Maria Artlysia Boblit Tracy remarried after my great great grandfather John Edward Tracy died in 1896. After digging around I found she remarried July 4, 1900 a John Burwell Forbes. At the time of their marriage she was 60 and he was 58 years old. He had a family before he married Maria and was himself a widower. I then remembered there were some Forbes pictures mixed in with the family pictures so I dug them out. They lived in Dodge County, Nebraska after they married and he died January 10, 1904. She died two years later, March 21, 1906.
The mystery now is; how did they know each other? In the 1900 Census he isenumerated as living with his son in Monona county, Iowa. The census is dated June 15, 1900 and they were married July 4th. I have to assume they had met before this. I did find that his family was living in McLean county, Illinois in the 1880 census and the Tracy’s lived there until 1873. Although I couldn’t find the right Forbes in the area in the 1870 census I’m almost positive they were nearby. So maybe they were neighbors and family friends. The Tracy’s only lived in the McLean area for about seven years but this is the only connection I can find. If this is the case did the families keep up correspondence all these years or did they reconnect after Mr. Tracy’s death and decide to get married?
