Irony, Thy Name Is Genealogy

Or Something

So I'm working on Knapper's mother's biological family.  She was adopted as an infant by the Wheelers of Coral, Montcalm County, Michigan.  Her birth mother was Louise Knapp.  There's a strange coincidence right there.  So his mother was born Phyllis Knapp.  Her birth mother, Louise, had 4 more children with Phyllis's father between 1930 and her death in 1935 at the age of 24 of pneumonia.  The death record I found listed her name as Louise Purcell, but she's buried in a Newaygo County cemetery as Louise Knapp.

I have found in the census records a man of the right age to be the father of her children: Robert Wayne Purcell.  He died in 1937.  I can find no census records of Phyllis' brother and sisters.  I don't know who raised them all after the deaths of their parents.  That's a mystery to which I may never discover the answer.  Sort of like Abner Lemon. 

But I was doing research on Phyllis' mother's side of the family, the Knapps.  Anna May White married George Knapp.  George Knapp's mother was Mary Pamelia Lindsley.  It's her side I'm researching tonight.  Mary Pamelia had a sister named Elsie.  Elsie married a man named Robert Tawney from Newaygo.  His mother was Martha Jane Wright, the sister of Guy Wright, who was the father of Zelma Wright, who was the mother of Jack Hazen Knapp, the husband of Phyllis Knapp Wheeler Knapp.  How odd.  Knapper's family used to go to Wright reunions.  I wonder if Phyllis ever met the Tawneys?

Life is a series of strange coincidences.