The Husband Who Wasn’t

… or, “The Wrong Husband.”  (Like Wallace and Grommit:  “They’re the wrong trousers, Grommit… and they’ve gone wrong!”)  I have been researching the second family of my great-great grandfather George Floyd, because I had an Ancestry DNA match with a descendant of George Floyd and his second wife, Elizabeth Jane Norris through their older daughter Mary Etta “Ettie” Floyd.  Ettie married Charles Eugene DuBose, and one of their daughters was named Lorene DuBose.  A number of family trees give the name of Alvin Matthews Avrett as Lorene’s second husband.  There is a Lorene listed with Alvin Avrett on the 1940 census, but based on that census, she would have been born in 1916, not 1907, which according to all family trees was the date of her birth (we do not have a date of death, but since she may have moved to California, it may be possible to find her date of death there).

On the other hand, the 1930 and 1940 censuses both indicate that the wife of John D. Sappington, born 1906 in Arkansas, was the right age to have been born in 1907. The only wife listed for Alvin Avrett is Geneva Y. Burton, and they were 72 and 65 when they married on 25 June 1985 in Henderson, Texas; this was probably a second marriage for both, and probably followed the death of Alvin’s wife Lorene.  Another date and location of their marriage is given as 30 August 1969 in Dallas County, Texas, when they were 56 and 49 – perhaps they divorced and remarried?

What is even more confusing is that the Alice “Lorene” Bourland Avrett listed on Findagrave is the daughter of William Hansel Bourland and Alice Jones and was born on 24 October 1910 in Dallas County, Texas – obviously not our Lorene.