History Detective pt. 2

In my last post, I told you about my discovery at work of an old diary owned by Blanche Warden who lived on 21st and Humboldt Ave S in 1910. I shared what I assumed about her based on my knowledge of Minneapolis history and what she wrote about herself in her journal. I've only read up to page 40 so far, though Blanche wrote about 95 pages. In this post you'll learn about what my brother, Andrew, uncovered after doing some detective work online.

First, he Googled Blanche's name but got far too many results from all over (also, we couldn't read that her name had an E at the end of it at first). He narrowed the search to her name and Minneapolis, noticing a hit for descendants of Alexander Warden on Ancestry.com. Someone was looking for information about his family, listing different names and birth dates. One name was Blanche L. Warden born March 20, 1892 in Minnesota. Could this be our girl?

If you read further down, another user posted some interesting information, some of which I will re-share here:

David Charles Warden, lived at 2112 Humboldt Ave. S. in Minneapolis in the home that he built. He and Ida had 6 children. I believe he was a land developer and built many mansions that are in the Kenwood area, Lake of the Ilse areas of S. Mpls. He and Ida lived there until their death in 1937, Ida in 1940. His son Lee Meredith Warden and his wife Olga Sand Warden moved into the family home, Lee was a grain broker and Olga was a famous interior designer, famous for doing the architectural interiors of many private clubs in the Minnitonka area and her clients were the Daytons and the Pillsburys who also lived in the area. 

Well, the address is right, so that would make David Blanche's father. She mentions at one point she and friend dressing up in Lee's clothes and playing around. And Marion is a name that I've noticed often. In the list on Ancestry.com, Marion's birthday is January 31st. Blanche notes on that date "Marion's birthday. 16 yrs old." I then flipped to March 20 in the journal, and what does it say? "My birthday. 18 yrs old seems mighty old I can tell you." So we found our girl! And I was spot-on about their family being quite rich and well-connected. Blanche's sister-in-law designed home interiors for the Pillsbury and Dayton families, who are still movers and shakers in the Twin Cities to this day.

As I was reading further on Ancestry.com, it looks like there's only one person left in the family line:

Lee was the only child of David Charles and Ida Belle to have children. They had two children Mary Lee and David. When Olga died in 1968 their son, David Sand Warden, an accomplished artist moved into the family home. David Sand has only one son, the last of this line of Wardens, David Wolfe Warden, who lives in Austin,TX.

The house on Humboldt is still there (I looked it up on Google maps this morning), but it looks like the family has almost died out. It's odd that only one of Blanche's siblings ever had kids.
As I'm doing more sleuthing, it looks like David Warden's mother is looking for information about their family. I'm going to try to get in touch with her to see if she'd like to have Blanche's journal.

Read Part 3 to find out what happened next!