In the 1920 census, a relative had an eighteen-year-old daughter and a five-year-old daughter. There were no other children and the presumed parents were in their early-to-mid forties. The wife in the household could easily have been the mother of both of the children. It was not unusual for a couple to have a gap in the ages of their children, but the thirteen-year gap did make me wonder if both children were actually theirs.
After quite a bit of research, it was discovered that the younger child in the 1920 census enumeration was actually the child of a deceased female cousin of the husband. That deceased cousin’s surviving husband was unable to care for the children after his wife died and her cousin (the husband in the 1920 census enumeration) had taken her in.
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