, according to one small-town tour book, the politician's family had moved, just after the 1920 census where I found Fannie's listing in the Rowell household.

Perhaps that is why, though his 1977 biography was penned by "award winning" Orlando Sentinel Star newspaperman Ormund Powers, it was actually published by the Board of Governors of the E. C. Rowell Public Library. Of the several quotes included on the dust jacket to the hardcover issue of E.C., Mr. Speaker, E.C. Rowell, none seems to capture his essence quite so well as the remark by Don Warne from All Florida News:

Rowell often shook hands while standing on someone's toes.

Despite all that can be found on E. C. Rowell—well, at least if you take the time to look—I still don't have my question answered: if E. C. was one of the two boys in the household of O. C. and Fannie Rowell, how, exactly, did the future Speaker of the House of the State of Florida relate to my grandmother's aunt? Though it certainly looked as if he would be Fannie's son, there was something hinting to me that that might not have been the case.

Above: Photograph of Florida Speaker of the House E. C. Rowell and his family—wife Mildred "Margie" Carlyon, daughters Diane and Barbara—on the opening day of the state legislature in 1965; courtesy of Florida Memory, the State Archives of Florida.       

   

Divertissement

With this article, consider yourself warned: genealogical research is rife with temptations and distractions. This is one of those opportunities to be snared by such divertissement.

In documenting the family tree of my maternal grandmother, I not only wanted to span the generations of my direct ancestors in the McClellan line, but I decided to round out the study with a listing of all of the siblings in each generation—and then, for DNA testing's sake, all their descendants as well.

Of those peopling the generation of my great grandfather, Rupert Charles McClellan, most have been faceless names. There was one, however, who stood out: my maternal grandmother's Aunt Fannie. Always mentioned as Fannie Rowell—not McClellan—she nonetheless never confused my child's mind into placing her in the wrong family constellation. Though I never met her, I knew, even in childhood, who she was.

Aunt Fannie was the one who always had the riveting family stories. Born in 1882, she seemed destined to someday make the century mark—though she fell five years shy of it at her passing in 1977. With a lifespan of that size, naturally she could have garnered some significant tales of the changing of the times—from a relatively isolated life in rural times of the nineteenth century, through such modern developments as the household use of electricity or the spread of the telephone, she witnessed the turn of the century, two world wars and all the upheaval and progress ensuing in their wake.

Yet it was her stories of lifetimes before her own that made their mark in my childhood memories, for Aunt Fannie must have been an informal repository of the sort that we now might dub the "Keeper of the Family Stuff." Passed down through her letters were harrowing tales of barely escaping Indian raids in the then-frontier settlements of what is now northern Florida.

Though I had heard these stories from my own mother, I see others had been party to her recountings of family history, for in their published McClellan genealogy, Kissin' Cousins, Joe and Bonney McClellan shared an excerpt from a distant cousin's recollections of these same stories.

Apparently, when Aunt Fannie's grandparents had first moved to Florida in 1827, it was indeed an incursion upon Native American territory and, despite what political machinations might have been transpiring in American and Spanish diplomacy of the era, the boots-on-the-ground take on the matter was one of trespassing. According to Aunt Fannie, "When they [the McClellans] moved on this place, it was a wild country, no near neighbors." Naturally, "aggressions" were bound to occur.

Indeed, they did. Despite it being by then only the early 1830s, the McClellan home had become a stagecoach stop. According to Aunt Fannie, the McClellans

built another new home as they took in transient people from the stage coach trading from Tallahassee to Jacksonville. They had plenty of stables built and horse lots to take care of the horses. They would come from Tallahassee then all the passengers would spend the night in Captain McClellan's home, then the stage would come from Jacksonville and passengers and horses would spend the night.

Yet in the midst of all this concourse, raids occurred. Aunt Fannie told of instances when, working in the fields, the settlers would be attacked, jump in their carts and hope the speed of their horses would save them. Just as we discovered when reading about the frontier settlers around Fort Wayne when researching my husband's Ijams and Jackson lines, settlers had a system in which families could retreat to the nearby fort for protection in such raids. In this case, it was to White Springs, where soldiers were stationed.

Much as the settlers in Indiana had also realized, the soldiers didn't always arrive on the scene of the raid in time. In one case, they got there only to find the raiders

gone to a home some miles away. The man's oldest son had gone to Jacksonville for supplies. The Indians scalped the balance of the family except the six month old baby, which they brained on a tree.

Hearing stories like these in my childhood made for wide-eyed wonder—to think how close our family was to having been wiped out entirely! It made no sense when I tried to contemplate how—why?—one family would be entirely gone, yet the destruction be halted just one house shy of where another family lived, unscathed. Those were the kinds of stories a child would never forget.

Yet, I never gave much thought as to the teller of those tales—who she was and why, as a McClellan daughter, she was always called Fannie Rowell, but was never mentioned in conjunction with a husband. There was never any offering of young widowhood or any other device which would make a satisfactory explanation.

Of course, once I was equipped to do genealogical research for myself, I began grasping the tools that would provide me the answer to that question. Still, the explanation came only gradually. It was easy to find Fannie in her parents' home in the 1900 census—one of the nine children raised by William and Emma McClellan in Wellborn, Florida. Even (thanks to subscription services such as Ancestry.com) when I was able to access the 1910 census, I could see Fannie Belle there—with the still-single woman's age adjusted to a demure twenty six—in her parents' household.

It wasn't until spurred on by my opportunity to visit Florida last month that I located any census entry under the surname by which I had always known her: Rowell. Even then, the listing was confusing. Though it finally included Fannie's husband—for once, he was actually in the same household as she—his name was indexed at both Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org as "O. C. Rowell."

If it hadn't been for searching via Fannie's own married name—and being truly grateful for having discovered the initial for her middle name, as there were many Fannie Rowells from which to choose—I wouldn't have found any possibilities at all. Still, did it have to lead to an answer which contained only those aggravating two initials?!

I did have an out, however: there were two sons listed in the household. One, happily, did not show up with that frustrating Southern device of the near-anonymous initials; he was indexed as Harris B. Rowell.

Try as I might with the name Harris B. Rowell, I found nothing helpful. That meant attempting to discover something with the other name. Fated once again to search for a name containing only initials instead of a given name, I tried my hand at googling the phrase, isolated by quote marks: "E. C. Rowell."

Almost immediately, I came up with this result from Find A Grave: a headstone upon which was engraved the epithet, "Mr. Speaker."

How dense I was. Because my daughter was a high school debater, that was my instant first thought: a fellow forensics enthusiast. Thankfully, I came to my senses and realized there might be something more to this story.

And there was. Continuing down the trail of multiple Google hits for the phrase, I was about to become educated on the political career of one influential Florida resident—as well as become ensnared in the genealogical puzzle of whose son belonged to whom.

Oh. There was one more discovery. I found out what "E. C." actually stood for. But that came only as the anti-climactic conclusion to the rest of the story.

Above: Photograph of E. C. Rowell, courtesy of Florida Memory, the State Archives of Florida.