Another Surprise Discovery in My Marfell Family

  When I research families I am always asking myself questions like why did they move there, why are they doing that, where did they meet their spouse? Usually I do this to better understand their lives, but many times this curiosity helps me unlock new facts about their lives I probably would have otherwise missed. And today that is exactly what happened when I was recently re-doing the research of my mom’s uncle, Howard Marfell. Howard left England in 1920 when he was about 15 years old to travel by ship to the United States. My grandfather, Louis Marfell,…

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The Illinois Bell Girls

In a previous post, I mentioned I discovered my mother had never graduated high school. She quit right after turning 16 and started working at Illinois Bell as a telephone operator. I am thinking she chose Illinois Bell because her Aunt Sophie worked there. (Unfortunately I was never really told what my Aunt did there other than serve as a union steward.) Anyway, in 1952, when my mom was 20 years old, she won the Illinois Bell Miss Voice contest for our area. It must have been a big deal for her because we heard stories about her experience many…

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Family Secrets

Over the last week I’ve been fortunate to have received some correspondence shedding more light on a few unanswered questions in my adoptive family’s maternal tree. This is the second time that a family member has shared what had been a family “secret” or unknown fact with me on my mother’s side of the tree. My mother would have been scandalized, or would she? For I discovered shortly after she died, my mother held her own secret. My mother was English on her father’s side and Polish on her mother’s. She was fiercely close to her father’s sister, Aunt Agnes,…

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