In Search of Alice Eleanor Andrews

One morning I received an email from the president of the Farmington Historical Society with two images in it and the question of whether I was related to the person whose inscription was in the book below.

Images from Jay Bombara

“Alice Eleanor Andrews

2525 Prairie Avenue

Chicago

Illinois

Farmington

Conn  1912 —”

Well, yes, but when you speak of a “shirttail cousin” this one is down there just inside the hem, just barely. She is my 8th cousin twice removed. To get to her, I have to go back 10 generations on my dad’s line and then come forward 8 generations on her father’s line. What does that even look like?

I’ll start. Me > Dad > Frederick Andrews (1887-1958) > Ernest John Andrews (1863-1939) > John Andrews (1831-1922) > Anson Seeley Andrews (1786-1854) > John Andrews (1752-1825) > John Andrews (1725-1815) > Robert Andrews (1693-1748) > Abraham Andrews (1648-1693) > John Andrews (1620-1682).

There, that’s ten generations back. Now let’s go forward until we get to Alice Eleanor Andrews.

John Andrews (1620-1682) > Benjamin Andrews (1659-1727) > Benjamin Andrews II (1683-1728) > Jonathan Andrews (1715-1797) > Jonathan Andrews (1756-1805) > Rev. Elisha Deming Andrews (1783-1852) > Dr. Edmund Andrews (1824-1904) > Dr. Edward Wyllys Andrews (1856-1927) > Alice Eleanor Andrews (1896-1967).

Like I said, the hem of the shirttail.

But who is Alice Eleanor Andrews and how did she end up inscribing a Farmington, Connecticut. book?

Born in Chicago on 6th October 1896, Alice Eleanor joined a family consisting of her parents, Dr. Edward Wyllys Andrews, a prominent surgeon, and Alice Scranton Davis, and Edmund, her two-year-old brother. Her father was about 40 when Eleanor was born, and her mother was 26. They had no more children.

Their family was fairly well off. The U.S. Federal Censuses of 1900, 1910, and 1920 show that they had several servants in the household.

With their family pedigree stretching back to some of the earlier colonists to come to America, perhaps family pride led them to send their only daughter to the exclusive Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut. Four generations of their family had lived and had children in Farmington; Dr. Andrews’s grandfather had been born nearby in Southington, Connecticut, where the family had moved when they left Farmington. This is a possible scenario for Alice Eleanor Andrews to have in her possession a book about Farmington, if she were actually in the town attending finishing school in 1912, when she would have turned 16 years old.

Known as Eleanor, she continued to live with her parents after completing her education. The 1920 U.S. Federal Census has no occupation listed for her; she was probably not expected to work.

Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) ·
Fri, Jan 19, 1923 · Page 21
Copyright © 2022 Newspapers.com.
All Rights Reserved.

In early 1923, she married Harry M. Zimmer, an insurance agent. They were close to the same age and both were born in Chicago. They lived pretty well too—besides their honeymoon cruise described in a newspaper article, in January 1929 they took a Caribbean cruise on a ship called Reliance, spending almost a month in San Juan, Puerto Rico, before returning to the New York port and then back to Chicago. They lived in the Lincoln Park area of Chicago, just north of her parents who were in the Gold Coast section of town, close to the lakeshore.

The 1930 U.S. Census finds them living at 2315 Lincoln Park West in Chicago. Harry still works as an insurance agent. But Harry died on the first of November 1937, and the records tell conflicting stories. One death index says that Eleanor is his wife. The other says that she is his wife, but the marital status is “Divorced.” The informant is not Eleanor; it is a “W.J. Masen.” Without access to the original record, this is a puzzle. Was all not well in the Zimmer household? An article in the Chicago Tribune says that he died of “infantile paralysis” or polio.

It would be great to get hold of the microfilm record of Harry’s death. Perhaps all was well in their household and it was the indexer who accidentally added “divorced” to the record.

Eleanor goes missing for at least five years, but she is in Chicago in 1943 in need of a birth certificate, and she files for a delayed registration of her birth. This probably is because she needed a Social Security card, so she must have been working to support herself. The birth registration lists only her maiden name, Alice Eleanor Andrews.

Seven years later, Eleanor surfaces in California in the spring of 1950, the wife of a man named John Henry Mason, living in Etna, Siskiyou County, California. This was way out in the mountainous country, close to the Oregon border, with a view of nearby Mt. Shasta. Her husband was working on a ranch. He had been born in Nova Scotia, Canada, and was six years younger than Eleanor, so she shaved some years off her age for the 1950 U.S. Federal Census. Her husband was a naturalized U.S. citizen and had been working for decades on ranches or farms, mostly in California. It would be interesting to know when and where they met, but at least we know that John was still single at the end of World War II, so they couldn’t have been married more than five years at the most.

They weren’t together very long. John died in 1956, but the index doesn’t say why and there is no image of a death record available. The local Masonic Lodge seems to have handled the entire funeral, and the newspaper write-up doesn’t even mention that John had a spouse, let alone name her. But Eleanor continued to live in the tiny town of Etna until her own death, on the 23rd April 1967.

She had no children, but she did have a nephew, Edward W. Andrews, her brother’s son. Perhaps it was he who sorted the possessions of his late aunt and sent the old green book to Farmington, Connecticut, where its inscription prompted a query, and the query a bit of a search, and the search, a few answers.

****************Update****************

My friend in Connecticut writes that he got the book off eBay. How unromantic an ending! Sometimes fiction sounds better.