The starting point is this picture c. 1900:
A classic Gibson Girl, one might say. She died when I was little, and my memories of her are minimal. I've asked around but no one knows anything about her background, except that she was from Chicago. The rest of that part of the family are long-time New Englanders. That's where she raised her children and is buried. So what I wonder is: Where did she come from? And how did she and her husband meet?
Her maiden name was Doré. Two-syllable pronunciation. Mabel Doré. French? In Chicago?
This diary is about the beginnings of the search. Research 101 you could call it. There's more to the story, perhaps to follow in later posts. A series of small puzzles and riddles. Perhaps not all of which can be solved.
I started by locating her grave. That gave me birth and death dates.
With this information, I went to the local town hall. I explained I was looking for a death certificate and the clerk on duty rolled her eyes, but got over it right away when I had the exact date. She pulled out the record book, and in a flash I scribbled down the following new information:
- Born: May 25, 1875; Chicago, Illinois
- Father: Alfred Dore; Born: USA
- Mother: Adelaide Sargeant; Born: Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin
That's something to work with. On familysearch.org, I found a copy of her marriage license in the Cook County Marriages file, 1871-1920. She was 24, her husband was 27, and they were married the same day the license was issued, November 1, 1899 - a Wednesday. There were married by a clergyman of the P.E. Church, which might be Pentecost Episcopal. Otherwise, I've no idea. Unlike some states, no birth or parental information is included. Too bad. This is part of the mystery: Her husband lived his entire life back East. How did they meet?
CENSUS 1900
Like you can see on the TV show Who Do You Think You Are?, ancestry-dot-com has a lot of records available, even if the scan of the marriage license wasn't one of them. All of what follows, save maps and street views, are from that source.
Newlywed Mabel shows up twice in the 1900 Census, which was supposed to reflect where people were living on June 1, 1900. Once in Bridgeport, CT with her husband: they're boarders, not far from his parents who appear on the same census page. That household includes his sister, the sister's husband and 2-year-old son, his aunt and two young, female, immigrant servants. The newlyweds are boarding with a family with one child, another boarder and a servant.
Mabel shows up in Chicago in 1900, too, where her parents inexplicably listed Mabel as still living with them. This fits: both parents are named as on the death certificate. Married 1872-3 when they were both 22. Ada (Adelaide) reports having borne two children, with only one surviving. In 1900, Mabel's their only child, and might have grown up as same. I've yet to locate the 1880 Census records for either of her parents.
This record has Mabel born in May 1874, a year earlier than the gravestone and death certificate. And that her parents were wed about 1872, but not where. The other 1900 Census (CT) has Mabel born in April 1875. I guess the head of the boarding house would be more likely to get it wrong than her parents, but this isn't enough to be entirely confident of her birth date.
Mabel's mother Ada is listed as born in Wisconsin, so that's looking consistently solid. And here, Mabel's father Alfred is born in Canada, as are his parents. That might be more reliable than whomever provided the information to the Connecticut authorities after Mabel died. Perhaps the name Doré has a French Canadian origin? I wish I could decipher the entry for Occupation, but even without the numbers scrawled on top of that entry, it might be a challenge:
We get a date of immigration (1862) for Alfred, when he was 12 or 13, so presumably he did not come from Canada alone. The family in 1900 is reasonably prosperous, given that the house is owned (albeit mortgaged) and there's a live-in servant. And everyone is literate, even the servant woman. But perhaps not wildly prosperous. I checked Google maps, and the address listed in the Census - 47 N. Campbell Street - is a vacant lot enclosed by cyclone fence, as are many others in the neighborhood. And it's only a few blocks from a big rail yard. Nowadays, there's not much housing stock in that neighborhood. These are only a couple of blocks away today, so perhaps similar:
CITY DIRECTORY & VOTER REGISTRATION
The 1890 Census is missing. And I've not found the 1880 Census record when Mabel was 5 yet. Nor have I found Mabel's birth certificate. But I did find a Chicago City Directory from 1882, when Alfred was 33. This could be him:
In 1888, still a grocer (no business address listed this time), the residence is 3635 Prairie Avenue:
I found a voter roll for that same year (below), at the same address. Somewhat surprisingly, voter registration did not include a birth date. It does indicate residence at that precinct/address for 11/2 years and in Cook County for 9 years. That would be 1879, when Mabel was about 4 years old. Residence in the state of Illinois is 30 years, or 30-something, which puts Alfred in the country well before his 1862 immigration reported in the 1900 Census.
If that's correct, then Mabel was born in Illinois, but someplace other than Chicago.
Born in Canada, Albert's October 1888 voter registration indicates that he's a naturalized citizen. However, both the date and the location of his naturalization are "not known." But he was still eligible to vote. This might have something to do with it being Chicago, but it also might be that standards might have been more relaxed back then.
Two years later, in the 1890 city directory, he's not a grocer any more. Now he's a "commercial traveler", which might be another name for a salesman. And there's yet another residential address, 3136 S. Rhodes Ave, in a neighborhood since bulldozed to make way for highrise housing projects. In the 1910 Census, at age 60, Albert's occupation is still commercial traveler, and we learn drugs for the industry. Snake oil or proto-pharma? (Sometimes there's not a lot of difference.) Looking at the 1900 Census again, perhaps that scrawl says "Druggist", rather than anything to do with groceries.
1910 CENSUS
In the 1910 Census, Albert's birthplace is given as Canada (English), so perhaps my conjecture that the name Doré is of French-Canadian origin, might be wrong. Ada birthplace is again Wisconsin, although her father's birthplace is listed as Vermont, rather than England as in 1900. And there's no servants. The address, 3944 Indiana Ave. is gone now, with a park in its place. Their rental, occupied by two households, probably wasn't much different than these, still standing across the street:
PASSPORT APPLICATION
There's one more source about Mabel I found. She applied for a passport in the 1920s. It has the same birth date as the burial headstone and death certificate. The birthplace is one we've not seen mentioned before: Galesburg, Knox County, Illinois. That fits with the residences listed on Albert's 1888 voter registration, as it's in Illinois but not in Cook County. I found out with a little research that Illinois birth certificates were not kept by the counties prior to 1877, so finding an official 1875 birth certificate likely isn't an option. So the "birth certificate seen" stamped on the passport application might be the best available record. And finding birth and death records for Mabel's non-surviving sibling might be difficult, too.
SUMMARY
This is the best I can surmise from the various contradictory records so far:
Somehow, Albert from Canada and Adelaide from Wisconsin found each other, married, and gave birth to a daughter at Galesburg, Illinois. But they didn't stay there long. Perhaps they buried a child there. Perhaps because of the Long Depression following the Crash of 1873, they went bust and decided to take their chances in the big city. Such questions wait for more research to be answered. I've not found death notices or burial locations for either Albert or Adelaide; nor found either one in the 1920 Census when they would have been 70 years old.
I do know that they changed residence often, and that their only child apparently left them behind without looking back. More investigation into where they came from might shed a little more light on the story. I can't get my mind around what they reported in the 1900 Census: that Mabel still lived with them in Chicago. And they got her birth year wrong, too.
EXTRA SURPRISE
And then there's the University of Chicago. The undergraduates produced their first yearbook in 1895:
Education for women was still the exception rather than the rule, but the U of Chicago's charter mandated education for both sexes on equal terms from day one. (Actually, from its rebirth, as a previous all-male incarnation had gone under, and John D. Rockefeller, Marshall Fields and others generously endowed a new University of Chicago which continues to the present day.) Gender equality notwithstanding, student officeholders were all male but for the secretaries. And in the UofC Academic College, the secretary for Fall 1893 was one Mabel Dore. Might be the same person, even if no one ever mentioned she went to college. After all, they never mentioned anything else about her, either. At any rate, a page-by-page excursion through the yearbook shows no other mention, including in the full list of students enrolled in 1895. So maybe she dropped out. If so, it wasn't to get married, since that didn't come until until 5 years later in 1899. I've put in an inquiry to their alumni office. Perhaps something will come of that.