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Helen Davis (center, front row) and Sarah Marshal (hand on Davis’ shoulder) at a Marshal family reunion, date unknown
Ann Brown
I’m seeking help confirming a family legend about the origins of my late mother, Helen Sarah Louise Davis, on her father’s side. Her parents were Jennie Eleanor Marshal, from Pensacola, Fla., and a man named Charles Call. Family lore says that Call was married to a woman whom he could not divorce because she was in an insane asylum. It also indicates that he was a writer who fled Florida for California after writing something controversial about white people. Once out in California, the story goes, he made a lot of money, which he hid in the wheels of his car. Unfortunately, as he drove back across country, the money burned up from the heat generated by the wheels.
My mother was born “out of wedlock” on April 17, 1914, in St. Louis, we’ve been told. She died in 2003. She was estranged from the Call side of her family for most of her life; however, shortly after retirement, she traveled to Pensacola and met her Call half-siblings. We learned that Charles was the grandson of Keith Call, who served twice as governor of Florida in the 19th century. Unfortunately, we have never been able to find proof of his connection to Charles Call, my grandfather. Can you help me confirm their relationship, please? —Ann Brown
You may not be able to locate proof of the relationship between Jennie Eleanor Marshal and Charles Call unless Call is listed as the father on Helen Sarah Louise Davis’ birth certificate. Public access to Missouri birth records only extends up to 1910, so you will not be able to locate her birth record through a site like Ancestry.com or FamilySearch. However, as a living direct descendant, you could request a copy of the record from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services or through St. Louis County. An original copy of her birth record may help you locate more clues about Helen’s father.
If that is not available, you could explore a connection through DNA evidence by comparing your DNA with that of known descendants of Charles Call. Try using one of the major testing services, such as 23andMe, AncestryDNA or FamilyTreeDNA. Even if you cannot find a known descendant of Call’s through conventional means, the major services have databases of individuals whom they have tested and who have agreed to make their information available to be matched with potential relatives. There’s a chance you could find a definitive connection that way, too.
What Do We Know About Helen Davis and Jennie Marshal?
We located Helen in the Social Security Applications and Claims index (available through Ancestry.com; subscription required), which records her mother as Jennie E. Marshall and father as John Davis. Perhaps this is the man through whom Helen got the surname “Davis”?
This record helped us to then locate Helen in the 1920 U.S. census living with her mother, Jennie Davis, in the household of her grandmother Sarah Marshal in Philadelphia. This was the first census record that would include Helen, and it states that she was 5 years old, born in Missouri. This matches what you know about her. Since she would not be included in any earlier records, you’ll need to turn your attention to her mother, Jennie E. Marshall (“Davis,” in this record), to see if you can determine whether there is any truth to your family lore.
According to the 1920 census, Jennie (Marshall) Davis was born around 1882 in Florida. We did not find her under the surname “Marshall” or “Davis” in 1910. However, when you told us in a subsequent email that Sarah Marshal had been married to a man named Caesar, we searched the 1900 census for a black female named Jennie born between 1880 and 1885 in Florida and pulled up this record for a 17-year-old Jennie Frazier whose parents were named Sarah and Caesar Frazier. The parents’ names match and she is about the right age. Perhaps this is your Jennie Davis and Sarah Marshal.
Using that information, we found a record in the 1910 census for 29-year-old Jennie Frasier, a black woman living in Tallahassee, Fla. This is just a few years before your mother’s birth, so you’ll want to focus your search efforts to see if you can locate Charles Call in close proximity to her. To account for a surname change from “Frazier/Frasier” to “Davis,” we suggest that you look for a marriage record between 1910 and 1914. Unfortunately, the Florida Marriage Index has a gap in the records between 1875 and 1927. According to the state of Florida, any marriage record before June 6, 1927, must be obtained from the county clerk of the court where the marriage license was issued.
What Do We Know About Charles Call?
We were able to locate a Charlie Call, a married black man in Pensacola in 1920 roughly the right age, who seems to have been living alone. Could this be because his wife was institutionalized, as your family lore states? We don’t know; and because of the time gap in the Florida Marriage Index previously described, we were not able to search for a marriage index record. We should also note that the census taker recorded that this man could not read or write, though all we really know from this is that either this was what Charlie told the census taker or this is what the census taker’s own impression was. If your family lore about him writing controversial things is true, perhaps Charlie provided the safest answer to the census taker.
We jumped ahead 10 years to the 1930 census and found a record for a Charles F. Call in Pensacola who was the 60-year-old single uncle of the head of the household, Bertie Gibbs. If this is the same man, as we suspect, perhaps there is a divorce record to be found. We also suggest looking into the Gibbs family to see if there is a connection or any more clues that might help solve the mystery of whether Charles Call had been married.
To check out your family lore about his time in California, we searched for a Charles Call in that state during the same time period but did not pull up any records. This does not mean he wasn’t there, but it seems likely that his permanent residence remained in Florida.
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