Willard Benjamin Britain and Katherine "Kate" Cook had five children, four sons and a daughter. After the death of Kate (and if anybody has any information about this lady beyond her name, please let me know), Willard for some reason felt himself unable to care for his daughter, Bertha. She was "adopted out" and eventually married a man named Myers and had two sons, Kenneth and Gerald.

Until a couple of days ago, that was all I knew about Great-Aunt Bertha. A couple of days ago, I sat down at my computer, plugged the name "Bertha Britain" into a search engine on Rootsweb, and hit a bulls-eye.

Bertha was adopted by a man named Marion Francis "Frank" Hoover and his wife, Samantha (Simmons). They had no children of their own. Contact of some sort between the Britains and the Hoovers continued; I have pictures of Bertha as a teenager or young woman and one of her as an adult. I also have pictures of her boys, including one of the boys, a man identified as "Frank Hoover" (that mystery now solved) and another man identified as "Dad Britain:"

Frank Hoover is the man in the car with the boys.

Bertha Britain was born around 1891 in Nebraska. The exact date is unknown. As I have yet to discover any sort of information about her mother, I also have no way of knowing just when she was adopted by the Hoovers. I was sent a picture of her with her adoptive parents in front of their farmhouse; I would guess that she is younger than ten in the picture, though it is hard to tell.

Bertha married Nevin Sanford Myers in 1910 in Rice County, Kansas. They had two children, Marion Gerald Myers (he was known as Gerald), who was born 11 April 1911, and Kenneth Willard Myers, who was born 4 March 1913.

Bertha Britain Myers died shortly after the birth of her second son, sometime in March 1913, presumably of childbirth complications of some kind. She is buried in Alden Valley Cemetery, Alden Kansas.
Both sons died of sudden heart attacks in their early 60s.

This is Gerald Myers, the older son.

And this is Kenneth, the younger boy.

Dates of photos unknown, but they look all grown up. These were in the family picture album, so there is pretty good evidence that some sort of contact continued for a while--someone sent Grandpa pictures of his nephews, apparently.

It is sad that Bertha died so young, but it would appear that in spite of a rough beginning to her life, she was well-loved while she was alive, and I can only imagine how much she was missed after she died. I am happy to have finally found out what happened to her, though. And her sons both married and had children, so we have more cousins out there somewhere.