Notes:
Data source is Susan Kingrey Boxberger. E-mail hgb001@aol.com
Roger Rhoads lists LeRoy's middle initial as H. Both my father and his sister Ina are certain that he did not have a middle name.
Burial: Highland Cemetery, Covington, Newberry Twp., Miami Co., OH
Census: bet 1920-1930, Newberry Twp., Miami Co., OH
An obituary given to me by Ina Kingrey Apple
BRADFORD--Services for LeRoy Kingrey, 68, will be held at 2 p.m. at the Stocker funeral home. Mr. Kingrey died at the home of a daughter, Mrs. Ina Pearl Apple, with whom he resided, at 12:30 p.m. yesterday. He had been ill for four months. A retired farmer, he was a member of the Greenville Creek Christian church. Besides his daughter, he is survived by a son, Virgil, Columbus. Friends may call at the funeral home after 2 p.m. today. Burial will be in Highland cemetery, Covington.
My grandfather LeRoy died when I was two weeks old. My father doesn't talk about him much. I know that he was blind from glaucoma for several years before his death. He and my grandmother were separated. Notice that she is not mentioned in the obituary, even though she survived him by 25 years and was ultimately buried beside him in Covington. I believe it was an unhappy relationship in which he possibly abused her, at least mentally.
LeRoy in turn was from a home and family in which his parents domineered over him. It seems that after they were married, LeRoy and Ivah lived for a while with his parents, Will and Ella (Wonner) Kingrey. The parents were determined that "Roy" and "Ivy" not have children too soon, and so arranged the bedroom furniture in order that the bed was visible via a large mirror over the dresser which reflected into the living area of the house. There was no door on the bedroom. Other stories have been shared of Will hiding under Roy and Ivy's bed, and of Ella tying silverware and other metal objects to the underside of the bed so as to produce noise if there was too much movement on the mattress. In a family where such things have not been openly discussed, I tend to believe it's true; I see no reason to make it up. This comes from stories told to me by my aunt Ina Kingrey Apple, and by cousins Virginia Apple Leapley and Barbara Apple Hines. Ina says that these controlling tendencies came from Ella's family, which would have been Henry and Susan Searer Wonner.
Perhaps this interference is the reason that my grandparents' marriage produced only two children, born 10 years apart. I do think it's interesting that Will and Ella also had only three children, widely spaced in age. Their son Omer only had one, and Ivan had two, closely spaced, but he was much younger and Will died about that time. According to my father, Ivan was always the "black sheep" of the family. Henry and Susan themselves were not very "prolific," having had only two children, one of whom died young.
Ivy had left Roy by the time my father was an adolescent, and went to work as a live-in housekeeper in another city. She actually referred to herself as a "governess." My father spent his high school years living with his older sister Ina, who by then was married to my uncle Henry Apple. We (Kingrey and Apple children) have even wondered if Ina's marriage finally freed my grandmother to leave my grandfather, since it provided a viable alternative for Virgil's care. This is something my aunt Ina always did, from taking in her younger brother, to caring for each of her parents and Henry's father before they died.
July 2001 my aunt Ina was finally able to provide me with a marriage date for her parents; I don't know her source--she has the marriage certificate, but has been unable to locate it for quite a long time. Anyway, the dates she reiterates for her father's birth doesn't match the information I already have, which likely came from her too. She says her father was born January 13, 1892 (I have 1890).
During Ina's residence at a care facility and her subsequent death in early 2010, her daughters went through her things and designated many family mementos and genealogical material for me. Among these things was a decorative marriage certificate for Roy and Ivy with photographs of each. All of the materials were in a plastic bin in the trunk of my father's car when he had a significant auto accident while in Ohio for my aunt's (his sister's) funeral. Most of the items survived, but the marriage certificate was destroyed.