Updates on Elizabeth and Rosanna

Those of you keeping track on your scorecards can tell we have four more First-Generation Daflers posts to go. It usually takes me about two weeks to research, document, and write these posts, but I had to put the work on hold as I plan a trip to Ohio for a memorial service. While I’m in the area, I’m hoping to visit some of the local genealogy rooms to get some details that have eluded me online thus far.

While I’ve been researching the recent stories, a few more tidbits were unearthed that fill in the stories for Rosanna and Elizabeth:

Rosanna and Women’s Suffrage

I concluded my discussion of Rosanna Kepler's life by bemoaning that her name didn't appear frequently in the publications I had searched. However, I later stumbled upon an unexpected mention of her name in an archived copy of "History of Madison County, Ohio", published in 1915. Here we find the history of the Madison County "Women's Elective Franchise Association", an organization of women working to secure the right to vote for all women in the state of Ohio.

Some success had already been gained on this front. In 1894, women in Ohio were granted the right to both vote on and serve on county school boards. This success was viewed not as accomplishment of the mission but as an initial step towards full voting rights, and many groups formed across Ohio to continue the work. A public meeting of women was called in London, OH, on November 19th, 1894, and the result of this meeting was the formation of the Women's Elective Franchise Association. Mrs. Rosanna Kepler was listed as one of the charter members.

When this book was written, the work of the women's suffrage movement was still very much underway. In Ohio, interest in extending the franchise was reasonably popular but faced several hurdles. Anonymous agitators distributed handbills linking the suffrage movement to the temperance movement in an attempt to decrease its popularity - a move that was largely successful. German-American women were, as a group, generally not strong supporters of suffrage and significant efforts had to be made in German-dominated areas like Cincinnati to build support. (This factor makes Rosanna's participation even more intriguing.) A statewide suffrage amendment, placed on the ballot via referendum, failed in 1914. We know now how close the suffrage movement had come to their goal - they received the right to vote in federal elections in Ohio in 1917, and the Ohio Constitution was amended to remove the words "white male" from the description of a voter in 1923.

This is just a tantalizing glimpse of Rosanna's part of the story. Did she stay the course over the next thirty years until suffrage was won? Did she write articles or march in parades? We don't yet know, but the suffrage movement was well documented. We'll keep this subject on the research list.

Cause of Elizabeth and Samuel Hughes’s Bankruptcy Revealed

One of the loose ends in Lizzie Dafler's story was how Lizzie and Sam ended up in bankruptcy court so soon after their marriage on Christmas Eve, 1919. New newspaper research reveals that the marriage didn't simply precede the bankruptcy - instead, it was the cause of the bankruptcy.

We already knew that Sam Hughes had lived in Dayton as a single man for at least a year before the death of his first wife Grace. They married around 1910 and cohabited as late as 1916, according to the Dayton city directory entries. By 1917 Sam lived alone in more modest quarters, and in September 1918 he attested that he was no longer in contact with his wife when questioned by the Montgomery County draft board.

We now know that Sam met at least two single women in the year following Grace's death. In September 1919, Alice Wilson was a 42-year-old woman who lived about a mile away from the 24-year-old Sam, boarding at 506 Oak Street. According to the 1920 Census, she was a domestic worker at a nearby hotel. She alleged that Sam proposed marriage to her, but progress towards nuptials suddenly stalled. Finally, she asked for a conversation on his intentions regarding their upcoming wedding, and he asked her to call him on Christmas Eve... at which time she discovered that Lizzie Dillon had become the new Mrs. Hughes that very day. (Lizzie claimed to be fifty in the 1920 census; she was in fact 64 years old.)

At this time in America, women had a peculiar legal right called "breach of promise". Simply, if a man proposed marriage and then broke the engagement, the former fiancee was entitled to monetary damages. This legal protection was seen as a way to compensate a woman for her decrease in value in the marriage market due to the time that she had spent proceeding towards the cancelled marriage, as well as a counter for any allegations that the woman may have been the cause of the breach. Her suit was filed and served within a week; she sued Sam for $5000 and the news hit the papers on New Year's Eve. Later, Alice would also sue Lizzie for $10,000 based on an allegation of slander.

Alice was a pugnacious legal opponent, as later news reports would reveal, and perhaps Sam and Lizzie knew that from the start. According to later legal allegations, Lizzie took a gift of about $1000 from Sam and bought real estate in the name of Elizabeth and John Hughes on February 16, 1920 - after the suit had been filed but before the trial. Thus, when the two-day breach of promise trial ended on May 14, 1920 with a $900 verdict in favor of Alice Wilson, Sam and Lizzie believed they could claim they didn't have the money to pay off the judgement. However, the law saw that as a form of fraud. Within two weeks of the judgement, the real estate venture was discovered and Alice's lawyers began trying to track the money down.

As we've seen already, Sam and Lizzie still tried to claim bankruptcy, and Alice Wilson (through her attorney) was the major opponent to that action. The Hughes filed a bankruptcy petition in June 1920, which began a protracted battle in both state and federal court through at least 1923.

There may be more to discover in this story. I have yet to find records about the evidence or conclusion of the slander suit, the 1921 fraud allegations, or the conclusion of the bankruptcy proceedings. Nor have I found firm records about the potentially fraudulent property purchase. To continue this research will probably require digging into the archives of the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court as well as the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio - which will take time and money with little assurance of gaining further insight. But this new information, incomplete as it is, raises a new question. When we consider this situation combined with the bigamy case her first husband Thomas Dillon was embroiled in, I'm left wondering whether Lizzie was a victim, an accomplice, or somewhere in between.

From the 5/14/1920 and 5/25/1920 Dayton Daily News and the 12/31/1919 and 5/15/1920 Dayton Herald.

Next up

Once I get back, I’ll get back to work on the stories for Charles, Christian, and Upton. Last in line will be the story of the most prolific of the eleven children: David.