I found Rose Whybrew

The fate of Rose Whybrew after 1918 has been one of those brick walls that has been a long time in coming down. But I think I've finally cracked it. And I had the evidence I needed all along, without realising it.

To summarise what I already knew, Rose (born 1877) was the fifth daughter of David and Susan Whybrew (nee Mason). She and her husband, George Henry Anthony, migrated to Chicago in the USA in 1907. Their son, George, was born just before they migrated and died in Chicago at the age of six, leaving them childless. George senior seems to have become a permanent resident of an asylum by 1910. He died in the 1940s. The last trace I had of Rose was her address on George's unanswered military call-up papers in 1918.

After that she disappeared. Ages ago I found this small clipping which listed a Rose Anthony from Chicago applying for a marriage license in Indiana in 1917. At the time, I assumed that it probably wasn't the Rose I was looking for because she was still married to George in 1917.  And I couldn't find a record of the marriage anywhere.

Lake County Times, (Hammond, Indiana)
15 June 1917

This week I went back to the article, and realised for the first time, that the future husband's name was also listed - Robert Reichert. I'd been looking at it as a random list, but it's actually a list of couples. I still couldn't find a marriage record, but I had a new name to look for.

First I found a Robert and Rose Reichert in the 1930 US census in Chicago. Rose Reichert's date of birth (1877) was the same as Rose Whybrew/Anthony, and her year of arrival in the USA matched. She was said to have been born in Australia, which wasn't correct, but Rose Whybrew's mother was born in Australia. 

By the 1940 census, Rose Reichert's birth place had changed to England. Each census asks for different information, and in 1940 one of the questions was 'age at first marriage'. Rose Reichert's age at first marriage was 19, about 1897 (the same year that Rose Whybrew married George Anthony) whereas Robert was first married about 1917. So Rose Anthony had been married before she met and married Robert Reichert.

All of this was suggestive, but not conclusive. I couldn't find the couple in the 1920 census. I did find a marriage record (on familysearch.org) for their marriage in Lake County, Indiana, in 1917, though it gave no details except their names and the date (14 June 1917). Could they have gone to Indiana to marry because Rose was still married to George? Perhaps she couldn't afford a divorce, or perhaps a divorce would have been difficult with George in the asylum. Maybe the reason I couldn't find the Reicherts in 1920 was that they didn't want to be found easily.

I'd begun to feel pretty confident (and excited) that this was probably the Rose I was looking for. But the evidence was still rather circumstantial. From newspapers I discovered that poor Robert Reichert was knocked down by a car in December 1955 and died in January 1956. His death record said that he was a widower. 

From that information I was able to find Rose Reichert's death record (on familysearch.org) which included her father's name; 'David Weybrew'. She died in Chicago on 9 February 1944 at the same address as in the 1940 census. Her date of birth on the death record was 13 November 1877, the same as Rose Whybrew. Her mother's name was listed as Murphy, which was actually Rose Whybrew's maternal grandmother's name, and she was said to have been born in Australia. Given that her husband Robert would have been giving the details, it isn't surprising if some of them are muddled or inaccurate. 

So this, I believe, is Rose Whybew's gravestone, at the Montrose Cemetery in Chicago. She had a hard life, but I'm glad that, even if her second marriage was possibly bigamous, she seems to have had a few good years at the end.