History Repeats

Week 37: #52 Ancestors – Mistake

By Eilene Lyon

Thomas Harvey Ransom, the only son of Dr. William C. Ransom to reach adulthood, emulated his father quite readily. Unfortunately, W. C. Ransom was not a good role model. Harvey (as he was known) took the mimicry a step too far, and it cost him dearly.

My family tree used to show Harvey Ransom with his wife, Nellie Pearl Wiggins, and their three children. What I discovered when working on an article about his father for Michigan History magazine, was that Harvey had other wives, and another child.

Harvey was born in Grant County, Indiana, in the summer of 1870.¹ His parents were William C. Ransom and William’s third wife, Emily Hodgson. When William married Emily in 1865, though, he was still married to Edith M. Nickel of Crescent City, California.² Not only did he abandon his California wife, he abandoned his three daughters (by his first wife, Ann Jane Jenkins, d. 1863), leaving them in Oregon when he returned to Indiana after the Civil War. Nice guy, right?

William and Emily Ransom also had a daughter, but she died very young, so Harvey essentially grew up as an only child, not knowing his three half-sisters.³ Following in his father’s footsteps, Harvey went to medical school and upon graduation went into practice with William in South Haven, Van Buren County, Michigan.⁴

If William Ransom hadn’t made a spectacle of himself in the national news, I might not have learned about Harvey’s first-born child and first wife. Just before William’s grand disappearing act in 1894, he was reported as hugging his little grandson goodbye.⁵ Whoa! Harvey didn’t marry Nellie until 1902, so this boy had to be from an earlier marriage.

It turned out that while still in medical school, Harvey married Eula Hulbert.⁶ They had a son they named Litt R. Ransom (no middle name, just an initial) in September 1891.⁷

William Ransom eventually turned up in Oregon, after running off with the widow of one of his patients.⁸ There, he visited his grown daughters, possibly for the first time in 30 years. He made one short trip back to Michigan to see Emily, his wife of about 35 years, but they did not reunite.⁹ William become a bigamist again, instead!¹⁰

Harvey, seeing that his father was living it up on the west coast, decided the time was right to go meet his sisters. Leaving his wife and son in Michigan, Harvey took up a medical practice in Coquille City, Oregon, that William had established. William “and lady” moved to Portland to start up another practice.¹¹ (I do not know the identity of this woman. One article suggests it was Emily.)

However, Harvey soon left Coquille City, after having charmed his way through the local society, and followed his father to Portland. There, without benefit of a divorce from Eula, Harvey married again, to Florence L. Smith.¹² Florence was born in Van Buren County, Michigan, so she probably came out to Oregon to be with Harvey. The newlyweds moved back to Michigan.

Not surprisingly, Harvey’s wives took a dim view of the bigamy. Both women divorced him: Eula in 1897, Florence in 1900.¹³ Eula, taking Litt with her, remarried. Florence died of peritonitis in 1904, just 27 years old.¹⁴

Harvey then married Nellie Pearl Wiggins and had three children with her (Theone, Ruth, and Milan). I do not know how much contact he had with Litt, because Litt’s step-father, Fred Greene, moved the family to Wisconsin.¹⁵ Sometime after Fred died in 1920 and prior to 1923, Eula and Litt moved to Pasadena, California.¹⁶

Harvey and Nellie divorced in late 1929.¹⁷ By the time of the 1930 census, Harvey had married his fourth wife, Pearl Blanche Schneider, and moved to Burbank, California.¹⁸ For the first time in over 30 years, Harvey and his son Litt were living in close proximity.

On his World War II draft registration, when he was 50 years old, Litt named Dr. T. H. Ransom as his next-of-kin (person who would know his whereabouts), and gave Harvey’s address as “City Hall Burbank Calif.”

When Thomas Harvey Ransom died on June 3, 1946 in Burbank, the death notice named his widow as Carma Anne.¹⁹ Thus, just like his father, Harvey had at least five wives. Hopefully, he never repeated the bigamy stunt. Litt R. Ransom never married.

 

Feature image: by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

(Apologies for the extensive footnotes!)