Stephens Roots: A family tree

Life was difficult back then
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, life must have been pretty tough for most people. If you look at census records and other documents, you see that many men in the south were farmers or tradesmen. They worked with their hands.

Most women took care of the house and children. And there were usually quite a few children to take care of.

Babies, babies, babies
In many families, children were born every two years, almost like clockwork. A gap often meant a stillborn child or a child who died young.

If a wife died, the father was left with the almost impossible task of working 12 hours per day and taking care of children. If a husband died, the wife had to raise children with no source of income. Other family members jumped in and helped when they could.

In the case of my great-grandfather, Dionysius Virgil Stephens, he quickly found a new wife after his first wife died at the age of 26.

 

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The secret wife of Dionysius Virgil Stephens: part 4 (Elizabeth Bauschell)

I still wasn't sure that the information I had found really meant that my great-grandfather had a third wife. Everyone knew about Mary Kitchens and Rebecca Reaves, but did anyone know there might have been a wife number three?

I visited the Georgia State Archives and went to work with the microfilm machine. It's surprising how many people got married in Fulton County in 1907. Page after page after page, and I was getting a headache. But I finally found it. On November 19, 1907, D. V. Stephens married Mrs. Elizabeth Bauschell. Note that this is "Mrs." Bauschell, a widow, just as mentioned in the news article. This was the correct marriage, but was this man my great-grandfather, or another D. V. Stephens? I needed proof.

I contacted my second cousin Christine Stephens Kelly. She said that yes, she had heard a rumor about a third wife, but she had no proof. More ammunition. Later, a more distant relative, Nell O'Shields, said she was very much aware of the third wife, and she told me several family stories about her, a woman known as Mrs. Bauschell. This was proof enough for me.

I wanted to know why he married for a third time, at the end of the same year that wife Rebecca had died. Nell said that Dionysius, then a Baptist preacher, said that the Bible said "it is better to marry than burn." Pretty hot stuff for the early 1900s. Apparently he was looking for considerably more than someone to cook and wash clothes.

But what was the widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Bauschell looking for? Maybe someone to take care of her and keep a roof over her head? That's probably true, because this mystery woman, Elizabeth Gooddy Bauschell, who came to the United States from England when she was a child, was having financial problems.

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Last update: April 7, 2014