We have left as much doubt in the wake of writing Spite Work as there was in the beginning. This is true of Virginia Rappe’s roots. We hoped to discover evidence in her family history of how her life had been influenced by her forbears–forcing us to consider abusive relationships, the death of a parent, and, even possibly, incest given the mother–daughter–sister paradox described below.

In the soon-to-be-released monograph-length version of our research, speculations of this sort have largely been avoided. But we did have to dive into the wreck, as it were, of her family to make some sense of who she was. So, relying on databases that became available in the 2010s, the same ones that Greg Merritt used to posit the date of Rappe’s birth of 7 July 1891 (i.e., Cook County records made available by FamilySearch.com, a genealogical service provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.), we agree with him, that Rappe was older than the age that is usually associated with her.[1] She was 30, not 26, when she left Los Angeles for San Francisco and the fated Labor Day party in September 1921.

The record of her birth indicates her mother was named Mabel Rapp, age 15. The document also indicates that Virginia’s birthplace was a private hospital operated by a professional midwife, one who advertised her services in Chicago’s newspapers and seems not to have gotten in trouble for performing abortions. Though midwives of that era were known to assist girls in trouble.

From there we began to look at any extant record and newspaper sources related to Mabel’s world and her family, before she evolved into a South Side “tough girl” in Gay Nineties Chicago.

The first piece of the puzzle was an application for a “permit to wed,” i.e., a marriage license, issued on December 26, 1891.[2] The husband, Oluf C. Madison, 32, and bride, Mabel Rapp, 18. Was this a gentleman doing the right thing and agreeing to make an “honest woman” of Mabel? Was this the elusive father of Virginia Rappe? Other “Mabel Rapps” existed at the time—but none who quite pulled us away from thinking this was an event in her life.

In any event, Madison or, more likely, Madsen, wasn’t the person Virginia Rappe considered her father. She either believed or was told to say she had been born in 1894, the result of a love affair that took place when her mother met a man at the 1893 Columbian World Fair in Chicago. She believed she was born the following year and might have celebrated her birthday on a day other than July 7. During the Arbuckle trials, the father was variously described as some wealthy personage, from an English lord to a person who was somewhere listed in the Chicago Blue Book. Such stories would have lessened the onus of being illegitimate and provided cover for any unconventional family dynamics, even possibly incest which was being posited by sociologist Richard Dugdale and other Social Darwinists as a cause of low morals and weak intellect. But Virginia Rappe hardly belonged to the Jukes Family. Nevertheless, Mabel was very unconventional. She passed herself off as an older sibling to Virginia, which freed her to enjoy a reputation as the “Queen of the Night” and the “Queen of Chinatown” in the demimonde of Chicago’s South Side.

As often happened when records were spotty, family lore confused the truth. As described in court by the neighbors who served as foster mothers to Virginia, the woman who was regarded as her grandmother/mother/aunt at various times wasn’t actually related to her. As for the identity of her birth mother, these neighbors testified that Rappe only knew of Mabel as her older sister.

This white lie was a common ruse to cover for illegitimate children, especially resulting from rape. Parents of the rape victim would simply claim the grandchild as their own. A daughter borne of incestuous rape could, in effect, be the sister of her mother if they shared the same father, the niece if the father were a brother. The former scenario may not apply to Virginia Rappe. It is a thought experiment at this writing. But this situation was not that unusual in the 1890s.

We could have stopped there and left Mabel Rapp and her daughter. We could have been satisfied with a family tree that began and ended with them.[3] But not all the limbs had disappeared from the family tree and our intuition told us that something unusual had caused the disintegration of the family.

There is an entry for a Mabel Rapp in Chicago in the 1880 census.[4] There are two entries for Virginia Rappe in the U.S. Census: 1910 and 1920. The 1910 entry was likely filled out by the person indicated as the head of household, the putative grandmother. As for her, she entered herself as a forty-nine-year-old widow named Virginia Rappe![5] She entered who we know as Virginia Rappe as a daughter but using the name Zelliene V. Rappe, aged 16.[6]

So out of the blue there were now two Virginia Rappes. And the younger one going by a rather unique appellation. We will discuss that in another note. For the present, however, the V surely stood for Virginia. As for the extra e and syllable added to the family name, that had been done by Mabel Rappe after she relocated to New York City. She had become known in Chicago for passing bad checks and being an accomplice of a longtime boyfriend, Frank A. Parker, the leader of a forgery ring and the black sheep son of a wealthy Chicago stockbroker. Her death certificate listed her as Mabel Rappé. In keeping with this decision, her daughter and “mother” assumed the name as well and kept it after her death in 1905.

The 1910 census form included a question for female correspondents regarding their number of live births. Virginia Rappe the Elder listed three. She also indicated that she was born in Kentucky and that her father and mother came from West Virginia and Tennessee, respectively. Zelliene, who is listed as sixteen years old, was born in Illinois in, approximately 1894. Her mother’s birthplace was listed as Kentucky and her father New York.

The only census entry that was authored by Virginia Rappe the Younger was the next one, the 1920 census.[7] This entry lists her as a boarder in the Los Angeles home of the comedy director Henry Lehrman. Her vocation is motion picture actress and, like many women in that profession, she has subtracted from her real age for Uncle Sam. She lists herself as 22, making for an approximate birth year of 1898. Her mother’s birthplace becomes Virginia rather than Kentucky. But her father’s birthplace remains New York.

Now we turn to the death certificates of Virginia’s mother and grandmother, which make for puzzle pieces that don’t fit well.

Mabel Rappé, as she styled herself in her final years, died in a New York City hospital on January 7 1905. Her death certificate is handwritten and one can easily see an accented é but it was transcribed later as a lowercase i. For that reason, New York City health department records have her listed as Rappi. Thus, Mabel Rapp’s father is recorded as Henry Rappi of New York, New York, and her mother as Virginia McPheadridge of St. Louis, Missouri. (Mabel Rapp’s age is indicated as 23 and her birth year as 1882. That made her a closer “sister” to her daughter, of course, but also meant a nine-year-old mother or bride in 1891!) The 1911 death certificate for Virginia Rappe the Elder, however, is at odds with this information.[8] This document was informed by the Younger, who listed the birth year of her putative grandmother to be 1851 and her age to be 60—hardly close to the 45 years of age that the deceased gave as her age in 1910 census. Virginia the Younger also indicated that the deceased was born in Virginia. The death certificate lists Virginia the Elder’s father as John Gallagher. That may lead to other truths. But for now, we will focus on a limb or two of the family tree of Virginia Rappe.

Whoever was the informant for Mabel Rapp’s death certificate pointed us in the right direction. One Henry H. Rapp and a Miss Virginia McPheetridge (sic) were married on 26 May 1864 in St. Louis, Missouri.[9] The bride’s name was spelled out phonetically by the minister who conducted a ceremony that required the payment of a five-cent federal stamp tax levied to prosecute the ongoing Civil War. Furthermore, 1850 and 1860 census data revealed that the Virginia McPhetridge—the preferred spelling of the family—came from Virginia and that her grandfather was a veteran of the Revolutionary War.[10]

The Rapps seemed to have been living a normal life in Chicago, where Henry Rapp had been a railroad freight agent listed in Chicago business directories at least since 1862—a vocation that, incidentally, kept him from being drafted. When we scoured the 1870 census for this couple, only Henry Rapp appears in the population schedule for that year, with an approximate age of 28, and born in Indiana—a curious mistake since other records consistently indicate New York.[11]

The 1870 census included little else about him. He owned $10,000 in real estate. He appeared to be a bachelor living in a boarding house in the 2^nd Ward, within walking distance of the railroad yards. Despite his real estate holdings, he remained a renter and the business directories up until 1880 continue to list him as a hotel and boarding house resident, moving from such establishments as the Howard House, the Bishop Court Hotel, and the Burdick House. He also moved from one freight office to another (the Rock Island, the Diamond Line, the B&O), where he was known as “Hank.”

What happened to his wife? Did they have children?

The answer begins in the 1880 census, which lists Mabel and an Earle Rapp as the residents of a Chicago boarding house on Michigan Avenue. At first glance, they seem to be orphaned. The nine-year-old Mabel is listed as the “head” of household, perhaps only because she answered the door when the enumerator arrived. When asked where she was born, however, for herself and her five-year-old brother, she answered “Maine.”

There were also other residents of the boarding house, which was located at 256 Michigan. Flanked by townhouses and hotels, the large, private house had been subdivided. A woman named Helen Rapp was listed as a resident of the same building, right after the landlady. She was 27, married, and a boarder. She was born in New York.[12]

Entries for Helen, Mabel, and Earle Rapp in the 1880 census (FamilySearch)

Helen Rapp proved to be a dead end as far as census data goes. But that isn’t the case for Earle Griffith Rapp.[13] The younger brother’s life was well-documented and his records began in 1891, when he was listed in a Chicago business directory as a bookbinder. And the most valuable record concerning him was his 1898 marriage license.[14] There we find that his parents and those of Mabel Rapp correlate. His father is identified as Henry H. Rapp. His mother is identified as Virginia McPheatridy. Although the latter’s surname is garbled or phonetically spelled, it is the same woman who married Henry Rapp in 1864.

His age in the 1900 census indicates he was born in Kentucky in 1871. His father’s birthplace is New York, his mother’s Kentucky.[15] These two data points for Earle Rapp are repeated in the 1910 census.[16] His birthplace, interestingly, was always given as Kentucky. His death certificate, however, throws a little dust in our eyes.[17] The informants, Earle Rapp’s adult daughters—Virginia Rappe’s cousins—confirm his earlier official information except his mother’s maiden name which is given as Virginia Griffith, which explains his middle name.

A Chicago directory entry for Henry Rapp, mid-1870s (Ancestry.com)

Now let’s return to the pater familias, Henry Rapp. Despite the lack of census data after 1870, evidence of his residence in Chicago can be found in brief notices in Chicago newspapers of a lawsuit, a promotion, and his long railroad career. There is no evidence that he himself lived in Kentucky, but rather lived a prosperous middle-class life in Chicago, where he died on 7 January 1901, at the age of 63.[18] His death certificate indicates he was born in New York in 1838 and that he was widowed. This and an obituary in the Chicago Tribune show that was buried in Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery in what became a family plot, for Earle Rapp is buried there as well. (The obituary also provided his middle name: Hoisington, a surname that surely belonged to his mother and one fairly common in Vermont and well into western New York in nineteenth-century census data.[19])

So, how and when did Henry Rapp become a widower? For now, like the identity of his granddaughter’s biological father, that detail remains unsolved. We could find nothing to indicate what happened to Virginia McPhetridge Rapp. Perhaps she died before 1880. Perhaps she abandoned her family. As for the mother and grandmother in the 1911 death certificate and the 1910 census, her data reveals that her husband preceded her in death—and that she is in Rosehill, too. But she wasn’t buried near Henry and Earle Rapp. Nor is Mabel Rapp interred in that family’s plot. Indeed, Rosehill’s administration doesn’t have any plot numbers for the family Rappe.

Then there is Helen Rapp. A sister-in-law to Henry Rapp? Helen and Virginia Rappe the Elder are close in age if the age of 27 in 1880 is correct. That would have made her 57 in 1910. If they are two separate people, that could mean that Helen Rapp is the first of two or more foster mothers for Mabel, Earle, and, eventually, Virginia. The three children in the 1910 census. Presumably, only two should have the same father.

Earle Rapp lived in Chicago. He was a respectable stock broker in 1899 when his sister’s name appeared in newspapers across the country as the moll in a ring of check forgers. That must have been embarrassing—but it wouldn’t compare to the shock he must have felt when he opened the Chicago Tribune in September 1921 and saw his niece’s death had become the center of a national scandal. He apparently watched her notoriety and that of “Fatty” Arbuckle rise to a fever pitch and said nothing to draw attention to himself.

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[1] “Illinois, Cook County Birth Registers, 1871-1915,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N7WC-FZB: 10 March 2018), Rapp, 07 Jul 1891; citing p.254 no.12677, Chicago, Cook, Illinois, Cook County Courthouse, Chicago; FHL microfilm 1,287,737.

[2] “Marriage Licenses,” Chicago Tribune, 27 December 1891, 8.

[3] Unfortunately, there are no records for the 1890 census. The vast majority of the population schedules were destroyed in a fire in the basement of the U.S. Department of Commerce building in Washington, D.C. in 1921.

[4] “United States Census, 1880,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MXNX-BJ5: 13 January 2022), Mabel Rapp, Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States; citing enumeration district, sheet, NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), FHL microfilm.

[5] “United States Census, 1910,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MKZ5-PZV: accessed 13 June 2023), Virginia Rappe, Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 1199, sheet, family, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll ; FHL microfilm.

[6] “United States Census, 1910,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MKZ5-PZK: accessed 13 June 2023), Zelliene V Rappe in household of Virginia Rappe, Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 1199, sheet, family, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll ; FHL microfilm.

[7] “United States Census, 1920”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MHQF-VFK: 31 January 2021), Virginia Rappe, 1920.

[8] “Illinois, Cook County Deaths, 1871-1998,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2M7-FWC2: 8 March 2018), Virginia Rappe, 22 Nov 1911; citing Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States, source reference 28968, record number, Cook County Courthouse, Chicago; FHL microfilm 1,287,615.

[9] “Missouri, County Marriage, Naturalization, and Court Records, 1800-1991,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6D5W-3NKY: 21 May 2022), Henry H Rapp, 26 May 1864; citing Marriage, St. Louis, Missouri, United States, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City; FHL microfilm 004003319.

[10] “United States Census, 1850,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MDZP-BST: 22 December 2020), Virginia McPhetridge in household of Cammel McPhetridge, St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States; citing family, NARA microfilm publication (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

[11] “United States Census, 1870”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M64L-N1B: 29 May 2021), Henry Rapp in entry for Lizzie Williams, 1870.

[12] “United States Census, 1880,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MXNX-BJJ: 13 January 2022), Helen Rapp in household of Francis Wood, Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States; citing enumeration district, sheet, NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), FHL microfilm.

[13] “United States Census, 1880,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MXNX-BJR: 13 January 2022), Earle Rapp in household of Mabel Rapp, Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States; citing enumeration district, sheet, NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), FHL microfilm.

[14] “Wisconsin Marriages, 1836-1930”, database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XRVX-D15: 30 January 2020), Earl Griffith Rapp, 1898.

[15] “United States Census, 1900”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MS3L-Y8Z: 12 January 2022), Earl Rapp, 1900.

[16] “United States Census, 1910,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MK83-3YD: accessed 15 June 2023), Earl G Rapp, Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 1257, sheet, family, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll ; FHL microfilm.

[17] https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/1872821:2542?tid=&pid=&queryId=29dbf5fe3dabe43b9d469d4841c1911b&_phsrc=JrV2659&_phstart=successSource.

[18] “Illinois, Cook County Deaths, 1871-1998,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2MQ-46GR: 8 March 2018), Henry H Rapp, 07 Jan 1901; citing Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States, source reference 16278, record number, Cook County Courthouse, Chicago; FHL microfilm 1,239,664.

[19] “RAPP—Henry [obituary],” Chicago Tribune, 10 January 1901, 5.