Anna Elizabeth Ridgeway middle initial "H"
Contributed by John C. Carter, Jan 2013
Anna Ridgeway Wright was married to Robert E. Clark first and then to Raymond J. Wright. She was a daughter of Brady Ridgeway & Julia Dixon Ridgeway. Rev. Roland Coker was the pastor at her funeral. (See funeral program below).
Some of us are trying to figure out why her middle initial is listed as H. when her middle name was actually Elizabeth? To make matters more confusing, Raymond Wright was married twice: first to Anna Hughes (born 1903), and then to Anna Ridgeway (born 1915). And both Annas are buried at Fork Branch Cemetery, even though Raymond himself is buried over in NJ at Gouldtown Cemetery. So, his first wife was definitely an “Anna H.” because her maiden name was Hughes. She died in 1950. Here’s her headstone at Fork Branch with two of their young children:
Then, later in 1963, he married his 2nd wife, Anna Elizabeth Ridgeway, who had been previously married to Robert E. Clark. In 1976, Raymond died, and the family (including 2nd wife Anna) buried him at Gouldtown and got a stone with 2nd wife Anna’s name on it, too, because it was planned that she would be buried there when she passed. But notice how her middle initial is H.:
Then, when 2nd wife Anna died in 1989, the family (step-children) were planning for her to be buried with her husband, but the story goes that her sister Florence came over from Delaware and took her sister Anna back to be buried in Fork Branch, over their objections. So here is her stone at Fork Branch. Notice again it has a middle initial H.:
But here’s her birth certificate, which clearly shows her middle name was Elizabeth:
And here she is with her father & brother & sister in the 1920 census. (Her mother, Julia, had just passed away in 1919). This also shows her middle initial as E.:
But here’s her funeral program, which has a middle initial of H.:
Why did she repeatedly used her middle initial as H. when her true middle name was Elizabeth?
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