When I was a wee kid still, Adams & McCormick was the name on the vanilla bottle, later 1940s. Mom was teaching me measurements and cake-making. As memory recalls, she pointed out that father's father's wife, thus my great-grandmother "had something to do with McCormick"; it was nebulous whether related or worked there or ??

To better set this scene, Mystery Grandpa was (Harold?) Allen Burton Chapman, born variously 1864-67, OH. All docs but one census state both his parents were born OH (the 1920, he claims England!) Who was grandpa's mother?

ABC first shows up on documents 1878ish as a student at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson OH; next is 1880 census, as a student he was boarding with a Spring-Warriner household; they thought he was "about" 17. WRA records show him living with "Mr. Chapman" his first year.

I do not find this child on any recognizable 1870 OH census. He may have had an additional first name of Harold, HABC. In fact, his firstborn son was unaccountably named Harold Maxwell Chapman. For whom? I can't guess. A Mason, Shriner, or Knight of Pythias sponsor?

On the 1880 census is one John Chapman (family lore says he consistently named his father as "John"), divorced, born OH, and boarding in a Korn household. I haven't identified John on 1870 census, either. The only Hudson OH cemetery plot I'd not dismissed is for a John, has an interestingly worded monument to himself, and only his of 8 plots occupied.

After leaving WRA, Allen Burton Chapman married and resided for some time, up to-around 1900, in Canton OH, working as an "electrical engineer", sometimes for father in law Skinner's lumber and contractor business.

So. Can anyone identify a McCormick female born 1830s-40s, possibly OH, who may have married 1860s, and divorced a Chapman by around 1880ish or earlier, to be my great-grandma?

Is my "Adams and McCormick" spices and flavorings memory even accurate?