Time Machine: The case of the out-of-wedlock daughter in Marion

Margaret Lucile Granger was the middle child in the home of Earl and Dora Granger of Marion. Her father indulged her, and reports of her parties regularly graced the society pages.

Margaret's acting career and her sensational paternity lawsuits were still in her future.

Earl Granger came to Marion in 1856 when he was 20. His first marriage lasted only a year, when his wife died in 1870. Two years later, he married Dora Krouse of Toddville. They had five children. Margaret, born in 1888 and raised with the rest of the children, was known to be adopted.

Granger owned a thriving meat market and was a founder and director of Farmers & Merchants State Bank.

He also owned a large farm north of Marion, but the family home was in town at the corner of Central Avenue and 10th Street. The Granger House is a Victorian museum today, decorated in the style of the late 19th century.

In 1901, Marion, looking to add a park and fairground, bought 43 acres north of the city from Granger. The tract included a 15-acre grove with a spring running through it. The land would later become the Indian Creek Country Club.

AN ORATOR

Margaret found her talent as an orator at Marion High School, where she won second place in a March 1904 speech contest, in which, The Gazette reported, 'the contestants all did splendidly.'

In 1906, Margaret spent the summer at the School of Music at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., returning home in the fall to take a class in oratory and expression at Cornell College in Mount Vernon. A few weeks later, she was on her way to Vanderbilt University in Nashville to attend the School of Oratory.

Her school year was not yet over when she received word that her father, then 71, had died in March 1908. Earl Granger's funeral was held in the family home.

Margaret remained at home until January 1909, when she was hired as a teacher of elocution and culture in Erie, Tenn. The next year, she took an eighth-grade teaching position in Marion but soon resigned to move to Chicago to attend Elias Day's School of Lyceum Art.

A PERFORMER

Margaret began rehearsals as a reader with a Chicago concert company, the popular Cambridge Players, in preparation for a winter schedule of sold-out performances of songs and drama. She came home for Christmas to visit with her mother and her aunt, Anna Krouse.

In 1912, Margaret met with a near-fatal accident while traveling with the troupe. Gas jets in her hotel room leaked, nearly asphyxiating her. She came home to recover. Two months later, she was back with the company in Chicago.

The Marion Young People's Union believed itself fortunate to book the Cambridge Players for a program on Oct. 4, 1912. The audience, looking forward to seeing one of their own perform, was disappointed to learn that just before the Lyceum season opened, Margaret had had an operation on her throat and wouldn't be performing.

The surgery slowed her career, and two months later she was back in Iowa, accepting students for classes in expression and physical culture. She was hired as a teacher in Robins in 1913 and was a member of a judging panel for oratory contests. As her voice improved, she began to perform again.

THE LAWSUIT

The main focus of her life, however, had shifted.

It soon became public knowledge that Margaret Granger was the biological daughter of Earl Granger but that her mother was Anna Krouse, Dora Granger's sister.

Margaret sued the family, seeking a share of her father's estate. The trial was scheduled for July 1, 1913. Her birth mother, Anna, was the principal witness. On June 26, Margaret, who was living with her mother in Toddville, woke to find her mother dead.

A post-mortem exam was performed at Pingrey's Mortuary in Marion by Linn County Coroner David King. He concluded Anna had died of natural causes — most likely a heart attack — but her organs were removed and sent to the University of Iowa to be tested for poison.

On July 10, Coroner King reported no traces of poison were found. The pending inquest was canceled, and Margaret's lawsuit against her stepmother and half-brothers moved forward without her mother's testimony.

In October, Judge Milo P. Smith ruled in Margaret's favor. He said that in his lifetime, Earl Granger 'generally and notoriously' recognized Margaret as his daughter, that the facts were convincingly proven by the evidence and that she was, therefore, entitled to a share of her father's estate. The judge awarded her two-ninths of Granger's estate, valued in 1913 at about $65,000 ($1.5 million today).

MOVING ON

With that part of her life behind her, Margaret, at age 26, married Judge Percy Stuart Crewe on April 21, 1914, in front of 75 guests at the home of her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Embert Busby.

Margaret and Percy had met three years before when Margaret was performing with the Cambridge Players. They would have one daughter, Barbara.

The couple made their home in Mohall, N.D., where the judge was state's attorney for Ward County and county judge for Renville County.

After filing another lawsuit asking for an accounting of her father's estate, Margaret finally settled all litigation by accepting $12,500 as her share of the estate, with all legal costs paid by the other heirs. She then transferred all rights to the real estate to her stepmother and half-brothers.

Dora, the stepmother, had been an invalid for years when she died at home in February 1937 of a heart attack. Her obituary didn't mentioned Anna or Margaret.

Margaret died in 1954 at age 66. She is buried with her husband at National Memorial Park in Falls Church, Va. Although her middle name was Lucile, her tombstone reads Margaret G. — for Granger — Crewe.

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