Arthur McClain’s oldest surviving sibling was his brother Charles. (There was a sister Alice who was born before Charles, but she lived just one month after birth.) On January 1, 1901 (the first day of the 20th century!) Charles married Belinda Catherine Smith, who apparently went by Kate. In November of that year, Kate bore twins, a boy Charles and a girl Belinda Marie, who went by Marie. Sadly Charles lived only a year, leaving Marie as the oldest of Mom’s “McClain cousins.”
According to census records, Uncle Charlie and Aunt Kate lived in Nebraska until sometime after 1920. Then they moved to Albany, along with Marie and also a nephew and niece, Marion and Neta (children of Kate’s sister who passed away in 1918). Uncle Charlie and Aunt Kate lived in Albany for the rest of their lives (until 1944 and 1952, respectively) and are buried at Riverside Cemetery.
This is Marie McClain with her grandmother, Mary McClain. If Uncle Charlie and Aunt Kate’s move to Albany occurred before this photo was taken, it was necessarily before September 1923 (when Mary McClain passed away). That seems likely but is not a sure thing, since Marie was an adult at that point and could have come to Albany before her parents. (But if Uncle Charlie and Aunt Kate can be positively identified in the group photo from Grandma and Grandpa’s 15th wedding anniversary, that would establish that they had moved to Albany by 1923.)
By 1927 Marie had married Donald Orr. As of the 1940 Census they had two children, Bobby, 13, and Beverly, 9. The census indicates that in 1935 they were living in Woodburn, but by 1940 they had moved to Albany and were living just a few blocks from Marie’s parents. Donald worked for the railroad.
1940 is getting into chronological territory where my older siblings might remember these people. Do y’all have any memories of Uncle Charlie (who was a barber), Aunt Kate, Marie Orr and her family, or maybe even Marion or Neta? Uncle Charlie and Aunt Kate lived at 630 W 7th Avenue. Marie Orr and her family lived at 532 S Ferry Street. Unlike Mary McClain’s house, both these houses seem to have survived to the present time.
Just as I was sending this post to press, I came across a sheet listing Mom’s cousins (or their spouses) who were still living in 1990. (The cousins still had a round-robin letter going at that time.) I was pleased to see that Neta was on the list (she was living in Salem at that time). So evidently Uncle Charlie and Aunt Kate’s adopted nephew and niece were treated as “cousins” by the McClain family.