Some genealogy brick walls sit quietly on the shelf for months at a time. You know they’re there. You think about them. You pick them up occasionally, turn them over in your hands, and set them back down when life gets busy. The mystery of Clifford Max’s father is exactly that kind of wall. About a month ago, my son and I decided to stop letting it sit. We cleared a Saturday, opened our laptops, and spent ten hours working the case together. Welcome to Week 14 of the #52Ancestors Challenge: A Brick Wall Revisited. This is one of those brick wall genealogy cases that refuses to stay solved.
If you’re new to this story, here’s the short version. Clifford Max was born on June 18, 1929, to Myrtle June Thompson in Edwardsville, Illinois. His father was never identified on any record. Clifford grew up, married, and had a son of his own. That son is my son’s father. My son has taken both an autosomal DNA test and a Y-DNA test, and the results point clearly toward one family: the Pitts family of North Carolina (and later, Ohio and Pennsylvania). What we have not yet been able to do is name the specific man.
For the fuller backstory, see The Mysterious Mr. Max, Genetic Breadcrumbs: Following DNA to Find the Mysterious Mr. Max, The Secrets We Keep: Myrtle’s Hidden Truth, and Cousins: 3 Lessons From My Most Surprising DNA Matches.
Meet the Patriarch: Abel Montezuma Pitts
The DNA evidence points to the sons of one man: Abel Montezuma Pitts, pictured below.
Abel had seven sons, and any one of them could, in theory, have been in or near Edwardsville, Illinois, in the late summer or early fall of 1928, when Clifford Max was conceived.
Seven sons. One mystery. Ten hours on a Saturday to work through them.
The seven suspects were:
- Marlor Abel Pitts (1896–1977)
- Clarence E. Pitts (1898–1986)
- James Arthur Pitts (1901–1972)
- William J. Pitts (1903–1933)
- Clifford McDowell Pitts (1907–1995)
- Paul Edward Pitts (1911–1980)
- John Harold Pitts (1917–2000)
My son has an analytical mind. He approaches a research problem the way an engineer approaches a system: methodically, skeptically, and without sentimentality. He was not going to let a candidate stay on the list because we hadn’t gotten around to eliminating him yet. If the evidence said no, the answer was no.
That mindset was exactly what this brick wall needed.
The Method: Building the Case Record by Record
For each of Abel’s seven sons, we pulled every record we could find: census records, city directories, marriage records, military records, newspaper articles, and obituaries. The question we asked for each man was the same: where was he in the late summer and early fall of 1928?
Edwardsville, Illinois sits just thirty minutes east of St. Louis. For someone to be Clifford Max’s father, he needed a plausible reason to be in that area at the right time. Geography mattered. So did age, marital status, and occupation. We were looking for opportunity, not just possibility. This was a classic process of elimination, grounded in time, place, and evidence.
One detail from earlier research added an interesting wrinkle. As I wrote in The Secrets We Keep: Myrtle’s Hidden Truth, the 1920 census shows that Martha Thompson, Myrtle’s mother, ran a boarding house, renting rooms to strangers for extra income. We do not know whether Martha was still taking in boarders in 1928. We have not found evidence either way for that specific period. But the possibility lingers: a boarding house would have been one way for a young man from out of town to land in Myrtle’s world without anyone needing to travel to St. Louis at all. It is a thread worth pulling.
Five of the seven sons did not survive the scrutiny.
Five Down: The Eliminations
Marlor Abel Pitts (1896–1977)
Marlor was the oldest of Abel’s sons, thirty-two years old at the time of Clifford Max’s conception. The records placed him firmly in Pennsylvania. He was living and working in Bethlehem and Allentown as a mechanic, his second wife Elsie was by his side, and in 1926 his son Marlor E. Pitts was born and died there. A Pennsylvania mechanic had no documented reason to travel to southwestern Illinois. Marlor is eliminated.
Clarence E. Pitts (1898–1986)
The 1929 Steubenville, Ohio city directory placed Clarence in Steubenville, married to Violet Augusta Blanc and working in construction. No documented connection to Illinois. More critically, we have a confirmed DNA match to a descendant of Clarence E. Pitts, and the shared centimorgans do not fall within the range expected if my son’s father were a descendant of this man. The DNA closed the door that geography had already pushed shut. Clarence is eliminated.
James Arthur Pitts (1901–1972)
James was living in Columbus, Ohio in 1928. His wife had just given birth to their daughter in late August of that year. Beyond the geography, we again have a confirmed DNA match to a descendant of James Arthur Pitts, and the numbers don’t support a close enough relationship. Two lines of evidence pointed the same direction. James is eliminated.
William J. Pitts (1903–1933)
William married in January 1928 and remained consistently documented in either Columbus or Dayton, Ohio from 1928 through his death in 1933. No evidence of travel to Illinois. No gap in the record large enough to accommodate a trip to Edwardsville. William is eliminated.
John Harold Pitts (1917–2000)
John was twelve years old in 1929. We did not spend long on John.
Still Standing: Paul Edward Pitts (1911–1980)
Paul is the candidate we have not fully eliminated, but we also do not believe he is Clifford Max’s father. He was seventeen or eighteen years old at the time of conception, so it’s possible but improbable. More importantly, we have not yet been able to place him definitively anywhere in 1928 and 1929. He appears to have been living in either North Carolina or Dayton, Ohio during this period, with Dayton the stronger probability by 1929.
Paul stays on the list only because we have not yet gathered enough evidence to eliminate him. That is not the same as evidence in his favor. It is an open research question, and we intend to answer it.
The Primary Suspect: Clifford McDowell Pitts (1907–1995)
From the beginning of this investigation, Clifford McDowell Pitts has been the strongest candidate. After ten hours of research, he remains the strongest candidate.
First, the name. Family lore says Clifford Max was named after his father. The surname “Max” was fabricated: there is no documentary evidence of anyone named Clifford Max anywhere in the United States at the time of conception. It seems to be a name Myrtle invented to give her son a father on paper. But his first name, Clifford, she kept. His obituary reveals that Clifford McDowell Pitts went by the nickname “Mac.” Myrtle named her son after a man the world would know as Mac — and gave him “Max” as a plausible cover. It is the kind of detail that makes you sit up straight.
Here is what we know. Clifford McDowell Pitts was twenty-one years old in the summer of 1928, well within a plausible age range. He was not married at the time of conception. In 1926, records place him in Akron, Ohio, working for Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. And in 1930, in his marriage license for his marriage to Marie Zaprazny, it also states his residence is also in Akron, Ohio.
That employment detail matters more than it might seem. Firestone was aggressively expanding its national sales and service network throughout the late 1920s.4 A young Firestone employee in 1926 could plausibly have been traveling as a district sales representative, a dealer support agent, a service store scout, or a regional staff member by 1928. The St. Louis metropolitan area, just thirty minutes from Edwardsville, was a significant commercial market. Madison County, where Edwardsville sits, was home to heavy industry. A Firestone connection to that corridor is not a stretch.
What we do not yet have is documentary proof placing Clifford McDowell Pitts in or near Edwardsville in 1928. That gap is the heart of the remaining brick wall. We also do not yet have a direct DNA connection to Clifford McDowell Pitts specifically. What we do have is substantial: my son’s Y-DNA test connects to the Pitts family, and both my son and his father show DNA matches that cluster around Abel Montezuma Pitts’s broader family. The specific branch within that family remains the open question.
Fresh Eyes and Ten Good Hours
I want to say something about my son, because this post is as much about him as it is about Clifford McDowell Pitts.
This was the first time my son had ever seemed genuinely interested in genealogy. Genuinely, leaning-forward, what-does-this-record-say interested.
He approached the problem like the analytical thinker he is. When the evidence said no, he said no. When I might have lingered on a candidate out of habit or hope, he cut through it cleanly. He saw patterns I had been too close to the problem to notice. He asked questions I had stopped asking.
That is what fresh eyes do. They do not know which suspects you have already mentally dismissed or quietly favored. They come to the evidence without the accumulated assumptions of years of research. And sometimes they crack open walls that have been standing for a long time.
We did not solve the mystery of Clifford Max’s father that Saturday. But we eliminated five candidates with confidence, identified one open research question, and strengthened the case for the man we believe is the answer. That is a very good day’s work.
Where the Investigation Stands
Five of Abel Montezuma Pitts’s seven sons are eliminated. John Harold Pitts was too young. Marlor, Clarence, James, and William are ruled out by geography, confirmed DNA evidence, or both.
Paul Edward Pitts remains an open question pending further research into his whereabouts in 1928 and 1929.
Clifford McDowell Pitts remains our primary suspect: the right age, unmarried, employed by a company with plausible reasons to send a young man to the St. Louis area, and not contradicted by any evidence we have found. What we still need is documentary proof of his presence near Edwardsville in 1928, and ideally a DNA match to one of his known descendants.
This genealogy brick wall case is not finished. But it is finally moving.
YOUR TURN!
Have you ever worked through a multi-candidate elimination problem in your genealogy research? How did you approach placing each person geographically at a critical moment in time? Share your strategies in the comments. And if you happen to be a descendant of Clifford McDowell Pitts who has taken a DNA test, I would very much like to hear from you.
This post is part of the ongoing Mystery of Mr. Max series. To read previous installments, visit The Mysterious Mr. Max, Genetic Breadcrumbs: Following DNA to Find the Mysterious Mr. Max, The Secrets We Keep: Myrtle’s Hidden Truth, and Cousins: 3 Lessons From My Most Surprising DNA Matches.
- “Abel Montazuma Pitts,” photograph, [date unknown]; uploaded by wpitts9584, 27 July 2008, Ancestry public member tree (https://www.ancestry.com/mediaui-viewer/collection/1030/tree/6365764/person/-1206046790/media/8e792f7c-14b1-40f5-bab6-35c41ecec532?galleryindex=1&sort=-created : accessed 6 April 2026); photographer unknown; original held by unknown repository. ↩︎
- “Deaths and Funerals,” Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio), 23 February 1995, p. 24; digital image, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/image/408496034/ : accessed 6 April 2026). ↩︎
- Brooke County, West Virginia, Marriage Records, 1929–1930, Clifford McDowell Pitts and Marie Zaprazny, 30 April 1929; digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-68N9-ZVF : accessed 6 April 2026), Image Group No. 004230118, Brooke County Clerk of the County Court. ↩︎
- “Firestone Tire and Rubber Plant,” Historic Places LA (Los Angeles Conservancy, Los Angeles, California), article entry for 333 N. Central Avenue, South Gate, California; (https://www.laconservancy.org/learn/historic-places/firestone-tire-and-rubber-plant/ : accessed 5 April 2026). Digital article describing the plant’s 1928 opening and 1929 expansion, produced by a nonprofit historic preservation organization. ↩︎
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