Divorcee? Second Marriage? Early Death? The Mystery of Isadora Macbeth
Isadora Macbeth: 1876-? (Maternal First Cousin 3x Removed)
Female ancestors can be a source of frustration in
genealogy. They can inexplicably disappear from records, leaving me to question
whether they died or simply married and changed surnames. I wonder whether their
death or marriage records exist but are just not yet available on Ancestry or
Family Search, or whether they never existed in the first place or have been
destroyed. Isadora Macbeth is one of those frustrating ancestors. She exists in
a few records: I know when she was born, that she got married, and that she
received a bequest in a will. But after that? Poof! She’s gone. So what
happened to Isadora?
Isadora Macbeth was born July 7, 1876 in Blue Earth County,
Minnesota. Her parents were Collin Macbeth and Ellen Downing Macbeth. She was the
youngest of their six children. Curiously, the birth records seem to list her a
male rather than a female, but I believe this was a transcription error, where
the transcriber didn’t see the “a” on the end of Isadora, and the name was
misspelled in the birth record index as Isidor with an “I” rather than an “a”.
As a result, the transcriber assumed the child was male. Here is the index
entry for Isadora’s birth.
Isadora appears on the 1880 census as a three-year-old
daughter, so her sex was properly recorded there. Tragically, her father died
three years later at the fairly young age of forty-nine. Collin had been a
stock trader, and Isadora’s eldest brother Charles appears to have taken over
the business. Perhaps he supported Isadora, her mother and any other siblings
who were still minors until they were able to support themselves. As there are
no 1890 census records, I don’t know.
Isadora’s next appearance in records comes in 1897, when she
married a newly-minted attorney named Morton Wilkinson Brewster. A news article
on the wedding notes the couple was “quietly married in this city (Mankato)
last evening by Probate Judge Mead, but the fact did not leak out until this
afternoon…The wedding was a surprise to their friends.” This news item seems to
hint at some unusual haste in the marriage and perhaps a secret courtship that
surprised their acquaintances as well.
The marriage did not result in a child, nor did it last. Morton
Brewster married a woman named Maud Allen on December 29, 1903, just six years after
his marriage to Isadora. I have found no divorce records, so I am unsure
exactly when they separated. I had difficulty finding Morton on the 1900 census.
I finally resorted to searching the entire 1900 census record for Wells,
Minnesota where Morton and Isadora lived, and found only a partial entry—just the
surname Brewster, that he had a wife who had no children, and that he was an
attorney. It appears they were still married at that point.
Isadora’s mother Ellen died on July 14, 1905. She left a
will that had been written a couple years earlier and lists Isadora as married.
Interestingly, Ellen treated Isadora differently than her other children in the
will. Isadora’s sister Jennie and brothers John, Colin and Frederick, each
received lots of property in Mankato. Isadora received only a “life estate” in
lot 5 of block 19 in Wells, Minnesota. Following her death, the lot was to be
given to three of Isadora’s siblings.
Why the difference in treatment? Morton practiced law in
Wells, Minnesota, and he and Isadora lived there. I hypothesize that the lot in
question contained their home, which would mean that Ellen had purchased their
home for them. Perhaps Isadora’s marriage was already crumbling when Ellen wrote
the will in 1902, and Ellen was trying to ensure that Morton didn’t get his
hands on the property. Obviously, Isadora was already divorced by the time
Ellen’s estate was probated in 1905, as Morton had already remarried by that point.
I’m sure Isadora would have found ownership of the property more valuable in
1905 than a life interest, so Ellen’s attempt to ensure Isadora had a place to
live ended up leaving her without financial assets.
So what happened to Isadora after her divorce? I found a
marriage record in Wisconsin for her. She had taken back her maiden name of
Macbeth, and married Arthur Edward Hankin, a musician and telegraph operator,
on Valentine’s Day, 1906. They married in Arthur’s hometown of Sparta,
Wisconsin.
After that marriage, Isadora disappears. I believe I have
found another marriage record for Arthur a few years later. If it is for the
same Arthur Hankin, did he and Isadora divorce? Did Isadora die?
I looked at other family trees on Ancestry that include
Isadora, and I looked at the wiki tree on FamilySearch. None of these trees
includes a death record or even a death date for Isadora. Like me , those
researchers have found no end-of-life records.
Perhaps someday I will find a record or records that gives a
glimpse of Isadora Macbeth’s life post-1906. Until then, Isadora remains a
challenge.
Sources:
Isadora Macbeth birth record. "Minnesota, County
Marriages, 1853-1983," database with images, FamilySearch
(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939Z-BPTV-G?cc=1803974&wc=MRJR-VZ9%3A146277801
: 15 May 2020), 004540653 > image 998 of 2162; county courthouses, Minnesota.
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939Z-BPTV-G?i=997
Marriage Certificate for Morton Brewster’s second marriage. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939Z-YP2W-D?view=index&action=view&cc=1803974
Ellen Brewster Will Record, 1905. Minnesota, U.S., Wills and
Probate Records, 1801-1925. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/9070/images/007667673_00153?pId=4632107
