Leafy Dell Park: 52 Ancestors Week Three Prompt "Unusual Name"

Leafy Dell Park: 1878-1958

            I can’t claim a close relationship with this ancestor: she’s my second cousin three times removed. But I was charmed by her name, so happily added her to my family tree.

            The Park branch of the family had some lovely, atypical names such as Huldah, Rosolvo, Lorenzo and Hiram, so I suppose the choice of the name “Leafy Dell Park” for George Alonzo Park’s second daughter would scarcely have raised an eyebrow in the family. I haven’t found any information about the source or reason for the name, but it works well with the surname “Park”, conjuring up a beautiful image of a green, leafy hollow amid the trees. 

            Leafy was born on April 14, 1878 to George Alonzo Park and his second wife, Angeline Stevenson Park. Leafy was the eighth of George’s ten children, his sixth with Angeline. She first appears on the 1880 census, incorrectly recorded as “Leathy”. The family was farming in the Delaware, Ohio area. 

By 1884, the Park family had moved to Kansas, settling in Montgomery County near Caney. By 1895, Leafy is 17 years old and is married to Charles Dobson, living next door to her parents and younger siblings, and by the 1900 census, she and her husband are living with her parents and youngest sister, Frankie. 

             At some point after 1900, Leafy and Dobson apparently divorce, because on October 19, 1904, Leafy Dell marries Earnest Ellmore Love, and she becomes Leafy Dell Love, another charming name. (Charles remarries as well.) On February 8, 1917, Leafy gives birth to a son, Robert Solomon Love. By this time, the Loves are living in Arkansas City, Arkansas, and Earnest Love, a native Arkansan, is working as a barber. They continued to live in Arkansas City until Leafy’s death at age 80 on December 28, 1958. Since Earnest had served in the military from 1901 to 1904, both he and Leafy were buried in the National Cemetery in Little Rock. 

            The Park family features one additional Leafy Dell Park. Leafy’s older brother, Sidney Fremont Park, named his third daughter Leafy Dell in honor of his sister. This next-generation Leafy was born September 20^th, 1911. Tragically, she died just a few months later, on January 3, 1912.