The Mystery of History

Often, when trying to uncover a family mystery, you uncover a new one which leaves you oftentimes more perplexed than the original one!  I started my genealogical research to find out where my Great Grandfather ever went off to.  In the family, the romantic story that he was born in France and had a beauty parlor there was not true at all.  He was born in Bellville, Ohio and eventually ended up married to a woman named Betty Jean who was born in Belfast, Ireland.  This was after he left my Great Grandmother and Grandfather.  He did own a beauty shop but that was in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Yes, his side of the family is French in ethnicity, but he is as all American as being from the Midwest can get.

I now realize that my grandfather must have found out that he was in Indiana because at no other time did he have a beauty salon...perhaps he chose to spare my Great Grandmother the embarrassment of what truly happened.  

My second mystery is that Jess had a stepdaughter...as in my grandfather had a half sister.  A half sister that no one ever talked about.  Or knew about.  Or heard of.  I have made it my mission to find out as much about her as possible and to document it.  Her name was Katherine Buchanan Lefevre Kyte.  She was married to Benny Kyte, orchestra conductor of the Benny Kyte Orchestra and musical director of WXYZ in Detroit in the twenties and thirties.  They had one daughter named Marilyn.  Katherine died while still relatively young after suffering for many years from tuberculosis.  She spent time in a tuberculosis hospital in Pittsburgh, PA and also moved to Texas to try to recover but to no avail.  Her mother, my great grandmother Bertha Lefever, later perished after spending several months in the hospital recovering from burns in a fire.

I will never know why my grandfather never mentioned Katherine and I will probably never find a photo of her or of my Great Grandparents either.  They may be gone, but they will be forgotten no more.