Madeline Laurnell Cooper Bremner, 1932-1966, In MemoriamYou Are Not Forgotten
History of the Lloyd Family of Spokane WA
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The first Lloyd in Spokane WA was Henry Robert Lloyd, who was born in Wales about 1879.
He listed his first language as Welsh. He emigrated to the US in 1898 and became naturalized
in 1914. He probably married Karen Mathea Fjellingsdal about 1901. She was an immigrant from
Norway. According to her grand-daughter Elinor Flood Iverson, Karen worked as a maid
and then became pregnant by her employer. She returned to Norway and gave birth and
had the son put up for adoption and then returned to the US where she married Henry.
The son tried to contact her later but she didn't want contact; he later committed
suicide.
Henry and Karen had three daughters, Alice Pauline Lloyd born 2 May 1912, followed by Elizabeth Jane (1909),
and Anne Brunhild (1910). He worked in mining and logging camps and later as a farmer in the Spokane area. Madeline Laurnell Cooper Bremner was born on February 23, 1932, in Spokane, Washington,
to Alice Pauline Lloyd
and Edward Joseph Ehrlich. She was put up for adoption. Her son, Doug Bremner, had her adoption record opened in 1990. But because
the names were falsified on the birth certificate it couldn't be determined right
away who the real parents were. In 2006 her son began again his quest to learn about
his mother's identity, and contacted the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society,
who were very helpful. Laurnell Bremner married and had a family
and died in 1966 in Olympia, WA.
Identifying the mother of Laurnell was more difficult than finding the father. Alice listed her name as
"Alice Pauline Woods" age 20 and born in Washington State. However her adoptive
sister Vinnie Cooper was told by her mother, Madeline Cooney Cooper, before
she died that Laurnell's half-sister was named Elinor Flood. Doug Bremner
looked up obituaries from Spokane and found the obituary of Lloyd Flood,
the father of Elinor, who married Alice Lloyd in about 1933; the obituary
listed a 'Elinor Iverson' as a surviving daughter, and Doug was able to
call her and establish the fact that she was Laurnell's half sister.
Doug and his family went to Spokane the next year and met her and her
family, as well as Connie Martin and her husband, Lanney, who was daughter of Thomas
"Hal" Conlon (brother of Edward). Together they visited the burial site of Laurnell's mother,
with a view of the Spokane River Gorge.
A local neighbor was Frank Gilbert. His sister was Edith Gilbert. This probably explains
why after Alice got pregnant by Edward Ehrlich, who was working in one of the local
hotels in Spokane at the time, that she lived with Edith who acted as a "birthing mother",
i.e. a place where she could live during pregnancy and then deliver her baby in secrecy.
After birth Laurnell was adopted by Lyndle and Madeline Cooney Cooper.
They were both school teachers who worked in schools in various places in Eastern Washington.
Madeline's first child (Madeline) died shortly after birth in Wenatchee
while the family waited for the doctor to arrive. She apparently became depressed
after this and they moved to Cheney WA and adopted Laurnell. There is no
record of a legal adoption and the most likely scenario is that the "Dr Hall"
who delivered her arranged in advance for the adoption through mutual acquaintances
in Cheney.
After her birth the family moved to Four Lakes and later Reardan WA, 1939-1943, a small
town 30 miles west of Spokane set in the middle of vast wheat farms. For some
reason her biological mother Alice, with her new husband Lloyd Flood, a wheat
farmer, also moved to Reardan. In fact Alice taught school at the Reardan
elementary where both Laurnell and Elinor where students. It was the family secret that
they were related, which came out years later.
Dr John Deshaye was quoted in her
obituary as saying that she had polio as a child.
That may have been what someone referred during her memorial referred to as the
difficulty in her early childhood that she had to overcome. However other familiy members
have denied that she ever had polio, and that her characteristic limp was from an injury
to her hip from a skiing accident.