Who was Guy Darby (b. Indiana, 1881)?

Question

US Census, 1930.

I ran across Guy Darby looking for info on my great uncle Elmer Edgerton, who is shown living in Guy's household in 1930.  Elmer had a crippling bone disease and lived with various family members at various times.  This census says Elmer was Guy's cousin.

To be a first cousin, Guy would have to be the son of an older sister of one of Elmer's parents, someone who married a man named Darby.  The sister would have to be older because Guy is 12 years older than Elmer and only 13-14 years younger than Elmer's parents.  Problem is, I know of no older sister for either of his parents.

Before I make this too intricate, what I'm looking for is who were Guy Darby's parents and how is he a cousin of Elmer Edgerton?

Answer 1

Guy Darby and his family appear here in the 1920 census, and he's known as John G. Darby: https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MF7T-G6H

The Family Search hivemind/user submitted trees say that the wife of John Guy Darby (alternately known as Ina or Inez) was a daughter of Charles Dailey and Rachel Jane Edgerton, and that Rachel's parents were Calvin Edgerton and Hannah Overman. So it would seem that Elmer is a most likely a cousin of Guy's wife. Damn censuses!

Comments

Damn censuses is right!  That 1930 census gives his wife's name as "Iya."  I thought that sounded unlikely, but I've seen some very odd given names while doing this research, so I wasn't certain it was wrong.

Thanks so much for your help, Erin.  I think you've solved this particular mystery for me and I appreciate it.  WikiTreers are great!  :-)

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I've had this problem myself a couple of times, finding a "cousin" or "niece" in the census, doing contortions to figure out whose sister the head of the household was married to, only to stumble upon something that revealed that they were related to the wife. Sometimes I need to smack myself and remember that enumerators made tonnes of mistakes, and I'm just as prone to hoping for shortcuts. (I also think there's a generalized tendency to overlook wives because their paper trail tends to be smaller and more fragmented.)

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Absolutely agree on wives.  That's why maiden names are so important.  Nothing will bring you to a dead end quicker than not knowing the wife's maiden name.  How do you search for her parents?

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Take the census in the closest year before her marriage, for her birthplace and the place where she was married, find every unmarried woman with her name, and throw a dart at it. :-P