A musing about Mabel Mae Scott

As noted previously, there is a sibling conflict in my great-grandmother’s family, namely she has a brother Aaron (with a birth record) and a sister Mabel (without a birth record) born respectively in March and May of 1882. Mabel’s birth information is included in her death information, and she is referred to a few times in other documents as a sister to Aaron and also my great-grandmother Leta.

I keep trying to figure out how this can be. While I have recovered some new information recently, it does not provide any conclusive detail, but it has lead me into a creative storyline. In this newly recovered information, there is a newspaper clipping noting that five of the Scott siblings were reunited after 33 years, when sister Louise and her daughter traveled British Columbia to visit Mabel, and then brought her back for a family reunion. Alas, whoever saved the clipping did not include the date, but based on other information, it takes place before 1946 and around Labor Day. The article notes that while visiting Mabel was going to visit an aunt named Lydia Lutman.

Front row (l to r): Louise Scott Wescotte, Florence Burrell Scott,Mabel Scott Worthing, Nellie Scott Jaquillard, Leta Scott Fields; back row: Hiram Wescotte, Aaron Scott, Floyd Worthing, Frank Jaquillard, Bob Fields

Lydia is the younger sister of Julia Ann Snyder Scott. While I have found her death record, I have not yet found her birth record or her marriage record. But from the article, with all of the Snyders and Scotts in the area, why would Mabel choose only Aunt Lydia to visit?

Unless…

Thus, my musing.

What if before she married Lydia found herself with child? And to help out her sister, Julia and her husband David took the child after it was born, giving Lydia the freedom to marry and have a safe and “appropriate” family life. Now, because we know that Aaron left his family for a while, what if Mabel and Aaron were raised as twins, and only later on found out that actually Mabel was a sister in family life only. This may have caused a rift in the family life, particularly for Aaron and Mabel who both may have felt betrayed and subsequently left—he to become a vagabond of sorts in Arizona and Nevada, and she to British Columbia, where she married another American (Frank Worthing) and set up a household. (It may even be possible to have brother Fred disappear as well as a result of this long-lived subterfuge.

Then, 33 years later, her sister Louise basically visits Mabel to reconcile, and Mabel agrees. Much of the family is reunited and going forward the siblings remain in regular contact (and even visit one another). I do know that in the 1950s, after her husband died, Mabel joined Leta on a trip to Florida. I have a bookmark in Leta’s Bible and pictures as evidence.

While I am strongly considering this scenario, my research is yet incomplete and at any time, a different may alter what I am considering.