After identifying everyone on the postcard, I spent some time looking for more information on the American Welbourn(e)s.
Shortly before leaving for America, Albina’s husband James (whose occupation was listed as “gardener (unemployed)” in the 1881 UK Census) set up shop in Nottingham and was listed as a shopkeeper in the city directory the year he left for the United States with his son Arthur.
Albina and James’s son Arthur, much like his sister Eliza, had trouble recalling when he arrived in the United States. Although he was obviously living in England in 1881, his passport application lists him as arriving in 1880.
I also located Arthur’s marriage certificate, which helped me track his wife, Elizabeth Ann Eddolls, back to Wiltshire, England.
True to the baffling nature of the Welbourn(e)s, I found that both Arthur and Elizabeth were buried in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, despite dying in Illinois (he in 1937, she in 1940). Perhaps they wanted to continue their travels even after death!
The last remaining piece of the puzzle was what happened to Eliza’s children after 1910. Sometime between 1920 (when they were still living in Evanston, albeit at a different address) and 1930, most of the family (minus Herbert James Shaffer) moved to Ocoee, a suburb of Orlando, Florida, since that is where they show up on the 1930 US Census.
Harry and Eliza continued to live in Florida, and died there (in 1947 and 1951, respectively). Their eldest daughter, Constance, married shortly after the 1930 census to a man named Earl Dean Carter but passed away in 1940 from uterine cancer. Florence married and had a son, John Bunny Mills Jr., but died shortly after giving birth in 1927. John is listed as living with his maternal grandparents in Ocoee in the 1930 US Census. He served in the Marine Corps during World War II, and died in Texas in 2002. May, the youngest daughter, appears to have died at a relatively young age, without ever having been married. The three sisters are all buried in the Ocoee cemetery. Herbert James Shaffer, the only son, moved to California, married twice, had a son (Herbert James Jr) and a daughter (Mary), and died in Los Angeles in 1987.
