Marriage Annulled

After looking into New Orleans Parish Marriages and news articles I previously missed, I'm taking one last recap on Marguerite Barba, first wife of my great-grandfather Harry O'Brien. After separating from Harry and returning to New Orleans (likely in 1909 or early 1910), Marguerite married Charles LeMore in New Orleans on 14 November 1911. Her sister Leonora was one of the witnesses (listed as Mrs. F. H. Jaubert).

FamilySearch. New Orleans Parish Marriages, 1911.

A problem was that Marguerite was still technically married to Harry. While the divorce had been filed in Illinois on 24 June 1911, the petition was not granted by the court until 28 November 1911. Marguerite did not learn of this until January 1913. By then her marriage to LeMore was also over, but she still had this problem to resolve. According to a news article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune from 22 January 1915, Marguerite petitioned the court in New Orleans to dissolve her marriage to LeMore.

New Orleans Times-Picayune, 22 Jan 1915.

Marguerite continued living with her mother, operating their home with rooms for rent. Her mother passed away on 28 June 1945.

Marguerite died in New Orleans in August 1982, almost 98 years old.

A Change of Name

I have been looking back through historic New Orleans records on FamilySearch, uncovering records that either were not previously available or records that I missed on prior searches. My latest search uncovered what happened to Leonora Barba, sister of Marguerite Barba. When I last wrote about Leonora in 2015, I wrote about her brief scandalous marriage to Frank Fuller in 1903, while she was living in New York City to be an actress. Leonora returned to New Orleans, and was living in the same home as her mother and sister at 708 Carondelet in the 1910 US Census. The 1910 Census record indicated that Leonora was divorced, but I didn't realize she had been twice-divorced by then. The FamilySearch scans of the Louisiana Parish Marriages, 1937-1957 revealed another previously overlooked marriage in 1908, which uncovered the rest of her story.

FamilySearch. New Orleans, 1908.

The image above shows the marriage of Berthold Marno Le Moult to Eleonor Barba on 23 September 1908. Berthold had only been in New Orleans for a year, as seen in this news clipping from September 1907 below.

New Orleans Times-Democrat, 8 Sept 1907.

This marriage appears to have been short-lived, as young Marno returned to Germany and remarried in 1911.

Leonora's third marriage stuck. She met Frank H. Jaubert, likely in New Orleans, and they married in Biloxi, Mississippi over Labor Day weekend in 1911. From this point on, she went by Eleonor (or Eleanor). Interestingly, their marriage record in Harrison County, Mississippi lists her full name as Leonor Barba Fuller and includes her signature.

Biloxi Sun Herald, 8 Sep 1911.

Eleonor appears on a list of US citizens returning from Cuba on the S.S. Atenas, arriving in New Orleans on 25 September 1916. I can picture them spending an anniversary trip in Cuba during the summer of 1916. Or perhaps Frank had regular business there. Frank appears on various New Orleans passenger records between 1916-1926, returning from trips to the Panama Canal Zone and Cuba.

Eleonor was listed on Frank's WWI draft registration card in 1917. This record shows them living in Shreveport, Louisiana. They appear together on a passenger list arriving into New Orleans on 7 September 1925 (see below), perhaps again for another anniversary trip. The S.S. Heredia departed Havana on 5 September 1925.

Source: Ancestry. New Orleans Passenger Lists, 1925.

Frank and Eleanor appear in the New Orleans voter registration records between 1935-1947. She wrote her name as Mrs. Frank H. Jaubert in the voter registration records (1935, 1939, 1940, 1945, 1947). In 1947, they were living in a stately home at 504 Chartres Street in the historic French Quarter. Eleanor's sister Marguerite later moved into the same address.

Frank Hastings Jaubert died in New Orleans on 28 April 1947. His obituary names her as Countess Leonor Barba Le Moult, which is interesting given how briefly she was married to Marno Le Moult.

New Orleans States, 29 Apr 1947.

Eleanor passed away on 10 November 1956. As far as I can tell, she had no children. It is nice to uncover this thread and highlight her story, even if it is tangentially connected to my own family history. I imagine my great-grandfather Harry had quite a few interactions with Leonora, later Eleanor, during his years in New Orleans. 

Harry's New Orleans Voter Registration

 

FamilySearch, Louisiana Voter Registration, 1906.

Well this is quite the find. I knew that my great-grandfather Harry E. O'Brien had moved to New Orleans to play music and attend Soule Business College. I wasn't entirely sure when he arrived in the city. This new-to-me record puts an earlier date on his arrival. According to his voter registration, Harry arrived in 1902, at the young age of 18, straight out of high school, but other records I've seen show him still in Illinois in 1903. This document also shows his address as 708 Carondelet, the boarding house owned by the mother of his first wife, Marguerite Barba.

Marriage Record for Harry & Marguerite

 

New Orleans Parish Marriage Records, 1906.

I previously wrote about the short-lived marriage of my great-grandfather Harry E. O'Brien, to his first wife Marguerite Barba in 2015, and featured her family again in 2018. I don't think I've posted the actual marriage record before, but I found this on FamilySearch in the New Orleans Parish marriage records. The next image included the back of their marriage record, and contains their signatures, which is pretty cool to see.

Source: FamilySearch.

The marriage was witnessed by O.E. Soderstrom, who may have been a family member or close family friend of the Barbas, and "Mrs. F. A. Fuller" was Marguerite's notorious sister Leonora. There are a few other new-to-me New Orleans records, and I'll be posting more of those soon.

Correcting Errors

 

Source: Ancestry. Hermosillo Marriage Records, Jun 1836.

In 2016, I wrote about the family of my 3rd-great-grandmother, Dolores Quijada. I've revisited her records a few times, but overlooked some key details and had misidentified her parents. My previous post documented her parents as Jose Quijada and Maria Josefa Gradias. These were actually her grandparents. Dolores' correct parents were Jesus Quijada and Maria Rosa Grijalva (also spelled Grijalba). The image above shows the marriage record for Jesus and Maria Rosa, from 23 June 1836 in Hermosillo, Sonora.

Their informacion matrimonial states that Maria Rosa was 18, and her parents were Ramon Grijalva and Maria Josefa Acuña.

Dolores' parents were correctly listed in her informacion matrimonial to Jesus Dias in December 1863. I'm not sure how I missed this.

Informacion Matrimonial for Dolores, 1863.

Ramon Grijalva passed away in San Miguel de Horcasitas, Sonora on 10 April 1872.