Elizabeth Wolf (Aunt Betts) is a bit of a legend among Pauline Rivers' daughters. Mom told quite few stories about her aunt, and we loved them. Beautiful, willful, a feminist before feminism was a term, a self-made millionaire. Though we didn't really know her well -- other than Joyce who lived in California for a time and visited with Betts -- we knew the stories and thought we knew the woman.
What you're about to read is deviation from my usual approach. Generally I take the data I have found about someone, embed it in the culture of the area and the times and build a speculative narrative. But in Betts's case, I have real conflicts between the myth Betts crafted and the facts. That's a disappointment because I think she probably had a remarkable life; just not the one we were told she had. And it's too late for me to really put it all together. What I have is a good deal of evidence that what she supposedly did wasn't what she actually did. But I don't know why she lied, and some key pieces that would reveal the woman she was are missing, probably never to be found.
The Aunt Betts myth is this. As a young woman, she became furious with her father for leaving his vast holdings to his two living sons, leaving nothing to his daughters on the premise they could marry money. In a huff, Betts left her family and went off in search of her fortune. She found it in California, where she either worked for a stockbroker who taught her how to invest, married a stockbroker who taught her how to invest, or became a stockbroker on the Pacific Exchange. Because of her father, she made certain in her will that only women would inherit her estate. We heard that she never returned to her hometown, Mt. Carmel, Illinois. Of her husband, Dennis Fitzpatrick, we knew almost nothing. End of story. However, keep in mind that this story of a strong, independent woman had quite an impact on those young women who heard it. I, for one, was rather in awe of this tough bird. When I finally met her in 1974, she was elderly, lucid, charming, sophisticated, and generous.
The trouble with the myth is that, other than the business of the will, as far as I can determine, none of it fits the facts. I've spent a lot of time off and on tracking down (or actually NOT tracking down) Betts and I'm feeling a bit bereft. An icon has cracked and just might be turning to dust.
I'm going to preface this with an important caveat. While Mt. Carmel had a variety of newspapers that were thriving in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there don't appear to be many editions in archives, real or digital. So while I can trace the Bushu activities in Mattoon papers (their comings and goings are breathlessly reported and sometimes various Wolfs were included, including Betts for a brief period in 1914-1915), I've yet to find more than a scattering of Mt. Carmel papers, and the Wolfs are not in them. No birth, wedding, or death announcements, no soirees, no travel news, no business brags, no sales, no lawsuits, no scandals. I have a few obituaries, and that's it. It's a massive shame, not just because we've lost all the fascinating social history of our family, but because the vibrancy of journalism of that period was and is worth preserving, and it wasn't.
Back to our story.
Elizabeth was born Jan 20, 1883 to Francis J. Wolf and Eva Hertling Wolf in Mt. Carmel, IL. She was the fourth child and fourth daughter, and my guess is that her dad wasn't exactly thrilled to have yet another girl. Eva had been producing girl children on a regular basis, starting with Mary in 1876, Til in 1878, and Ida in 1880. Men of that era, especially men who were making something of themselves, as Frank was, wanted sons. In 1885, Eva would finally present Frank with son Henry, and I'm willing to bet that Henry became the center of his father's world. The 1883 baby girl was christened simply Elizabeth — no middle name, an anomaly for the time — on 21 February, 1883 at St. Mary's Catholic Church. Her godparents were Johannes and Elizabeth Schmitt.
An early census tells us that Betts completed the sixth grade (a later one changes that to third year of high school). She probably attended St. Mary's Catholic elementary school (St. Mary's has no records for that period); I don't know where she would have gone to high school, if in fact she did. She appears with her family in the 1900 census (as Lizzie, age 17) and In 1908, at 25, she was one of the witnesses to Ida and Herbert's wedding. But in 1910, when she would have been 27, I can’t find her ANYWHERE. I’ve done the standard searches in the census, and I’ve gone through all the pages of the three Mt. Carmel districts’ censuses, and she isn’t in any of them. Frank G., Pauline, and Ray are with Frank and Eva but there's no mention of Elizabeth. My best guess is that she’s staying with one of her sisters, possibly Ida, who has a new baby, or Mary, who dies at the end of the year of TB, but she doesn't appear with them in the census. Maybe she's bouncing between her sisters and her parents and so is simply missed in the census. In 1914, when she visits her sister Pauline in Mattoon, the newspaper reports her as "of Mt. Carmel." The newspapers were pretty careful to specify where someone made her home, so in the absence of evidence, I'm applying Occam's razor and going with the easiest answer: She's in Mt. Carmel.
(In the interest of making sure what I know doesn't get lost, I shall wander off topic for a second. Francis Joseph Wolf was quite possibly an ambitious lad, one who broke with his Indiana family soon after marriage. The family farmed, and that doesn't seem to have appealed to him. More tellingly though, in my mind, is that his break may not have been cordial. Only Rosa carries a name that echoes his family. Frank's father was Martin, his grandfather Peter; those names do not appear in his children. I don't know if that means he simply rejected the old world naming conventions, if it was Eva's influence, or if there were more than miles between him and his family. I mention this because an easy place for an unmarried woman to go would be to her father or mother's family. And I really doubt that's where Elizabeth was in 1910, not only because I think Betts was too ambitious to submit to an agrarian lifestyle, but because I don't think Frank's relations with his family were that cordial. But I'm absolutely speculating here.)
And I did look briefly into the possibility she was with her Hertling relations. That is, of course, possible, but I haven't seen any evidence that the Wolf family was tight with Eva's relatives. Her brother Philip moved to Mt. Carmel in 1900 and I think he and his wife MIGHT have been the unidentified couple in a late photo of Frank and Eva. I will investigate that possibility if I ever run out of other stuff to look up. Right now, I've decided Elizabeth's whereabouts in 1910 aren't that central.)
In 1911 or so, Betts moved to Colorado Springs with her sister Ida Wolf Bushu, who relocated there, sometime between June and Nov of 1911, in hopes of defeating tuberculosis. I know Betts was there; she's listed in the 1912 city directory. But I don't know for how long. She and Ida are not listed in the 1913 directory. Ida died of TB in March of 1915, in Mt. Carmel, and Ida's obituary names Elizabeth as one of her sisters living in Mt. Carmel. I’m going to guess that Betts stayed with Ida during her illness after they returned to Mt. Carmel, but I have no evidence of that (you will get tired of me saying that). It would appear that Betts and Ida were close; Ida's death must have hit Betts very hard.
On August 28, 1914, Elizabeth Wolf accompanied her sister Pauline Bushu back to Mattoon. The newspaper doesn't indicate how long she stayed. And two months after Ida's death, from May 14 to at least June 25, Elizabeth spends time in Mattoon with Pauline. I searched the Mattoon newspapers for more mentions of Elizabeth and came up blank.
Betts next appears, perhaps, in the 1920 census in Salt Lake City, working as a shopgirl. I have a photo of her taken in some western location, so it's certainly plausible to think this is she. This Elizabeth Wolf is the only one in the entire US 1920 census who is a reasonable match. The census data are accurate (her birthplace and her parents’ birthplaces) except for her age; the census says this 37 year old woman was 29. We know that census data are often inaccurate so perhaps this is Betts. In 1920, her parents are living in San Diego, for what earthly reason I haven't a clue. Just in case Frank and Eva had gone to San Diego to be near Betts — for whatever reason — I checked the San Diego City Directories from 1919-1921 and found her none of them.
Around 1926, when she was 43, but before April 1927, Betts married Dennis Fitzpatrick, an car service agent for the railroad in San Francisco. And before you ask, I don't know where they met, where she was living when they met, or where and when they married. I do know Dennis was born in Cincinnati August 12, 1868, married Maggie Crowley at 19, and with her produced at least three children (Hattie, Kathleen, and Edward John). I presume he was a widower when he met Betts. Mother told me once that she didn't like Dennis; he'd once made a pass at her. I have no idea how she might have known him; in 1926, Mom was 17. Perhaps she met him at Frank J's funeral in 1927; the obituary makes no mention of Dennis being present (or for that matter, mother, her brother, and her father) but it's reasonable to expect him (and the others) to have been there to pay their last respects. Or perhaps mother met him in Cincinnati. Another puzzle piece that is just floating around the periphery of Betts' life.
In 1927, Frank J. Wolf died, and Betts is named in his obituary as attending the funeral. Frank had turned over his businesses to his two sons prior to his death, so his daughters did not share in that wealth. However, Frank did leave property to his surviving daughters (and his grandchildren), and Elizabeth got a building in Mt. Carmel.
Frank Wolf was a self-made man; he started a soft drink company in 1886 (Wolf Soda) in Mt. Carmel, Illinois that ultimately became a bottler for Coca-Cola (1905-1975). He invested his profits in land and oil leases, and when he died, he left behind a lot of property and successful businesses. His pride in his success is evident in the photos we have the era, formal portraits of his daughters (he would have two more girls after Elizabeth, Rosa and Pauline, and two more sons) posing in fancy settings and dressed in gorgeous gowns and hats. In fact, we have a wonderful photo of prosperous-looking Frank, decorous Eva, and six children, probably taken in 1888 or so. As the family grew, and Frank prospered, they moved into grander houses; Frank must have felt he was living the American dream. Apparently he invested in Mt. Carmel property and that's what he left to his remaining daughters, but the bulk of his wealth went to the boys, and Betts, according to the family myth, was not pleased.
Presumably after her father's funeral, Betts returned to California. She and Dennis are in the 1930 census; he's an invalid. Dennis died Oct. 30, 1930 at 62. He's buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, Colma, California. They'd been married no more than four years.
At some point after Dennis' death, per Bill Wolf (son of Frank G. Wolf, Betts' brother), Betts returned to Mt. Carmel to care for her mother. Bill said she came home frequently, and that Frank G. paid for those trips. In 1937, Eva died and shortly thereafter, Betts took two ocean voyages: one to Vera Cruz and one to Ireland. Dennis' parents were from Ireland; perhaps she was seeking his roots or visiting his family? I don’t know; I never heard of these trips. Bill thought she stuck around Mt. Carmel for a while after Eva's death, but he isn't sure of the details. Ultimately, she returned to California. In the 1930 census, she's unemployed, and in 1940, she's a clerical worker in a real estate office
Betts appears to have worked in shops and real estate offices and lived in apartments in San Francisco through the 40s, 50s and early 60s. After that she moved into a retirement center run by nuns in San Rafael, California. In the late 1970s Pauline Rivers and Marietta Suer visited Aunt Betts in San Rafael. By this time, Pauline was mildly impaired with Alzheimer’s, and Marietta, who had had a tough life and was a strange woman herself, was helping Pauline with her ADLs. Something happened on this trip, but no one now alive knows what. Whatever it was, it drove Betts to modify her will and disinherit everyone except the convent caring for her and Marietta. She died in 1982, age 99. Her death set off a small war among her female descendants. In her original will, Betts had left half of her estate to the convent where she lived and the other half to her living female relatives. But shortly before her death, she wrote five codicils in which she changed her heirs to just the convent and Marietta Bushu Suer. Many of the women who were disinherited sued, and after all was said and done, the convent got its half undiminished, the lawyers took half of the remaining estate and a bundle of heirs divided the rest.
So who the hell was this woman? Family lore suggests she put Mt. Carmel in her rearview mirror and never looked back; facts say she came home to be the dutiful sister and daughter, and in fact, returned multiple times at her relatives' expense. She married late to an invalid 15 years older. If Betts worked for, was married to, or became a stockbroker, (Tom Gutman, Joyce Rivers' ex-husband, claims she was the first woman stockbroker on the Pacific Exchange), there are no data to back that up. But she left a substantial estate. Was it Dennis's? I have doubts. If Dennis Fitzpatrick had money, we have to assume his children would have been his heirs. And given the apartment he and Betts were in in 1930, I don't think he was wealthy. Where did the money come from?
And more importantly, much more importantly, who was Elizabeth Wolf? Clearly she had a very complicated relationship with her family; Bill Wolf gave me a wonderful photo of her with Bill and his wife Wanda, his mom and dad, and a hunting guide, all of them displaying dead geese, taken maybe in the 60s. He says she hung around Mt. Carmel for a while after Eva died. I think I can understand that. She wandered about the country working wage jobs, married an invalid much older than she who died within a few years, plunged from being his nurse to caring for her mom, and then burying her. No wonder she took off for Mexico and Ireland.
And all we have of her are a few photos, a big box of documents pertaining to the will and its challenge, and the stories in my head. No one knows where the rainbow of her life is; her photos, journals, memorabilia, old clothes, books, address books, calendars, bills, furniture, collectibles. I think the heirs who fought so hard for her money fought only for her money; no one I've asked knows where her "life" went.
I don't have any answers. I want to believe she fell in love with Dennis, and they had three fabulous years together. But I also wonder at times if she were gay and married Dennis as her beard. Or she was tired of knocking around menial jobs and wanted someone to take care of her. Or perhaps she had a wealthy lover -- male or female -- that she couldn't acknowledge. Maybe she embezzled, robbed a bank, found a sackful of 100s on the bus, or ran a brothel. But the puzzle arises not from the tale of the money but from the rift between myth and reality.
The point to genealogy is to answer questions, fill in blanks, get a sense of who you are, where you came from, what shaped you. I'm finding it a bit unsettling to discover that someone who was held up to me as a model is so elusive, so complicated, and ... so human. And then to discover that those who would seem to be nothing special (Yes, I'm looking at you, Mame Wolf Walters Miller) turn out to dazzle. Genealogy: the science of confusing the dead, irritating the living, and upending everything you believe.
