Obituary of Marvin Dailey

Thanks to Ancestry user rhondohoyes1950, I was able to locate a copy of the obituary for Marvin DAILEY, second husband of Erma (HAYES) WRIGHT.

Marvin Dailey Passes Away on Thursday


Tipton - Harry Marvin Dailey, 75, of 570 Kentucky avenue, Tipton, died Thursday afternoon at 4 o'clock at the Jones convescent home in Marion.


He was born May 10, 1892, in Fayette county, the son of Oliver and Margaret Farr Dailey.  He was married in 1922 to Irma Wright, and she died in 1949.  In 1951 he was married to Ressie Anderson.


He was a former tinplate worker and resided in Elwood prior to moving to Tipton.  He was last employed at the Tipton County memorial hospital.


Survivors include the widow, two daughters, Mrs. Kenneth Harting Jr., of route 2 Elwood and Mrs. Jack French of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; three sons, Merrill of Kokomo, Warren of Goshen, and Marvin of Trinity, N.C.; the following step children, Mrs. Harry Browning of Tipton, Mrs. Harold Porter, Kenneth Anderson and Thomas, all of Elwood and Warren Anderson of Indianapolis; 19 grandchildren.


The body is in the Mitchell funeral home in Tipton where friends may call anytime.


Funeral services will be conducted at 2 o'clock Saturday afteroon, at the Mitchell home. Rev. Chester Mitchell will officiate.  Burial will be made in the Fairview cemetery.

This obituary gives me some good information, including a timeframe for his marriage to Erma (HAYES) WRIGHT of 1922, and his full name and birthplace.

Wright - Dailey family

I decided to do some fishing this evening to fill in some blanks in my WRIGHT family.  Working with my maternal great-granduncle, Chester Arthur "Mike" WRIGHT and his family, I noticed that I didn't have much on his first wife, Erma Violet HAYES, after her divorce from him and her subsequent marriage to Marvin DAILEY.

Checking out Ancestry.com, I found the DAILEY family living in Campbell County, Kentucky in the 1930 census.  They were enumerated on April 21, 1930.

Marvin's occupation was listed as a steelworker in a rolling mill.  He and Erma's children were listed under the WRIGHT surname, after stepdaughter V. June WRIGHT.


Marvin rented his home, didn't own a radio, and was 37 years old.  Erma, his wife, was 27 years old.  Children listed (under the Wright surname) are : V. June, age 9, Merrill, age 6, Warren, aged 4, and Eugene aged 2.  This is a census enumerator error, as only V[ivian] June should have the WRIGHT surname, the others were children of Erma and Marvin DAILEY.


I do not have the divorce record for Erma and Chester Arthur WRIGHT, but it must have taken place sometime before 1924, probably in Madison County, Indiana.  They were married there on March 5, 1920.

What ever happened to Uncle Mike?

Ever since I started working on my family history, there have been certain gaps in the family story that have intrigued me. Usually these mysteries have been compounded by the fact that none of the current generation was around at the time of the event or the stories were simply not handed down. One of those in my family is that of my maternal great-granduncle, Chester Arthur WRIGHT, whose nickname was "Mike".



Chester Arthur WRIGHT was the son of John William and Ellen (KING) WRIGHT, born October 18, 1896 in Orestes, Madison County, Indiana. He was the younger brother of my great-grandfather, Virgil Lee WRIGHT. Why his nickname was "Mike", is a mystery, although I can imagine that it sounds better than being named after a U.S. President named Chester.



One mystery is why would he be named after this particular U.S. President. Although many babies are named after war heroes and politicians, in this case, Chester Arthur was no longer President. In fact, he had been deceased for 10 years by the time "Mike" came around. There is no known family connection to the Arthur family. Perhaps his parents were Republicans, or admired him for some other reason, but either way he was named for the 21st President.



A few colorful stories have been handed down to me regarding Uncle Mike - one of them being that his father, John, ran off his first wife. Apparently, there was some bad blood and he didn't care for his son's choice. Mike's first wife suppossedly burnt the Wright family bible in anger, so she receives the heresay blame for the loss of this treasure. Who knows what family jewels may have been in this Bible?



Recently, I began to try and piece together the story of Uncle Mike and his family. I knew that he had a daughter from his first marriage, Vivian, whose granddaughter I went to school with. But other than that, I didn't know where and when he died, the name of his second wife, or any other children.



Searching out the census records, in the 1920 census, Chester A. Wright, aged 23 years, single, Farmer who could read and write was living in his father's household, the John W. Wright household, in Monroe Township, Madison County, Indiana. The enumeration date of the census was January 15, 1920, and Mike didn't stay single for too long, as he was married March 5, 1920 in Madison County to Erma Violet HAYES, daughter of John and Cora (Reason) HAYES.



By the 1930 census, Chester A. Wright, aged 33 years, divorced, Farmer was again living with in his father's household in Monroe Township. So, sometime between those ten years, he married, had a daughter, and was divorced. The search for the missing years was on - and I still needed to find out how the story would end.



Through newspaper sources, I was able to find the obituary of Mike's daugther, Vivian, in the Elwood, Indiana Call-Leader. In the obituary, it stated that Vivian was the daughter of Marvin and Erma (Hayes) Dailey, and listed her children and grandchildren, some of whom I already knew. One key fact was Erma's remarriage to Marvin Dailey. With this piece of information, I was able to find her obituary as well and learn that she had other children from her second marriage. Erma was born in nearby Frankton, Indiana on May 2, 1902, and would have been only 17 when she married Uncle Mike.



Searching in the Elwood Public Library, I was able to find birth records of the other children of Erma with Marvin Dailey and find out that she and Uncle Mike hadn't been married very long before the were divorced, perhaps only a couple of years. Maybe the story about her being run off by my 2nd-great grandfather was true. I still need to seek out the divorce records in the Madison County courthouse.



After the 1930 census, I didn't have any other records in my database that would shed any light on what had happened to Uncle Mike. I knew that he was still living at the time of his father's death in 1945, as he was mentioned in the obituary. For some reason, I had neglected to retrace my steps, as if I had done that, I would have found that I had his date of death, 1955, right under my nose.



The Alexandria-Monroe Township Public Library has an online database of obituaries from local newspapers, and I was able to find that the obituary for Chester Arthur Wright appeared on June 21, 1955 in the Alexandria Times-Tribune. I was quickly able to locate not only his obituary, but funeral notices over the next few days to piece together the end of the story. Interestingly, though he lived his entire life in the area, he was rushed to a Columbus, Ohio hospital where he died. The State of Ohio has many death certificates online, but they stop in 1953, just shy of the year I need to see this one, so I will have to write to them to obtain more details.



His obituary mentioned a second wife, Mamie, and a daughter Patricia. My mother said she remembers hearing that name, and thinks that Patricia may have been Mamie's daughter that Mike adopted and took the Wright name - but there is a whole new avenue to research.



Chester Arthur Wright, son of John William and Ellen (King) Wright was born October 18, 1896 Orestes, Madison County, Indiana, died June 20, 1955 Columbus, Ohio. He married Mamie Lawson in Alexandria, Madison County, Indiana in 1939.

Obituary : Vivian Harting (1920-2000)

Source : Elwood, Indiana Call-Leader, October 27, 2000


Vivian "June" (Dailey) Harting, 80, of Elwood, died early today at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis.

Born July 7, 1920, in Elwood, she was the daughter of Marvin and Erma Hayes Dailey.

She married Kenneth Harting December 21, 1940.

She was a member of the Central Wesleyan Church.

Survivors include her husband; a daughter, LeAnn McCormick of Manteno, Ill.; two brothers, Merrill Dailey of Anderson and Gene Dailey of Deer Lodge, Tenn.; eight grandchildren; 15 great-grandchildren; and several nieces and nephews.

She was preceded in death by her parents; a daughter, Judy Huntsberger; a son, Tim Harting; a brother, Warren Dailey and a sister Carol French.

Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Monday at Dunnichay Funeral Home, with the Rev. Matt Miller officiating. Burial will be in the Elwood City Cemetery.

Friends may call from 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday at the funeral home.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Central Wesleyan Church.

Obituary : Erma V. Dailey (1902-1949)

Source : Elwood, Indiana Call-Leader, November 2, 1949

Mrs. Erma Dailey Dies Tuesday At Her Farm Home

Mrs. Erma V. Dailey, 47, died at 6:40 p.m. Tuesday at her home on route 1 Elwood. She had been ill for several months.

Born near Frankton May 9, 1902, she was the daughter of John and Cora Reason Hays. She was married to Marvin Dailey.

Survivors besides the husband are a daughter, Mrs. June Harting, Elwood, and at home Carrol, Merrill, Warren, and Marvin. There are three grandchildren, one sister, Mrs. Faye Adams, Covington, Ky., and two brothers, Ivan Hays, Newport, Ky., and Gerald Hays, Elwood.

Mrs. Dailey was a member of the Frankton Christian church.

The body was taken to Jackley funeral home where friends may call after 7 o'clock tonight.
Funeral services will be conducted at 2 p.m. Friday at the Church of the Nazarene with Rev. Leonard Wright of Bluffton and Rev. Dee Henderson of Elwood officiating. Burial will be in the Huntsville cemetery.