Sunday, March 12, 2017

Sentimental Sunday: Snow and Sunshine - Fearless Females Neva Marie and Florida "Sally" Wolfe, ABT 1930



According to the label on this picture (in an album owned by my first cousin twice removed Shirley Thompson, which I got to see at a Shelton family reunion in June 2016), this is a photograph of my great aunt Neva Marie Wolfe Ely (1912-1995) and her sister-in-law, Florida Louise "Sally" Lasyone Wolfe (1911-1963).  The photo was taken at the "big white house, Pasadena, TX, around 1930, where Adilee & Charles Harris lived."

Adilee would be my great-grandmother Addilee Tennessee Shelton Wolfe Odom Harris (1890-1977), and Charles Burroughs Harris would be her third husband (1887-1959).  On the 1930 Census, they were living (with Neva, who always went by Marie) on S. Shaver Street in Pasadena, Texas, so that is probably the house referred to.

The name Neva derives from the Latin word for snow, and of course Florida makes me think of sunshine, hence the title of this post.  I've written about Marie in a previous post; here's what I could learn about Sally.

Florida Louise "Sally" Lasyone was born April 24, 1911, in Verda, Grant Parish, Louisiana.  She was the fourth and youngest child of Florian "Foy" Lasyone (1860-1911), who died a month before she was born, and Mary Adeline Chelette (1866-1957).  I suspect that is why she was named Florida - to honor her father - but my mother knew her as Aunt Sally.

I don't know where Sally was in 1920.  I have not been able to find her, nor her mother, nor her older brother and sister in that census (another sister had died in 1900).  Family stories indicate that she married my great uncle, Lloyd L. Wolfe (1906-1993) on May 31, 1927, when she was just 16 years old.  I am guessing that they met because Sally was a first cousin to Peter Lee Chelette (1902-1997), who married Addilee's sister Pearl Vivian Shelton (1909-1923) the year before, on June 16, 1926.

By the time of the 1930 Census (taken on April ), Sally and Lloyd are living at 3303 Gano in Houston, with a family of four rooming with them.  By this time, Sally has already had one child who has died (based on the birth certificates of her two daughters).

Sally's and Lloyd's children were Jeannine Yvonne Wolfe Canaday Alton Coon Jefferis (1930-2008), and Joyce Elaine Wolfe Whitehead Simpson Starritt Taylor (1932-2011).  In the 1940 Census, the family is living at 4918 Wipprecht Street in Houston.

Sally died from leukemia on April 29, 1963, just after her 52nd birthday.  She is buried in Forest Park Cemetery in Houston.


© Amanda Pape - 2017 - click here to e-mail me.

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