Marshall &Kay Family Histories
INGHAM HISTORY
and Personalities
(With My cousin Maureen’s story)
After my Grandfather Ingham passed away, it was hard to come by money then. My Aunt Madeline and Aunt Helen were married. The next one down the list was Aunt Dot (Ardell), then Aunt Alta, then my Uncle Ward, and then my mother (Mary).. But Aunt Alta had sort of run away, she married a Mexican and was also pregnant. Then he left her, so she had to come back home without a husband and pregnant. Any way that was Maureen's father. I guess Aunt Alta had a reputation for being a romantic, but very very unrealistic. She was always ,I guess, kind of the one they were worried about, the one that was going to get in trouble. Mostly, I think, she was just terribly, terribly unrealistic, she was a romantic. She remained that way all her life. I remember Maureen used to kind of shake her head about it. She would say, I don't know how mother thinks she's going to be able to do some of these things. She was so unrealistic." It turns out that Maureen's father was quite a wealthy Mexican young man, from quite a wealthy well known Mexican family. He had just come up to the states to play around for a while or something and that's when he met Ardell. They were all very strong Catholics (his family). He never did tell his family that he had married her, because he was afraid he'd be disowned or something. So when he left her he didn't let her know his whereabouts or anything. He didn't want her to ever find him. Some years later when Maureen was young, married, and was trying to do her own genealogy, she started asking her mother many questions about who her real father was, and was trying to get information about him. She got as much information as her mother could give her. Then she started actually searching for him down there in Mexico. She wanted to make contact, but she wasn't on high hopes that she would be accepted or anything. I guess she definitely did find out, who he was and where he was. She didn't want to approach him because she didn't know if she would be accepted. Instead she sent him a couple of registered letters, so she knew he received them. She went to a lot of trouble to make sure that he actually got them, literally. But she never ever heard back from him at all, ever. To the extent that she really felt strongly that he didn't want to be reached, he still didn't want his family to know anything about it. So for Maureen it's kind of a bitter thing. She didn't want to bother him, but she wanted todo her genealogy her ancestors.. That was a long time ago. But that was hard for her.
Maureen remained active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, she married an Italian who was also a very, very strong catholic. He spent about four years of the first years of their marriage in the South Pacific in WW II. It was just a miracle that he lived through it, because he kept having to stay there, he never got back home. During that time Maureen worried and worried herself do death, she lost almost all her hair. But about three years after he came back, he decided to listen to the missionaries. And he's probably one of the strongest members of the church that I've ever met. But I always felt like that's what would happen, because he was a strong catholic. In other words, since he was a very faithful man, and a very religious person, when he recognized the truth there was just no stopping him. He was so strong in the church. He raised all of his kids in the church. And he was thrilled because they had one son, who was called on a mission to Italy. He was able to go into the area where his ancestors came from, so that was a real thrill for their family.
Maureen and her family often visited the house on the beach - "The Beach Property". However, that's not where she lived. Helen and Jean and her family were the ones that were living on the beach.