favorite photo week 3

They say a picture is worth a million words. If the people in these photos could talk, what would they say? 

Elmer Ellsworth Friday and his wife, Sarah Margaret Jennings McKee Friday. Taken before March 1941. 

Elmer Ellsworth Friday might say he was born on April 19, 1865, days after Abraham Lincoln's assassination in Schuyler Co., Illinois, the firstborn child of Jacob Friday (1819-1879) and Mary Elizabeth McKee (1840-1906). His father, a Civil War soldier, died when Ellsworth was 14 years old.

On March 16, 1887, in Schuyler Co., Illinois, 21-year-old Ellsworth wed Sarah Margaret Jennings McKee, a 28-year-old divorcee of five children.

Wait...what?

Maybe Sarah would share she was born May 4, 1858, in Schuyler Co., Illinois, the daughter of Roswell and Mary S. Adams Jennings (see week 1 & 2 post - lore & origins). At the age of 16, in 1874, she wed George Washington McKee, with whom she had five children: Susan, Nancy, Clarence, James, Roland, and Minnie. Sarah, who stated in multiple censuses that she couldn't read nor write, separated at some point from her husband George. But the when and why is unknown. 

But maybe Sarah and Ellsworth can explain the how. 

Sarah's first husband, George W. McKee, had a sister, Mary Elizabeth McKee. The same Mary McKee who was the mother of Elmer Ellsworth Friday. That would make Sarah an aunt to Ellsworth until Sarah and George's separation. 

Things that make you go hmmm...

So Sarah's children from her first marriage, making them first cousins to Ellsworth, then become Ellsworth's step-children. 

Huh.

Would Sarah share stories about raising a blended family? Ellsworth and Sarah had four children: Mary (our line), Bessie, Maggie, and Henry. In the 1900 and 19010 census, Sarah listed that she had seven children living but one or two were no longer living so that makes at least nine children.

Children of Sarah Jennings McKee Friday: Bessie, Mary, James, Clarence and Margaret

Maybe Ellsworth would tell about the work he did for a living. Ellsworth held various jobs over the years: a laborer (1900), farmer (1910 in Missouri), proprietor of a dray line - meaning he unloaded the trains that brought goods in the town and trucked them to various stores (1920), and finally a teamster at Clay Manufacturing (1930). 

Would Ellsworth and his wife be comfortable sharing their brush with the law?

The Bardolph News, Bardolph, Illinois, May 11, 1904

The Macomb Journal (McDonough Co., Illinois), May 5, 1904, p. 1

A picture is worth a million words.