A couple of weeks ago the topic came up about whether three specific actresses from TAGS (Frances Bavier, Aneta Corsaut, and Betty Lynn) had ever been married.
I've been doing some checking on Frances' history and the results are sort of a mixed bag. We know for certain that she moved to Siler City after retiring from acting and became a recluse, living in a big old house with 15 cats (I guess that's better than hermitizing oneself in a cave with chipmunks and squirrels). I found statements online from someone who claimed to work for her there in Siler City, who insisted that she was once married briefly to an actor. Then I remembered that I had an old issue of Cats Magazine from March 1990 (three months after her death) with a feature story on Aunt Bea (sic) and her many cats. Most of the article was about finding homes for all of the cats, but it did have a lot of information about Frances herself, including the following: "After graduating in 1925, Bavier joined a traveling theater group that toured the Midwest. She was married in 1928, but her marriage ended five years later in a conflict over career ambitions." Another source gave the name of her husband as Russell Carpenter, a career military man, and according to this source it seems they separated but never actually divorced, and that she regularly sent him money for many years after the split. If this is true, then they probably met while she was performing with the USO, but the part about her sending money seems unlikely to me. So, perhaps at least SOME of all this info is true. Here is where I would like some help. Maybe we can't get ahold of those lovely ladies from the Women's Historical Society who were trying to track down Nathan Tibbs' descendant, but there must be several folks here in our chapter who do genealogical research. If anybody subscribes to one of those services that grants access to those huge databases full of marriage records, please search 1928 or thereabouts for the names Frances Bavier and Russell Carpenter and see if anything comes up. Since she was born in New York that's as good a place as any to start. Paul Mulik _______________________________________________ WBMUTBB mailing list WBMUTBB@wbmutbb.com http://www.mayberry.com/tagsrwc/wbmutbb/
