Robert Smith's Tangled Family: Oldest Story

AI Generated Image

 Well I thought my goal this week was to simply write about William "Blinky" Smith marrying his step mother's sister aka his father's wife's sister.  I can't make this stuff up.  The chart below is the summary of the rabbit trail I went down.  As I as building the chart the Lucinda's began to emerge as winners! I put this chart into Chatgpt to help me tell the story and do a few images. 

Can you imagine for just a minute that your loved one's headstone epithet looks anything like this imagined one?  

Let's take a peek at what story our family left for us to untangle. 

Chart of Robert Smith's tangled family.  He eventually had 16 children.  He had 6 with Nancy Sloan and 10 with Millicent Rednour.  

*as a side note, I had to come to the east coast to find relatives buried where my hubby and I will be buried on the west coast!

 So the tale begins:

 A Smith-Rednour-Fueston-Pilgrim Family Tangle

Let’s begin with a fair warning: this family tree is less of a “tree” and more of a topiary hedge sculpted during a windstorm. What started as a simple tracing of 3x Grandpa Robert Smith’s line turned into something between a Shakespearian love triangle and a 19th-century matchmaking game show. Except… everyone’s a cousin. Or a sibling. Or both?

     It Started with Two Brothers and a Woman Named Nancy

Robert Smith (1812–1882) and his brother Gregory (1808–1882) were just a couple of regular frontier guys who happened to marry and raise families. Gregory married Sarah Dobbs, and Robert married Nancy Sloan. Seems tame enough.

Until Robert’s wife Nancy passed away. That’s when things took a twist sharper than Aunt Thelma’s meringue pie knife.

Robert remarried in 1862… to Millicent Rednour, who of course had a sister named Lucinda. Robert’s son, William “Blinky” Smith (yes, really), decided to keep things in the family  — by marrying Lucinda Rednour, Millicent’s sister, in 1864. So if you’re keeping track:

• Blinky married his step-aunt (who was also his step mother's sister).
• His father is now also his brother-in-law.
• Lucinda Rednour is both his wife and his step-aunt. 
• They have 2 sons, they marry a set of Daniels Sisters! -brothers marry sisters.

Don't think about it too hard, it'll make your brain cramp.

   Lucinda of Another Generation

The next generation decides  “Let’s keep the family name of Smith going, how about it Lucinda?!” and Harrison Smith and Lucinda Ellen Smith (yes, yet ANOTHER Lucinda) — cousins — married in 1879
 and had six kids.    

The Double Wedding Bonus Round

Now let’s swing over to the Fueston family, who brought their own flair to the drama. In 1905, Henry Fueston married Lucinda Pilgrim (yes, another Lucinda), and just a few months later his sister Malinda Fueston married Lucinda’s brother James Pilgrim.

So we’ve got:

• Brother and sister marrying…
• Sister and brother.

That’s a lot of Fuestons at Thanksgiving.

Let’s pause here to ask the burning question:

       “What’s Up With All the Lucindas?”

Honestly, we don’t know. Was Lucinda the Jennifer of the 1800s? Did the midwife have a naming chart with only one name on it? Or did the Rednour-Smith-Fueston-Pilgrim clan just have a Lucinda quota to fill?

By the third Lucinda, we stopped trying to track who was who and just started assigning nicknames:

• Lucinda the Step-Aunt-Wife,
• Lucinda the Pilgrim-Wife-Sister,
• and Lucinda the Cousin-Bride.

                                    Final Thought: It's All Relative (Literally)

At some point, this family gave up on branches and just started braiding the tree. And while we might never fully unravel who married whom without a color-coded spreadsheet, one thing is clear:

These folks didn’t just marry into the family — they doubled down.

So next time your family reunion feels a little crowded, just remember — at least your brother isn’t also your uncle, and your stepmom didn’t introduce you to your wife....Probably.

Our Lucinda's mystery deserve a monument!

I can't help but think of and hear in my head this song by Ray Stevens 

I Am My Own Grandpa

And That is a Wrap....

The threads of another story told, keeping our family story alive.

Barbara 

Next week: #17  DNA

Big Mistake

 Meet George McClure Fueston (1878-1959) and his bride Edith Trent (1884-1966)

"America's most committed co-defendants:
George and Edith Fueston, partners in love, crime
and questionable sleeping arrangements."

What a handsome couple right? They were married in 1900, he was over 21 and she was over 18 indicating both were of age when married.  Let's peek into their lives and see if marring each other was a big mistake or if getting caught for misbehavior was the mistake. 

Big Mistake

A Weekly Family Story

Some people make a mistake and learn from it. Others marry the mistake, have a child with it, get arrested twice (maybe three times), and then have the good fortune to live out their golden years in peace. Such is the rollercoaster romance of George McClure Fueston and Edith Trent, a couple who redefined the phrase “it’s complicated.”

Meet the Fuestons

In 1900, George, a 22-year-old with a talent for making regrettable decisions, married 18-year-old Edith Trent.¹ 

By 1901, they had a child—an auspicious beginning for what would become a uniquely scandal-filled partnership.

Over the next few decades, their names would pop up in the most delightful corners of police records and local gossip columns. Arrests, scandal, mystery men—it's like they were trying to get a Netflix miniseries deal a century before it was possible.

The 1911 Oops

Their first known brush with the law came in 1911, when they were arrested for unlawful cohabitation and vagrancy.² 

It’s unclear whether the law was punishing them for being married but not behaving like it—or for behaving like they were brother and sister and not married when they were. 

At the time, family researchers suspected a fellow named Charles Francis might’ve been involved. But as it turns out, the true third wheel may have changed, more than once, over time.  

The 1916 Spectacle: Enter H. Courtney

In 1916, the Fuestons were arrested again—this time for gross lewdness, and this time, it wasn’t just the two of them. They brought along a third party: H. Courtney, a returned trooper and landscape gardener who found himself in the middle of a love triangle… that he didn’t realize was a triangle.³

Courtney testified that he’d been sweet on “Miss Edith Brown” (a.k.a. Edith Trent Fueston) for over a year. He genuinely thought he was going to marry her. In fact, he even slept in the same bed as her—and, oh yes, her “brother,” George Fueston.³

Imagine his surprise when he learned, just days before the arrest, that George wasn’t her brother at all, but her husband.

Poor guy. He brought love letters to court as evidence of his feelings. She had met him at the train station, thrown her arms around him, kissed him, and whisked him back to the house. George was there. Everyone was there. It was like a very awkward episode of Three’s Company, except everyone got arrested.

Let’s just say H. Courtney left the house with fewer illusions and probably fewer clean socks.

"Although the three slept in the same bed, [Courtney] was under the impression that George Fueston was her brother, and did not learn that Fueston and the woman were married until Monday, when the trouble arose..."
— The Spokesman-Review, 19 Oct 1916⁴

It’s the Victorian equivalent of a Maury Povich reveal. (“George… is the husband!”)

The Mysterious 1930 Arrest

Just when you thought they might’ve learned their lesson, the Fuestons pop up again in 1930. Arrested once more—but this time the charges are lost to history. Gambling? Moonshine? Public indecency? All of the above?

Whatever the reason, it was their final known run-in with the law. After that? Silence. Not a peep in the police blotter. Not a whisper in the local paper. Either they finally settled down, or they got really good at not getting caught.

Side by Side in the End

Despite the drama, the arrests, and the whole "surprise you're not my brother" incident, George and Edith stuck together. When they died—George in 1959, Edith in 1966—they were buried side by side. A permanent reminder that sometimes, the biggest mistakes are the ones you never walk away from.

Photo personal collection Barbara Fueston Grandon

What Can We Learn?

• Never assume the guy in your bed is anyone’s brother.
• If you’re writing love letters, make sure your “fiancée” isn’t already married (and sleeping in that same bed).
• And if you’re George and Edith… well, I guess the lesson is: go big, go bold, and go to court—together.

Sources Cited

¹ St. Louis, Missouri, Marriage License Book, 1900; Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.
² Family knowledge based on police blotter entries, 1911, location presumed St. Louis, Missouri.
³ The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA), 19 Oct. 1916, p. 6, “Denies Charge of Lewdness.” Newspapers.com, clipped by barbgrandon, 9 Sept. 2022.
⁴ Ibid.

And that's a wrap!

Next week #15

Oldest Story

Keeping Family Story Alive

Barbara 

Lauguage

The Love Language of Barn Doors and Backhanded Wisdom

Week #13

When people talk about "love languages," they usually mean things like words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service. You know, the stuff greeting cards are made of. But in my family, we spoke a different kind of love language—one that sounded a lot more like a raised voice from the kitchen and a heavy sigh from the hallway.

We were an English-only household, which meant no language barriers—at least not in the traditional sense. But that doesn’t mean communication was always crystal clear. In fact, the way my family expressed love was more like a series of shouted riddles, mild insults, and unintentional pearls of wisdom. Looking back, I now see it for what it was: a deeply odd, uniquely effective, and very funny dialect of family love.

Take, for instance, this gem yelled regularly through a screen door:

“Were you born in a barn?!”

It wasn’t a genuine question. No one in our family was ever born in a barn, though I imagine it would’ve made for a great family legend if we had. This was code for, “Please shut the door before the entire air conditioning budget escapes into the wild.” It was a love language of climate control, concern for utility bills, and mild exasperation.

Then there was my father’s signature phrase:

“What are you, stupid?”

Harsh, right? But hear me out. It wasn’t really an insult. It was more of a punctuation mark. A way to express disbelief, disappointment, and oddly enough—investment. My father cared that we were making good choices. He just didn’t always wrap it in a fuzzy blanket of affirmations. His tone said, “I expect better from you,” and also maybe, “I know you’re smarter than that because you inherited my genes, after all.”

It took me a few decades to understand that “What are you, stupid?” was, in its own gruff way, a verbal pat on the back. The love was in the expectation that we could do better. That we would do better. And that he’d still be there, sighing in the background, even when we didn’t.

And of course, the classic:

“If you don’t have anything nice to say, keep your mouth shut.”

Part moral code, part self-preservation strategy. This was the family version of Geneva Convention rules for siblings. My mother wielded this phrase like a verbal fly swatter, designed to keep peace, prevent tattling, and maybe—just maybe—encourage a little empathy. Or silence. Either one would do.

I didn’t grow up speaking a second language, but I did grow up interpreting one. One where sarcasm meant concern. Where yelling meant someone left the door open again. Where criticism came with a side of casserole. And where love was measured not in hugs or poetry, but in daily check-ins disguised as judgmental observations.

So no, I wasn’t born in a barn. But I was raised in a household where the language of love was loud, a little rough around the edges, and spoken fluently by everyone who ever told me to keep my mouth shut out of love.

And honestly? I wouldn't trade that translation guide for anything.

Does your family have any of these types of 'language' comments that have stuck with you over the years?

And That's a Wrap

Barbara 

Keeping Family Story Alive

Next weeks prompt Week 14:  Big Mistake  hum, which one will I write about?