The Elusive Eleanor McPherson Garner

Since I spend so much of my free time doing genealogy research, I thought it would be fun to write about some of the discoveries I've come across or the one's I'm still trying to make.

One of my more elusive cousins is Eleanor McPherson Garner.  Eleanor was the daughter of Robert Franklin Garner and Lillian Scrivener.  Lillian is a great aunt, the sister of my great-grandfather, Frank Scrivener.  Lillian married Robert, in Baltimore in 1900.  Eleanor McPherson Garner was born in Baltimore MD a year later on 14 March 1901.  From there on, Eleanor becomes very hard to track.

I have never been able to find her in the 1910 Census.  In 1920, she is 18 and living in the household of Frederick Stieff, a piano maker in Baltimore.  The census says she is his daughter, but this is probably not the case since he is only 27 at the time.  I'm guessing she was working for him, perhaps as a nanny for his infant daughter.

1930 and 1940, nothing.  She's not with the Stieffs any more. She's vanished. I figured she was probably married, but I didn't know to whom.

My only lead on Eleanor came from the funeral booklet of my great-grandfather, Frank, which my great-grandmother thoughtfully saved and which was passed along to me by my grandfather when he realized I shared her interest in family history (along with a treasure box of other notes and memorabilia she had saved. But that is another story.)  Anyway, in the guest register of the funeral booklet (1939), Eleanor Garner Wheelock appears.  It's got to be her, right?  And, bonus, later in the book she appears as a sender of flowers: Mrs. Thomas Gordon Wheelock.  Now I have something to work with.

So, I looked for Thomas Gordon Wheelock. 

First, I just Googled him and lo and behold, he turns up--as the fourth husband of actress Mary Astor! I even found a picture of him eventually. Now this is strange.  How did a poor girl from Baltimore hook up with this guy?  Thomas was from a wealthy Boston family of China traders, spent the early part of his life in Shanghai, attended Harvard.  His sister Florence was a famous travel writer.  In 1929, Thomas married Chicago socialite Dorothy Rend at the St. Regis Hotel in New York.  Hot stuff. In 1945, Thomas marries Mary Astor. I began to wonder if this could possibly be the guy that Eleanor married.  He seemed really out of her league. But if he married Eleanor, it had to be sometime between 1929 and 1939, with a divorce from Dorothy in between. 

My next clue showed up some years later when I had access to an online newspaper database.  By this time, I just automatically put in Eleanor's name when I find a new database, on the off-chance that something will turn up.  Well, this time something did--a report of the divorce of Eleanor and Thomas in Arizona in 1945, just before he married Mary Astor.  So at least I did know they were married but not where or when.

I tried another tack, focusing on Eleanor's father, who seemed to have disappeared shortly after her birth.   Lillian and Robert are in the 1900 Census of Baltimore as newlyweds, but after that, nada. However, Lillian does show up in the early 1900's in the Baltimore City Directory as the widow of Robert.  So what happened to Robert?  In one of my periodic checks for him on Ancestry, I found a reference to a military pension file.  I copied the numbers, went online and ordered up his record from the National Archives and found the very sad story.  Robert was an Indian fighter.  His file even included letters he had sent back to his family telling of his life out west.  (Lillian submitted these as proof that he had served in the Army.)  However, he became ill with pneumonia at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and died there in 1904. I found his grave later on Find-A-Grave.

The file also included info about Eleanor and her birth and that she and Lillian had traveled out to Kansas to be with Robert.  Eleanor got sick and they had to return to Maryland.  In the pension application, Lillian is begging for an increase in her small pension, which she eventually got after several rounds of petitions, but not in time to do her much good.  She died impoverished in 1948.  The only additional mention of Eleanor is a letter in the file in which she states that her mother is not competent to manage her affairs. So, I now know that Eleanor is alive in 1948 and still called Eleanor Wheelock.

 I also found Eleanor on Ancestry on a ship's passenger list returning from a trip to Italy, also in 1948, so she must have still had some money.  Makes me wonder why her mother was barely able to support herself?

My next clue turned up in another newspaper clipping when I again input Eleanor's name into a new database.  This time I found the marriage of Eleanor and Thomas Wheelock reported in the Chicago Tribune in 1938.  Eleanor was called Mrs. Eleanor Garner Wilder (aha! another marriage),who had divorced about a year previously, and both Eleanor and Thomas were called prominent Chicago residents.  Unfortunately, it did not mention Mr. Wilder's first name and so far, I haven't found the prominent Mrs. Wilder anywhere else in the Chicago papers. ;-(

11 Feb 1938 Chicago Tribune
Thomas Wheelock and Eleanor Wilder Will Marry Today

Auburn, N. Y., Feb. 10.-[Special.] -Two prominent Chicago residents, Thomas Wheelock, a broker and a descendant of the Rev. Elcazar Wheelock, founder of Dartmouth college, and Mrs. Eleanor Garner Wilder, will be married tomorrow noon at the home of Mayor Charles D. Osborne here. The mayor will perform the ceremony. Mr. Wheelock is a nephew of Mrs. Osborne.
It will be the second marriage for both Mr. Wheelock and Mrs. Wilder. Mrs. Wilder was divorced about a year ago. Mr. Wheelock was divorced from Mrs. Dorothy Rend Wheelock. The couple will be unattended.
The couple came to Auburn early in the week and have been guests at the home of the Osbornes. They plan to return to Chicago to make their home after the wedding.
Mrs. Wilder is a daughter of Robert F. Garner, formerly of Maryland. Mr. Wheelock is a son of the late Geoffrey Wheelock of Chicago and Shanghai, China. Mr. Wheelock's Chicago home is at 200 East Chestnut street.

I did find Thomas's divorce from Dorothy in the papers, apparently a messy affair in which she claimed cruelty and lack of support.  Again, I have to wonder how little orphan Eleanor ended up with Thomas.

Very recently, after I retired and moved back to Maryland, a helpful librarian pointed out that the Pratt library had The Baltimore Sunpapers database and that, as a Maryland resident, I could get a Pratt Library card, which I promptly did.  When I put in Eleanor's name, she showed up with another marriage, her first one, in 1923 to Gilbert Loutrelle Lucas, a Baltimore printer.  They were married in New York at the Park Avenue home of Eleanor's aunt, Harriett Garner Phillips. This at least gave me some idea of how Eleanor had an entree to meeting her wealthy husbands.  She was divorced from Lucas in Florida in 1929.

So, I now have three marriages for Eleanor, one to the mysterious Mr. Wilder.

My last sighting of her, so far, is in the Manhattan City Directory in 1953, Mrs. Eleanor G. Wheelock.

Oh, I can't wait to find out the rest of this story, although I'm afraid it might not happen in this lifetime.  Perhaps I should take a trip to Chicago for some research.

3 May 2016
Updates on Eleanor:

I finally found Mr. Wilder's first name in Eleanor's application for a marriage license in New York.  Her application stated that she was divorced from Paul Wilder in Los Angeles in 1937, the year before she married T.G. Wheelock.

Some poking around in online newspapers from California turned up a marriage between Paul Wilder and Eleanor Bullen.  What?  Had to be the same woman, right?  Another marriage?  Yep.

Paul Wilder

Turns out that right after Eleanor divorced her first husband in Florida, she hooked up with Richard Nixon Bullen, as his third wife.  Bullen, a stockbroker from Wisconsin, was divorced from Eleanor in 1935 and died in 1936.  Eleanor married Paul Wilder as his second wife in Pebble Beach CA just five days after her divorce from Bullen.

Wilder was born in Illinois and attended Cornell University.  Not surprisingly, the marriage to Eleanor didn't last long.  The divorce papers presented an extravagant Eleanor who was spending her husband into bankruptcy.

So, I still don't know what happened to Eleanor after her divorce from TG Wheelock, but what a ride she had: four marriages and at least one stint living in Paris.  Her Wilder divorce also revealed that she was the heir to her aunt Harriett Garner Phillips, which probably explains her moving back to New York City.

I would not be at all surprised to discover that she married for a fifth time, but so far, no clues about that.

26 June 2018
Finally turned up a picture of Eleanor, taken in 1923 about the time of her first marriage.  She certainly seems to be a very beautiful young woman. The newspaper clipping indicates that she was well known in Baltimore art circles and had posed for various artists, including a well-known artist: Erik Guide Haupt.  It would be interesting to find a picture that she posed for!