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POLITICAL GENEALOGY
Finding Adelia, Val Demings’s Great-Great-Grandmother
Fellow roots-enthusiasts know that when you research a family tree — even when it’s not your own — there are always one or two ancestors who call the loudest, and in this instance, it was Adelia. This is what I’ve been able to unearth of her story.
Adelia didn’t even make it to 30, but experienced more in that short span than most do in lifetimes that last twice as long. And if she hadn’t existed, neither would her great-great-granddaughter, congresswoman and vice-presidential contender, Val Demings.
Adelia, who sometimes went by Delia, was born in Florida around 1843, and I first encountered her in the 1870 census with her husband and their daughter Melvina. Melvina would one day become Rep. Demings’s great-grandmother, but at this moment in time captured in the first post-Emancipation census, she was a toddler of three. The family resided in Mandarin, a citrus-producing village that would eventually become part of Jacksonville.
Fast forward a decade to the 1880 census and Melvina was living with her father and had acquired seven siblings, but Adelia was gone. In her place was Lourania, so what had happened to Adelia? I had to know.
I began by confirming that Adelia and Lourania weren’t the same person. That may sound strange since the names are so different, but they were both three syllables ending with “ia” and census-takers at the time weren’t exactly renowned for their accuracy, so I wanted to be sure.
A dive into marriage records popped up the 1865 marriage of “Delia Floyed” to “Ruben Bryan,” as expected from the couple’s names in the 1870 census. Now I knew her maiden name!
A second marriage for Reuben — this one in 1873 to “Lorena Manton” (aka Lourania Wanton) — removed all doubts about Adelia and Lourania. They were definitely different women. Adelia and Reuben had four children with the last born around…
