Tressie's Trouble

Frank and Phoebe VanVleet had 7 children. One of these children was my grandmother Ozelma. This story is about Ozelma's sister Tressa Adiline VanVleet . She was born on July 24, 1901 in Oceana County, Michigan. Tressa got married twice, her first marriage to a man named Forest Weaver. At first glance this seems to be a good marriage. The Weavers were a pretty prominent family. Forest was the great grandson of Daniel Weaver, a New York native who established the towns of Fremont (first called Weaverville) and Hesperia, Michigan.


The VavVleet family, with Tressa and Forest to the right (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

My aunt gave me the picture. I asked her who was who, and she identified Forest and said he was Tressa's husband. No other info on that note. When I decided to do more research on Tressa and her 1st husband I didn't find but a marriage record. They were married in Hart, Michigan on June 9, 1921. And next I located them living in Muskegon on Sanford Street in 1922. I learned that she had divorced Forest some time before 1930 and had remarried in 1931 to Rex Swietser and moved to San Diego, California. I was satisfied with that for a while and I left it. One day I became curious about what happened to Forest after the divorce, did he remarry? So I looked for him and found him in the 1930 census for Jackson, Michigan. He was listed as a prison inmate! Wow, what could he have done? Ancestry.com has newspaper images available in their search files and what I found about Forest was quite a shock. I found many papers carried this story, it made national news. My mouth opened in horror thinking, "Holy cow, that could have been Tressa!". 

The murder of Gladys Echardt

When the 1940 census was released last year I tried to find his location, expecting to find him in prison, but he was nowhere. So a search of newspapers again, my suspicion was right...suicide! He hung himself in his cell in October of 1939. Even though his crime was the worst anyone could imagine a person can't help feeling sorry for him because he was clearly ill.