seeking Margie Morris, part 2

I was fresh on my Ancestry.com kick, which could access various U.S. Census reports. But with a last name like Morris and 2 first names not altogether unique, I needed to start making some assumptions.

A woman in 1940 who was old enough to have a baby but too young to feel she could raise it on her own was probably somewhere between 15 and 23. Any older than that and she’d be more likely to be married; any younger and it’d be a pretty unusual circumstance. That gave me an est. birth date 1925-1933.

I did a keyword search for Margie, Sampson, and Morris against a rough range close to those dates. After at least an hour of combing through public records, I found a hit under the Cook County Genealogy Records.

Candidate #1

Name: Margie Morris

Marriage Date: July 19, 1939

Spouse: Robert Sampson

Marriage Location: Cook County, IL (i.e. Chicago)

This could be her??? Correct maiden name, but it looks like her married name would be Sampson so the name I know would have been inverted. Very possible.

I also found a census record of the two of them in Chicago in 1940, and they were logged as being 20 and 21. That means she would have been ~28 by the time she had my dad. This seemed too old. Plus she was married by then. Why give up a child at 28?

But, I needed some encouragement and this was something if not nothing, so I kept hunting with my new info. At the end though, I managed to only find one other document that supported her existence: an obituary clipping for a relative that referenced her living in a suburb in the 80s. End scene.

I kept looking.

I took to the internet (God help us all), searching for a slightly younger Margie Morris in Chicago around 1948. After another excruciating hour of experimenting my way through search terms, I found an obituary/article on a judge named Margie Morris from California. Which brings us to -

Candidate #2:

“Presiding Justice Morris attended Northwestern University School of Law, graduating in 1948. There she met her husband, Robert S. Morris…They moved from Chicago to San Bernardino in 1949…Morris was a trailblazing pioneer for women’s rights.”

Don’t get confused like I did. This is a different Husband-Robert from Candidate #1. This Robert has an S. middle name but that’s not the one that matters…we need her middle name to have an S. The interesting part, though, is that she was in the right city during the right year. And then she got out of dodge immediately after that with her new husband. I think giving up your child might be good incentive to leave town in the 40s, what do you think? And after experiencing such a deeply traumatizing experience that only a woman could empathize with, maybe you too would find yourself committed to fighting for women’s rights? How's the web I'm weaving...convincing?

The tail end of the article listed survivors and also that she had been predeceased by her son David. Majorly important detail. Did he have what my dad had? Which would make that disease absolutely hereditary and also would mean I might not even need to keep looking to have my answer? 

I searched ruthlessly for his obituary but not shockingly, "David Morris California" is a Where's Waldo rabbit hole. I also did search after search for every one of her living relatives - including her other son Stephen - and found NONE OF THEM. Ancestry.com, Facebook, Google, nothing. Why couldn't she have named the kids something with a little pizzazz? Maybe they could've moved away from the most populated state to somewhere nice and cozy with not-as-many-citizens? Because I'm sure I could find a Tobias in Rhode Island...

At this point, Margie #2 has most backstory, the most plausibility, and the juiciest lineage to offer. But I don't know how to dig up more information beyond what I have now. But now I can't let it drop. Every time I start searching again, I find something new. Surely something will pop up? 

seeking Margie Morris, part 1

When I was about 10, my mother told me my father had been adopted. With no gauge for sensitivities yet, I openly asked him about it in an assumptive way and was hissed into silence - my grandparents were my grandparents and that was that.

Now I have the same curiosity about adoption that I'm sure many do - hypothesizing about backstories, motivations...that critical point where someone decides they just can't or shouldn't raise a child. All the adopted children I've known have grown up in wonderful families and so it became a universal truth for me that adoption is for the best. If you're unsure, watch one episode of 16 & Pregnant and then we can pretend like this whole disagreement never happened...

So okay fast forward back to the adoption being rigorously denied. I had no idea how he felt like this was plausibly deniable in any way...he looked absolutely nothing like his parents or his sister (also adopted). There are mysteriously no pictures of my Grandmama ever being pregnant. Oh and there's the birth certificate that he once showed my mom, registering him to someone else. While my mom can't ever tell a true depiction of emotional facts, she does have a scary steel trap for details such as: Margie Sampson Morris*, 1948, Chicago.

I wouldn't think of Margie S. Morris with any real interest for years. But I also didn't forget her name.

Then, fast forward forward this time to a few key events:
1) Around 2004, my Canadian aunt finds her mother and invites her to a family wedding. Thus I guess the Adoption Cat was out of the bag. I don't ask my Dad about it, but my curiosity is peaked.
2) In 2005, my Dad is diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, which is fancy words for a Real Piece of Shit Disease with no cure. When he dies in 2008, I suddenly realize this RPSD might be hereditary for all I know and man would it be nice to have Margie Morris' medical records. I do some cursory Google searches to no avail.
3) During Christmas 2014, I get really into Ancestry.com. (You're wondering how those words could come out of my mouth - I can't explain these things). I get a free trial and spends hours and hours and hours building out my family tree. Free plug for Ancestry.com - this site is the bomb. I mean, I found pictures of family members including a great-aunt who died in a school fire who I had never seen before...fascinating!

Anyway, that hot & heavy free trial period made me realized that clearly I just wasn't trying very hard with this Margie Morris thing. I mean, I'm a Grade A stalker when it comes to ex-girlfriends...how had I gotten tripped up on this person?

So, I put those stalker skills to good use and started searching for Margie Morris.

*Even though the whole point here is to find this person, it seems like a real dick move to "out" someone nearly 70 years after the fact, so names have been changed and whatnot.