Step-Siblings to Spouses: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Step”

 

The Steps to Love: Robert and Cora Evans

Sallie Worth Smith: 1890-1965 (Maternal First Cousin 2x Removed)
Cora Jane England: 1922-1994 (Maternal Second Cousin 1x Removed)
 

The 1935 wedding between widower Herman Evans and divorcee Sallie Smith England blended two families. Herman Evans had three surviving sons from his first marriage. Sallie Smith had two daughters and two sons from her first marriage to George England. This newly blended family gave birth to another family when Herman’s son married Sallie’s daughter six years after Herman and Sallie married. Two step-siblings fell in love.

Sallie Worth Smith was born April 3, 1890 to parents Carter Worth Smith and Sallie Ann Leachman. (Note: Cora Leachman, Lorene Smith Jandy’s mother, was Sallie Leachman’s sister) Sallie was a teenager when she married for the first time, to a man named Eugene Iglehart in 1907. A year later, she gave birth to a little boy, William Louis Iglehart. However, her marriage to Eugene had ended by the time of the 1910 census, when Sallie and little William were living with her parents.

Sallie married again on November 24, 1911. Her husband, George England, was 22 years her senior. She had five children with him over some fifteen years of marriage: sons Carter Wesley, George Thomas “Tommie”, and Henry Lewis, and daughters Ola and Cora (named in honor of Sallie’s aunt Cora Leachman Smith). Strangely, by the 1920 census, her son from her first marriage was no longer living with her despite his being only twelve. I find no record of him anywhere until he appears as a married adult in the 1930 census. I am guessing Sallie’s new husband didn’t want her son living with them.

Sallie’s new marriage also failed, and by the 1930 census Sallie was farming on her own as a divorced woman. Her youngest son, Henry, had died a few years earlier, so she was living with her other four England children.

However, by 1935, she had married a third time, to widower Herman Evans. Sallie’s sons were now adults, but her two daughters were sixteen and thirteen, so were now living with their stepfather. Herman’s sons were all adults; the youngest, JD, was eighteen, and the next oldest, Robert Lee, was 22. It is unclear if they were still living at home.

Wherever Robert Lee Evans was living, he must have been close enough to visit his father, stepmother and stepsisters frequently. He watched his stepsister grow up and fell in love with her. Robert Lee married his stepsister, Cora Jane England, on September 27, 1941. Robert was 28, and Cora was just 19 years old.

The newspaper announcement was carefully worded so that most readers would have had no idea the young couple were stepbrother and stepsister. “Mrs. Sallie Evans” announced the marriage of her daughter. The use of Sallie’s first name in this way is unusual for the time period. Wives were usually referenced by their husband’s name, so she should have been listed as “Mrs. Herman Evans”.

In addition, the groom’s home was listed as Louisville where he now worked, with no reference to the fact that he grew up in the house now occupied by Mrs. Sallie Evans and her husband Herman.

The write-up went on to state that “Mrs. Evans (meaning Cora) is a daughter of Mr. George England. Mr. Evans is a son of Mr. Herman Evans. Mr. and Mrs. Evans will reside at 1706 Owen Street, Louisville, where Mr. Evans is employed.” You would never realize, unless you knew the people involved, that Herman and Sallie were married, and that their children have now married. I feel the article was worded in this way to avoid gossip—step-siblings marrying was and still is a little unusual.

The marriage lasted forty-eight years, before Robert Lee Evans death in 1989. Cora and Robert had two children, a daughter named Betty Jane and a son named James David. Robert Lee farmed in McLean County, Kentucky, and Cora worked in the dietary department of Riverside Manor Health Care Center in Calhoun, Kentucky. Cora died at age 72 on November 3, 1994.

While Cora and Robert may have met as a result of their parents’ marriage, they formed their own family, moving from step-siblings to lifelong partners.

Sources:

Findagrave Entry for Robert Lee Evans. Photo by Anita R. Austill.

Cora Jane Evans obituary. https://www.newspapers.com/image/379503047