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The Anna DeMaro Misattribution — Research Note

Parentage research — ruling out a commonly repeated misidentification

Several online family trees identify Annie's parents as Francis and America DeMaro of Ironton, Lawrence County, Ohio, naming her "Anna DeMaro." The association is tempting at first glance: the 1880 census gives Annie's birth year as about 1857 and her birthplace as Ohio, and her death certificate names her father as a native of France, matching Francis DeMaro's own origin.1 John Farney Woodruff, Annie's second husband, was himself from Ironton, so the geography lines up too.

The documentation does not support the connection.

Census records for the DeMaro family across 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 (Lawrence County, Kentucky and then Ohio, the surname recorded differently by nearly every enumerator — Morrow, Demero, Demarre, Demarrow) consistently track a daughter named Anna, born about 1857, alongside an older sister, Amelia.2a,2b,2c,2d By 1880, the household headed by Frank Demarrow, a French-born carpenter, held only his wife Sarah and son William in Ironton's 4th Ward; both daughters had already left home, consistent with Anna's marriage some sixteen years earlier. The original 1880 entry itself reads "Demarrow," not the "Demanon" under which the record is indexed online — a spelling that lines up directly with the name on Anna's 1864 West Virginia marriage record.

When Amelia died in 1926, her obituary named her surviving siblings, including a sister living in Lunleith, West Virginia, whose married name the newspaper garbled almost past recognition.3 Read against the surrounding record, the corrupted name resolves to Plymale. A Wayne County, West Virginia marriage record confirms that an Anna Demarrow married John M. Plymale on 13 October 1864.4 She lived out her life there, dying in 1937 as Anna De Maro Plymale, per her state death certificate and Find a Grave memorial.5a,5b

That timeline rules the identification out. Annie married John Farney Woodruff in 1876 and spent the rest of her documented life in Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado, dying in Creede in 1932. The DeMaro daughter married in West Virginia in 1864 and never left. The two women's lives don't overlap in place or time.

What keeps this misattribution alive in other researchers' trees is the coincidence of a French-born father and a matching birth year, nothing more. The DeMaro Anna is fully accounted for, and she is not Annie.

References

  • 1. ↩ “Annie E. Fry” obituary, ...
  • 2a. ↩ 1850 U.S. census, Lawrence County, Kentucky, population schedule, p. 86b (stamped), dwelling 474, family 477, Francis Morrow household; image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 October 2020); citing NARA microfilm publication M432, roll 209.
  • 2b. ↩ 1860 U.S. census, Lawrence County, Ohio, population schedule, Ironton, p. 162 (stamped), dwelling 12, family 13, Frances Demero household; image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 October 2020); citing NARA microfilm publication M653, film 803997.
  • 2c. ↩ 1870 U.S. census, Lawrence County, Ohio, population schedule, Ironton, p. 375A (stamped), dwelling 574, family 579, Francis Demarre household; image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 October 2020); citing NARA microfilm publication M593, roll 1231.
  • 2d. ↩ 1880 U.S. census, Lawrence County, Ohio, population schedule, 4th Ward, Ironton, Supervisor's District 4, Enumeration District 91, p. 18 (stamped), dwelling 164, family 175, Frank Demarrow household; enumerated 8–9 June 1880 by Cambridge Culbertson; database with images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 1 Aug 2026), indexed by Ancestry as "Frank Demanon," though the original entry reads "Demarrow" on close examination — a spelling that matches the surname on the 1864 West Virginia marriage record for his daughter Anna. Household of Frank Demarrow (59, carpenter, b. France) and wife Sarah (53, b. Ohio), with son William (22, carpenter, b. Ohio); by this year neither Anna nor her sister Amelia remained in the household.
  • 3. ↩ Find A Grave, database and images (http://www.findagrave.com : accessed 25 October 2020), memorial for Amelia D. DeMaro Hunter (d. 10 Feb 1926), Ironton, Lawrence County, Ohio; obituary transcription contributed by Linda Frazier Meredith of Ironton, Ohio, naming her parents as Francis and America DeMaro and identifying a surviving sister, name rendered in print as "Mrs. Anna M. __ymkle of Lunleith, W.Va." Original newspaper of publication not yet identified.
  • 4. ↩ "West Virginia Marriages, 1853–1970," Wayne County, unnumbered p. 1, John M. Plymale and Anna Demarrow, married 13 Oct 1864; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 October 2020).
  • 5a. ↩ West Virginia State Department of Health, certificate of death no. 16859, Anna De Maro Plymale (1937); Kenova, Wayne County, West Virginia.
  • 5b. ↩ Find A Grave, database and images (http://www.findagrave.com : accessed 25 October 2020), memorial page 194782607, Anna De Maro Plymale (1859–1937), Ridgelawn Memorial Park, Barboursville, Cabell County, West Virginia; memorial created by Darryl Diemer; gravestone image posted.