‘Incredibly crazy’ 70-year-old mystery solved through DNA research – Walla Walla Union-Bulletin

The search for the father she never knew only took seven decades to accomplish for 99-year-old Margaret Bette Clayton Hults.

The former longtime Walla Wallan never met her father, but she gained newfound family members through DNA research.

Many in the clan came to town on May 8, the day before Mothers Day, to meet, said Hults daughter Sarah Sally Sumerlin of Walla Walla.

What started out as a small gathering of six or so people grew into a crowd of at least 60, Sumerlin said. That includes Hults daughters Sandra Torres of Waitsburg and Maxine Walker of Nebraska, and son Dan Hults, with whom Bette lives in Everett.

Originally planned for a rendezvous in Wildwood Park, cold, rainy weather chased the group to Sumerlins home.

It was a fun day gathering, visiting and learning about the family tree with Hults relatives, Sumerlin said.

Hults 80-year-old nephew, Alan Thompson of Spokane, composed a song for her to play on his newly acquired lute. Hults is already looking forward to her 100th birthday.

About three weeks before the gathering, Hults told Sumerlin, I dont know if I will make it. But then the next day she reported she felt great.

The family has done due diligence with genealogy research, Sumerlin said. Our family goes back to almost God 1022, (before William the Conqueror left Normandy, France, and stormed across the English Channel in 1066).

I dont know if Gods on there, but that family tree goes way back, Sally Sumerlin said of the chart behind her mother, Bette Clayton Hults, 99. The extended, multi-generational family, numbering about 60 or so, gathered the day before Mothers Day, on May 7, 2022.

Hults said the family tree with the John Howland family (he died in 1673) indicates he was aboard the Mayflower. He and his sons are forefathers to such leaders as Bush, Roosevelt, Nixon, Ford and Churchill, Sumerlin said.

My mother is a member of Daughters of the American Revolution. Ancestors came over on the Mayflower. Its a respectable family.

But then theres Hults father, about whom she knew nothing, other than the name Rex Clayton listed on her birth certificate.

(My grandfather) was someone who wasnt the most scrupulous of persons, Dan Hults said in a Sept. 4, 2016, Everett Herald article about Hults DNA odyssey. George Harpley Pidd II, Claytons real name, was 71 when he died in 1968 in Cupertino, California.

So the man had an alias, was a bigamist, was convicted of a crime and tried to break out of jail. Thats a rather noisy closeted skeleton.

But until age 93, Hults knew none of this. Her father was a mystery.

Her mother, Fannie Mae Janes Netherland, married Rex Clayton in Casper, Wyoming, on April 3, 1922. They ended up in Ogden, Utah. Mae was pregnant with Bette Clayton, who was born in November 1922.

George left her that year and went as a railroad strike breaker to California and sent money for Mae to join him, but she didnt go, Sumerlin said.

Curiously, George told Fannie Mae to look for an ad in True West or Old West magazine if he didnt come back. Mae never spoke about this time in her life and subsequently divorced Clayton.

Before Mae, George married Mirth Woodall Pidd and was stationed with the U.S. Army at Fort Lewis, now Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington.

Mirth wanted money to go to Portland so he decided to mug a taxi driver. They were probably still married when he married Mae.

The Everett Herald story cites a 1918 Tacoma Times article that reported Pidd was court-martialed, sentenced to life imprisonment and dishonorably discharged.

Furthermore, the Evening News in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, reported in 1919 that Pidd was found guilty of beating taxi driver Lawrence Berquist into insensibility with a gas pipe for the purpose of robbery, which netted about $10.

The Evening News continued, reporting that Pidd was freed after the sentence was declared invalid because Pidds wife had testified against him. It said the court couldnt try him again on the charge because of a technical violation of the law.

While in jail at Fort Lewis, he and two other inmates plotted to break out of the slammer.

They were served pancakes with bottles of syrup in their cells every morning, Sumerlin said.

Using the same bean-the-victim-over the head modus operandi, the jailer was conked with a syrup bottle, and the inmates got his keys to open the cell doors. Oddly, Georges door lock was stuffed with paper, which prevented the key from working. The other inmates got away, and he was left to face the music.

Hults, who had been looking for any information about this man, had her DNA evaluated through Ancestry.com when she was 93. She found Rex, the name of her father. But his name is really George, Sumerlin said.

They discovered cousins and visited them in California. Sumerlin located a nephew in Spokane, and before the COVID-19 quarantine, she took her mom to meet him.

Bette and her husband, Thomas Hults, moved to Walla Walla in 1963-64. We were dirt poor. We came out to see the Seattle Worlds Fair, Sumerlin said. They liked Walla Walla so much they settled here.

Bette Hults was a saleswoman and taught sewing at the Singer Sewing Machine Company on Main Street. She was a bookkeeper for Burbee Candy Co. and later worked at Blue Mountain Action Council. She was a 4-H and Campfire leader. Thomas Hults died in 1990.

My mother was on hospice care in her early 90s and recovered. It shows a woman with a strong constitution. Shes a character, Sumerlin said.

This story is incredibly crazy, Sumerlin said. I wish she could have found (her dad) before he died.

Visit link:
'Incredibly crazy' 70-year-old mystery solved through DNA research - Walla Walla Union-Bulletin