Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Dora Alice Duncan, Wife of John W Gray

© Kathy Duncan, 2018


Between census years, the family of Dora Alice (Duncan) Gray experienced tragedies that were recorded in local newspapers. Dora Alice Duncan was the daughter of Isaac and Susan (Reese) Duncan of Sebastian County, Arkansas and the wife of John W. Gray.

Early in the morning, on April 27, 1916, a chicken incubator in the basement of the house caught the house on fire. At that time, they were living near Little Rock, Arkansas. Dora was in the backyard while her daughter Bertha (Gray) Jung and her grandchildren, Vincent and Rose Mary Jung, were asleep in the house. They were only able to save the youngest grandchild, Rose Mary. Walter Vincent Jung, who was only three, died of his burns. Both Dora and her daughter Bertha received burns in the fire. Walter Vincent Jung was buried in Bayou Meto Cemetery in Pulaski County, Arkansas on the following day. The house was a total loss.

Records of house fires are important in doing in research because they may indicate when family documents and photographs were destroyed.




Dora (Duncan) Gray died nearly thirty years later at the home of her granddaughter Rose Mary (Gray) Cuttings.



In 1955, Walter Jung, Dora (Duncan) Gray's son-in-law, who was a railroader, found the body of  Theodore Hubert Morris, another railroader, along the Rock Island tracks in Little Rock.


Two years later in 1957, Walter and Bertha (Gray) Jung were scammed by phony tree trimmers.





Googling the Jung's address, 2901 State Street in Little Rock, Arkansas, turned up their house as it looks today. Some of these trees, no doubt, were there in 1957.




Then  Bertha (Gray) Jung died in 1965.








Finally, Walter Jung died in 1975.





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