In April 1890, Mae’s youngest sibling and only brother was born in Oxford, after which the family began a series of moves:  to Conway Springs, Kansas, in September 1890; to Winfield, Kansas, in September 1893; to Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory, in the spring of 1894; and finally to Wellston, Lincoln County, Oklahoma Territory, in February 1896.  There, Mae’s father was murdered, on 2 February 1898.  See the Mary Martin bio page for a description of Isaac Rhine’s murder.

Both before and after her father’s murder, Mae had been keeping company with Francis Lowell (“Frank”) Tannehill, of Evansville, Oklahoma (a former community about 13 miles northwest of Wellston, in Logan County).  She married Frank at Evansville on 27 March 1898.  Frank had been born on 1 July 1878 in Owosso, Shiawassee County, Michigan, the son of William H. and Anna (Allen) Tannehill.  Later his family also lived for a few years in Jackson and Albion, Michigan, but they had moved to Oklahoma by 1892.  I don’t know how Mae and Frank, living 13 miles apart, happened to meet.

After marriage, they settled down in Wellston, where their first child (Frank Jr.) was born in January 1899.  Soon after that, Mae’s mother, her sister Alice, brother Richard, and her twin sister Mabel moved away to Colorado.  In August 1899, Frank and Mae had a visit from Frank’s older brother Will, who was living in Chicago, and he apparently convinced them to move there.  The 1900 census shows them along with Frank Jr. living at 86 Nebraska Avenue in Chicago.  (Nebraska Ave. was later renamed Whipple St.)  Frank’s occupation is listed as foreman at a rubber tire manufacturing plant.

I don’t have a lot of details about Frank and Mae’s lives in Chicago.  (Big-city newspapers, unlike their small-town counterparts, do not carry much neighborhood gossip.)  After Frank Jr., all the rest of their children were born there.  All told, Frank and Mae had six children, two of whom died in childhood.  They were:

• Francis Lowell Tannehill, Jr., 1899–1971 (married Elinor Agnes Guilbert).
• Virgil Tannehill, 1900–1902.
• Maryanne Tannehill, 1903–1938 (married (1) Charles Fulton Hall and (2) Edwin O. Kapsa).
• Esther Louise Tannehill, 1906–1910.
• Hazel Tannehill, 1908–1999 (married (1) Arnold Harry Olsen and (2) Frank R. Carr).
• Phyllis M. Tannehill, 1914–1985 (never married).

Virgil was born late in 1900, after the official census date of June 1, so he is not named in the census, and I have not found any record of his birth or death other than a notation in the 1910 census showing that Mae was the mother of five, only four of whom were then living.  His name and dates were provided to me in correspondence from Lola (Mayn) McElwain (granddaughter of Mae’s sister Alice).  Esther Louise was alive at the time of the 1910 census but died before the year was out, and her burial site is documented on Find-a-Grave.

The 1910 census showed Frank and Mae “Tannyhill,” at 2637 North Rockwell St. in Chicago, along with their four then-living children, although Frank Jr. is listed as “Lowell” and Maryanne is mistakenly shown as “Merriam.”  Frank’s occupation is listed as “bill clerk” for an express company.  Thus we know that he had embarked on his career working for the American Railway Express Agency, where he served for at least 30 years.

Frank’s 1918 draft registration shows his address as 3733 Castillo Ave. in Chicago.  By the time of the 1920 census, though, he and Mae had moved to 4119 Nelson St., still in Chicago.  Included in their household at that time were Frank Jr. ( “Lowell”), age 20; Hazel, age 12; and Phyllis, age 6.  Maryanne, presumably, had married Charles Hall and moved out, although I have not found her anywhere in the census, and I have not found any record of the marriage.

Mae’s mother died in Kansas on 2 January 1930 and, according to her obituary, Mae was unable to attend the funeral because Mae had suffered a stroke the previous week, on Christmas Day 1929.

The 1930 and 1940 censuses both show Frank and Mae still living at 4119 Nelson St. in Chicago, and Frank still working with the Railway Express.  In the 1930 census, their household included three of their children — Frank Jr. (“Lowell”), Hazel, and Phyllis — along with Lowell’s wife Eleanor and daughter Laurel; Hazel’s husband Arnold Olsen and daughter Mary L. Olsen; and Maryanne’s daughter Doris Hall.  As of 1940, only their daughter Phyllis and granddaughter Doris Hall were still in the household.

A daughter of Doris Hall tells me that Frank and Mae raised Doris (as confirmed by the above-cited censuses).  I have not learned why Doris could not be raised by either one of her own parents.  All I have found out about them is that they divorced and, eventually, both of them remarried.  Maryanne died in a traffic accident in 1938, and Charles lived until 1980.

Frank’s draft registration card, filed in April 1942, shows him still on Nelson St. in Chicago, but sometime in the following year, apparently, he and Mae left Chicago and moved to the vicinity of Winfield, Kansas, which was where Mae’s brother Richard Rhine and sister Myrtle Mercer lived.  This move is confirmed by a report in the Winfield Record of 26 August 1943 (p. 4) saying that Mae’s twin sister, Mabel Eastman, had “returned to her home in McAllen, Texas, after spending the past three months visiting her brother Richard Rhine and sisters Mrs. Frank Tannehill of Winfield and Mrs. Myrtle Mercer of Burden.”

The 1950 census shows Frank and Mae living in Pleasant Valley Township of Cowley County, Kansas, a few miles south of Winfield, along with their daughter Phyllis.  No occupations are shown for any of them.  Frank died in Winfield on 27 April 1956.  The Wichita Eagle printed a short obituary for him, and he was buried in the Highland Cemetery.

In October 1957, Mae traveled back to Chicago to visit her daughter Hazel Olsen, and fell sick while she was there.  She passed away at Hazel’s home on 23 April 1958.  An obituary was published in the Winfield Courier, and her body was returned to Winfield for burial next to Frank.

If you can suggest any corrections to the information above or provide any further details about the lives of Mae, Frank, and their descendants, please contact me at the address shown in the image below:

Thanks,      
     —Pete Martin

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