Mary Belle Anderson

She was the third of the six Anderson children — born 6 October 1866 in Washington County, Pennsylvania, between Anna Janett (1862) and John Wallace (1864) ahead of her, and Margaret Florence (1869), Alice Gertrude (1871), and William James (1875) behind her. She is the least-documented of the six in Dale Eesley’s FamilySearch tree — no death date, no marriage record, no descendants (FS ID GMSS-55R).

Two possibilities account for the silence:

1. She died young, unmarried, at home with her parents — a common pattern for daughters of 19th-century rural and small-town American families, particularly in households where the eldest daughter (Anna Janett) had married off and the younger daughters (Margaret Florence, Alice) were still being educated.
2. Her adult life is real but undocumented in Dale’s tree — she may have married a man whose family records didn’t reach FamilySearch, or remained a daughter-at-home into a later age. The death-date blank in the GEDCOM under this reading is just an absence of source documents, not a young death.

The 1894 letter question

The 21 May 1894 letter her father wrote to her sister Margaret names two women at home in close succession:

Mary has finished washing and scrubbing, and has seated herself on [the] side of [the] table to read this letter when finished. Marie is “exercised” about attending W. M. Society at Thomas Station on Thursday of this week. If it were not that she is anxious to show her new dress I think she would stay at home.

Mary finishing the day’s washing in a Presbyterian-minister’s household, Marie debating whether to wear her new dress to the Women’s Missionary Society meeting. Both could refer to Mary Belle — the family form of her name as Mary for everyday use and Marie for slightly more formal moments. Alternatively, Mary could be a household helper and Marie could be Mary Belle. The ambiguity is preserved in the letter as it stands.

If Mary Belle is the Marie of the letter, then in May 1894 she was a 27-year-old unmarried daughter at home in the Anderson parsonage — old enough to have been married long since by the standards of the era, still living at home, exercised about an afternoon’s social outing. The new dress and the W.M. Society meeting are the small specifics of a quiet life that the GEDCOM doesn’t record but the letter does.

She is Chuck’s great-great-aunt on the paternal side.

Sources: Dale Eesley / FamilySearch — Mary Belle Anderson (GMSS-55R); the 21 May 1894 Rev. Anderson letter.