Uncle Ezra lost and found

As I mentioned in my previous blog on Joseph Smith, when my great-aunt told me the story of Joseph's family, she said that all his siblings had died while he was in California.  This was not entirely true, as Joseph's brother, Ezra Smith also survived.  However, as my great-aunt did not speak of him, so she did not appear to have known him or maybe she had forgotten about him if he was not close to her family.  So I as I began to research my family, I found Ezra did live beyond his brother's return from California in 1863.

My 3rd great-uncle, Ezra Smith was born on July 9, 1845 in Corinna, Maine, son of Daniel Jones Smith and Elizabeth Ann Wiggin.  He appeared on the 1850 and 1860 census living at home.  Ezra married Alwilda Ann Devereaux on April 20, 1867 in Augusta, Maine. I don't know why he married in Augusta, Maine other than Ezra also had an uncle named Ezra Sleeper Smith who resided in Hallowell, Maine whom he may have stayed with for a time.

Alwilda Devereaux was born on May 19, 1844 in Saint Albans, Maine, daughter of Dennis and Rhoda (Parkhurst) Devereaux.  Alwilda was the sister to Arminda Devereaux, who had married none other than Ezra's brother, my ancestor Joseph Smith.  So two Smith brothers married two Devereaux sisters.  As Joseph and Arminda had married in 1863, Ezra would have met Alwilda from his brother's marriage.

In July 1870, Ezra and Alwilda Smith were living in Corinna, Maine,   They were enumerated as part of his father, Daniel J. Smith's household, but as a separate household.  Ezra had followed in his father's trade of blacksmith and was working in his father's shop.

Then Ezra disappeared from Corinna census and vital records.  There was no gravestone for him in his father's lot in the Village Cemetery with the rest of his siblings.  However his wife, Alwilda Smith continued to appear on later census records usually residing in the household of her other siblings until her death in 1919.   Alwilda Smith was buried in the Village Cemetery in Saint Albans, Maine with her widowed sister.  If Ezra had died, she never remarried and always kept the surname Smith.  Of course keep in mind, I was doing this research in 1980s and this was before the internet and searchable Genealogical websites like today.  But as it turned out, fate sometimes plays a role genealogy.

My parents had divorced in 1990 and my mother remarried and moved to Gardiner, Maine and eventually I took a job in Augusta, Maine.  My mother had a dog who I would take for a walk and watch if they were going to be away for a period of time during the day. I would take the dog for walks down the street to the large Cemetery called Oak Grove near their home.  On one of my trips, I was reading the old stones and saw a gravestone for an Ezra Smith.  I began to read it and recognized the birth date of July 9, 1845.  I copied down the death date and later that day found the death certificate for Ezra and that he had died April 2, 1912 in Gardiner, Maine and was born in Corinna, son of Daniel and Elizabeth (Wiggin) Smith.  I had found Ezra!

Gravestone of Ezra Smith and wife
Oak Grove Cemetery, Gardiner, Maine

But with Ezra was his wife, Melissa Smith.  She had died in 1913.  How could this be when he had been married Alwilda Devereaux, who out lived both Ezra and Melissa?   It was not a case where Alwilda died and Ezra remarried as a widower.  It became clear that Ezra and Alwilda must have divorced.  If it was a case where Ezra deserted Alwilda and come to Gardiner and remarried, it would not have escaped the Devereaux family's notice as there was another Devereaux sister, Arvilla who had married and also lived in Gardiner, Maine, less than a mile from where Ezra resided.  It would have been highly unlikely that the two would never have crossed paths as Ezra became a blacksmith in Gardiner.  She certainly would have told her family or the authorities if Ezra had just deserted her sister and remarried illegally, and nothing suggests that Ezra was hiding at all.

It was after some discussion about Alwilda with my cousin Tarena Deden, another Devereaux descendant that I began a search for the divorce record of Erza and Alwilda.  It was surprising to learn that Ezra had petitioned for a divorce from Alwilda.  In his petition of 1873, Ezra stated that Alwilda had deserted him in August 1870, the month after they were recorded together on the 1870 census.  Alwilda had gone all the way to Florida to live with her brother, Converse Devereaux.  Ezra, then either because it was too hard to remain in Corinna with his brother and sister-in-law, whose sister had deserted him or just to start a new life on his own, moved to Hallowell, Maine.  Ezra's divorce was granted in the December term of 1873 in Kennebec County Supreme Judical Court. Of course we only have Ezra's side of the divorce and he claimed to have done nothing to cause Alwilda to desert him, but without her side, we can only speculate what would have made her escape all the way to Florida from her marriage.  After the divorce,Alwilda returned to Maine to live.  It doesn't not appear that Devereaux family members turned their backs on her as she resided with family for the rest of her life.  However, it may explain why my great-aunt Leona never mentioned her great-uncle, Ezra if there had been a divide in the relationship between the brothers over the desertion and divorce.

Ezra remarried to Melissa Britt (or Brett) on February 28, 1874 in Hallowell, Maine. His desire to remarry probably prompted him to petition for a divorce since his remarriage occurred within a ew months after the divorce was granted.

Melissa and Ezra Smith

Ezra and Melissa adopted a daughter, Mary Alice Britt,  a relative to Ezra's wife Melissa.  Ezra purchased a house on Church Street in Gardiner, Maine and was a blacksmith there.  An undated advertisement speaks of his high quality of work.

It would seem that Ezra had established a good life for himself in Gardiner, but the local newspaper provides a few mentions on Ezra in the 1880s and usually for public intoxication and drunkeness.  His adopted daughter quickly left home after the age of 18, and changed her name back to Alice Britt, marrying and moving to Brunswick, Maine.  Contact with a niece of Alice before her death, included the above photo of Ezra and Melissa and the advertisement.  She said that Alice said little of her life with the Smith Family, but it was known that she had an unhappy childhood and not treated well by her adopted family.

By 1900, Ezra and his wife are living alone in Gardiner, Maine.   The end of Ezra's life was listed on his death certificate as "suicide by shooting."   The Kennebec Journal provided the details of that event.

The Local Gardiner paper also carried that same detail, but also had included that it had reported a previous accident with Erza.  That was an incident where Ezra had fallen off a couch and broke his arm.  Nothing more reported as to how or why he fell but possibly due to his fondness of alcohol may have played a role. His widow, Melissa died the following year in 1913.  In her will, she left $1 to her daughter Alice.

The discovery of my lost 3rd great uncle, Ezra is one of the strange events in my life doing genealogy.  Obviously with today's technology, it would have been very easy to find that he had moved to Gardiner, Maine after 1870 and had a second marriage, etc.  But for that time, to happen across a gravestone for a relative that I had no idea had lived in Gardiner and for my mother to move to that same town and for me to find Ezra's stone by just walking a dog, makes believe in more than just coincidence in genealogy.