Lola Jackson Mystery (St. Joseph Co, IN)
Lola Jackson, (1867 to abt. 1949) was my mother's grandmother. When my mother's parents divorced, her grandmother Lola Jackson (Irvin) raised her in South Bend, Indiana.
On her deathbed, abt. 1949, she gave my mother some tidbits about a family scandal---scandalous, at least, for Victorian times. Seems that Lola was the out-of wedlock daughter of one Lydia Jane Davis and a local by the surname of Jackson.This must have occurred in the township of North Liberty, a very small place in those days.
In the same year of her birth, one William Nitcher married the young(b. 1844) Lydia Jane Davis to "make an honest woman of her", but he never changed the baby's surname to his own.
We'll probably never know why.Nitcher served in the 12th Indiana Cavalry during the "unpleasantness". Could the Jackson parent have been a fallen army buddy, or a close friend?I find no marriage data for the liaison which produced the child Lola.
There was a Jackson family living nearby in North Liberty, and one William Jackson seems to be of the "right" age.
However, other clues point to a possible connection in Hancock Co., Ohio, where the Davis family originated.
I have a cryptic, light-hearted letter from 1885 which Lola pressed into my mother's hands, as she died, which describes her beau Elmer Irvin's honeymoon elopement with her to Hancock Co., Ohio, and wondering what the relatives would think.
Has any of you got a rogue Jackson in your files, or Davis family stuff from Hancock, Co., Ohio?
Finding anything out 137 years hence is a longshot and certainly not vital---yet Lola Jackson was my great-grandmother and I may have Davis and Jackson blood relatives I don't know about. For my gen-line, look up Lola Jackson (m. Elmer Irvin) on WFT.
Nitcher had three children of his own with Lydia Jane Davis, yet I don't know of any surviving family from this union.
Sometimes genealogy is entertainment!
---Bob Robertson