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2022OCT02: Review of data now suggests to me that the best interpretation is that "Ida Phippen" and "Eliza Ann Phippen" are the
same person and that Alvin Leat Cook had just the one wife before 1885, as is reported in his obit by Ellen Reeve.
It is hoped that future research will shed some light on the naming confusion and the delayed marriage.
The second daughter is Almeda Phippen who married Phineas Keeney in 1878. We now look for Ida Cook elsewhere, including the possibility that she is a related Phippen. My entre to this line is Susie May Cook, and I have found getting data on her early life to be difficult. Her marriage to Parks links her to an Alvin Cook and records Ida for her mother's given name. I think most would agree that Alvin is Alvin Leat Cook, one of twins born in Dodge County in 1858. In his obituary, Alvin's last wife credits his four children to a "first wife who died 55 years ago" (circa 1885). She also identifies Susie May Cook as a sole surviving child via her married name at that time - Ostness. It would appear that this "first wife" was a simplifying conflation of two or three women. There are records on file in the Monroe County Court House (in Sparta) of an 1881 marriage to Eliza Ann Phippen and of a subsequent marriage to Mary Allen Flint in 1886. I have been unable to locate birth records for any of Alvin's children, so I have relied upon the marriage records of his children for clues. Susie's marriage to Parks specifies Ida Cook as her mother. Her marriage to Ostness makes no mention of parents. Minnie Adel's marriage to Edward Reeve specifies simply "Cook" for the mother. Charles Bryon's marriage to LuLu Reeve specifies "Ida Phiffen" as his mother!!! I chose to assume that this should have been "Ida Phippen"! Susie and Charles were born well before the marriage to Eliza Phippen, and both of them called their mother Ida on their marriages. I think that, in the context of the times, it is reasonable to surmise that Alvin married the older Phippen and, upon her demise, married the younger daughter. I have found no data yet regarding what happened to the two Phippen girls or Mrs Flint, but I did find that in the 1875 census Marcus Phippen was recorded as having a household of 3 white men and 3 white women. We know from the 1880 census of the two sons. The surmised Ida Phippen would fill the remaining female slot! I find this evidence sufficiently compelling, in this context, to asert in my database that Ida Phippen was Alvin Leat Cook's first wife and mother of Susie and Charles. Additional research is certainly needed. |