Mary Geneva Crawford, or Aunt Neva to my mother and her siblings was born July 13, 1872 in Galesburg, Illinois. She was the youngest of four children born to Francis Marion and Nancy Rebecca (Dailey) Crawford. She married Joseph McElfish in 1890 in Maryville, Missouri. She and Joseph were the parents of 4 daughters; Stella, Edith, Nora and Helen. The 1900 census shows the family and 3 girls (Helen was not yet born) living in Gravity, Iowa, Joseph's occupation is listed as "telegraph company worker." The 1910 census shows Neva living alone with her four daughters in Bedford, Iowa, her occupation is listed as telephone operator. Iowa state records show that Joseph and Neva were divorced in August of 1916. Neva remarried in August of 1917 to Richard T. Burrell, an attorney in Bedford. He was a widower with 3 children.
According to the Veterans Administration Joseph died on August 22, 1918 in France, he was a PFC in Company E, 32nd Engineers. At the time of his death Joseph would have been 56 years old, his rank was listed as PFC. $10,000 in 2020 dollars equates to almost $150,000.
The news article refers to "The Enoch Arden cases," Enoch Arden is a narrative poem published in 1864 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, during his tenure as England's poet laureate. The poem lent its name to a principle in law that after being missing a certain number of years (typically seven), a person could be declared dead for purposes of remarriage and inheritance. The hero of the poem, fisherman turned merchant sailor Enoch Arden, leaves his wife Annie and three children to go to sea with his old captain, who offers him work after he had lost his job due to an accident; in a manner that reflects the hero's masculine view of personal toil and hardship to support his family, Enoch Arden left his family to better serve them as a husband and father. During his voyage, Enoch Arden is shipwrecked on a desert island with two companions; both eventually die, leaving Arden alone there. Enoch Arden remains lost and missing for more than ten years. He finds upon his return from the sea that his wife, who believed him dead, is married happily to another man.
