Benjamin Clifford McLeland was the 6th child and 4th son of Thomas Asher McLeland and Caroline Decker. He was the last child born to the couple to survive infancy. (Thomas and Caroline had 9 children, 4 of whom died quite young.) In his family the men went by their initials and therefore throughout a very long life Benjamin Clifford was known as B. C.
B.C.’s oldest brother ( James Riland called J.R) became a dentist, the first of the family to attend “college.” His next oldest brother (Thomas Albert called T.A. jr.) was a settled resident of Iola, Kansas where he spend much of his adult life as an employee at the zinc smelter. When B. C.was young his father was a reasonably prosperous farmer, but none of his sons appeared to be interested in farming. Around the time B.C. came of age the farm was sold and his parents moved to Kansas City.
B.C. didn’t move with them. He married in 1900, and appeared to be settling down in Chanute, Kansas. He and his young wife Bertha Beckley adopted a daughter, then had a son. But B.C. wasn’t really stable yet. He worked as a night watchman, tried the burgeoning oil industry, and had several periods of unemployment. His preserved letters to his brother J.R. are filled with frustration and a sense of inadequacy. In 1915 he and Bertha had a daughter. Sometime between 1915 and 1916 he began traveling back and forth from the railroad yards in Bartesville, Oklahoma where he had found stable employment. Then something went wrong. On a trip back to Chanute, in either late 1916 or early 1917, Bertha and their two younger children were gone. He filed for divorce in March 1917 on the grounds of abandonment and was granted custody of adopted daughter Jessie Van Dyke McLeland. B.C. sent Jessie to live with his brother J.R. in Pleasanton, Kansas and returned to his life traveling with the railroad. In 1923 B.C. married Edith Oligive in Oklahoma and she traveled with him to Illinois, New Mexico, and Arkansas as his career with the railroads continued.
Edith Oligive McLeland died in 1945 and was buried in Tulsa Oklahoma. B.C. lived for a time with his brother in law Ed Oligive and Ed’s adult daughter, a widow who kept house for them. Sometime around 1960 B.C. moved to Siloam Springs Arkansas. B.C. died in November 1966, about 7 months before his remaining sister Sarah Jane McLeland. According to his landlady, B.C. had no family except his brother in law. However, B.C. had assets and he had created a will just a few weeks before his death. And that will complicates the relatively straight forward narrative we’ve compiled so far.
B.C.’s will mentions his children, Ronald (sic), Jessie and Lois and states that he has not had contact with them since 1913 and does not know if they are alive or where they might be living. He leaves his estate to brother in law, Ed Oligive, with a residual $1 to be divided among his children if they should make demands upon his estate. His administrator (appointed after Ed Oligive requested the attorney who had drawn up the will act as administrator on Ed’s behalf) apparently made very little effort to find any of the named children. Per the testimony of the landlady and the brother in law , B.C. had no living relatives. Except that was not true and B.C.’s statement in his will regarding the last time he saw his children is also not true.
B.C.’s relationship with his family
B.C. apparently drifted out of contact with his family after his father died in 1916. B.C. and T. A. jr visited their brother J. R. in Pleasanton, Kansas in April 1917. Surviving letters from him to brother J.R. stop around 1919. Those letters are almost completely about the settlement of their father’s estate and don’t mention any other family. Brothers J.R. and T.A. died in 1942 and 1946 and B.C. isn’t mentioned in their obits. He isn’t mentioned in his last living sister, Sarah’s, surviving letters or in her July 1967 obituary.
After she graduated from high school in Pleasanton, Kansas in 1919, Jessie VanDyke McLeland moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma and kept house for B.C., also working as a secretary for a local oil firm. She married in 1927, in Tulsa, Oklahoma and moved just across the state line to Texas with her oilman husband. Jessie June wrote regularly to J.R.’s widow, Nellie Valentine Whitman McLeland and Nellie’s sons, Jessie’s cousins. Her surviving letters don’t mention her adopted father. Her marriage and death appear in the family register kept by her cousin Roy Whitman McLeland. B.C.’s second marriage and death aren’t recorded in Roy’s family register. However, Jessie June Van Dyke McLeland Young was very much alive in 1966 when B. C. died. She was living not too far away, and she was known to B.C.’s in-laws in Tulsa, Oklahoma (they attended her wedding in 1927.)
B.C.’s biological children and first wife Bertha disappear from available records for a couple of years after the divorce. Bertha’s whereabouts have never been discovered, perhaps she remarried in an unknown location. Rollo Raymond McLeland joined the Marines in 1919 and appears in Chicago Illinois at a naval training base on the 1920 census. There is a picture of him in his uniform in the McLeland family photographs inherited by the author from her grandfather Roy Whitman McLeland so there must have been some minimal contact between the family and Rollo at least in the early 1920s. Rollo served at various bases around the Caribbean and Central America and mustered out about 1930. In 1930 “Ray” was living in Dallas, Texas not that far from his father or his adopted sister. He married in Los Angeles County, California in 1936 and remained in the L.A./Long Beach area for the rest of his life. He was a professional photographer like his 2nd cousin James Ray McLeland and appears regularly in L.A. business directories. Rollo died in March 1964, leaving 1 daughter from his first marriage. It is likely that B.C. did not know where Rollo Raymond was living, but had he given a correct first name for his son it is likely his administrator could have found Rollo’s daughter easily. If he had chosen to look. Why B.C. used an incorrect first name for his son in his will we can’t know. Rollo’s birth is listed in the McLeland family register with his full name. His father refers to him by name in a couple of early letters and there are existing family photos labelled with the name Rollo McLeland. However, B.C. was a very old man who had not had contact with his son for over 50 years. Human memory is fallible.
Lois McLeland was just a baby when her mother removed them from Chanute. We don’t know where she was or who she was living with until her marriage in 1938 in Los Angeles, California. Lois divorced her first husband after just a few years and her second marriage also did not last. Her third marriage eventually took her to Washington state where she lived out her life. Lois survived her father dying in 1992. Her only child, a son, died young. There is some question about her name. On family photos and in the family register she is Austa Lois McLeland and Jessie’s middle name is always given as June. However, Austa Lois used the names Lois and June all her adult life. In some records she is Lois June and in others she is June Lois McLeland. Perhaps she dropped the Austa because that was a name her father had chosen for her. It seems very clear that she had no contact with her father or adopted sister for nearly her entire life. It is possible she had no contact with her mother either. It seems likely she may have had at least some contact with her brother since they were living near each other in the 1930s and 40s.
When B.C. died in 1966, living in rented rooms and somewhat isolated, he wrote a will that expressed his anger and hurt with his family. The will presents a picture of a man still brooding on a betrayal and one who has rewritten his personal history in his own mind to accentuate that pain and betrayal. B.C. and Edith Ogilive seem to have had a comfortable marriage. He appears to have become a part of her wider family, maintaining long term relationships with his brother in law and niece by marriage. And at least initially Jessie was a part of that second family. But somewhere inside he was apparently still angry about the actions of his first wife and his “abandonment” by his children. When his statements from his will are added to his distancing from his siblings the picture of his life seems is very, very sad. But also distorted. We will never know exactly what happened but B.C. chose at least some of the separations from family that he endured. The will tells only part of the story.
All statements of fact are documented on my Ancestry family tree. My tree is private but searchable. If contacted I will be happy to provide access to the tree and my files.