The theme for Week 24 is Possibilities. When I read that word this week, I didn’t think first about open doors or bright horizons. I thought about Clifford.
This is the fifth post in the Mystery of Mr. Max series. If you’re just joining the story, the short version: Clifford Frank Max was born June 18, 1929, in Edwardsville, Illinois, to an unmarried nineteen-year-old named Myrtle. His father’s identity was never recorded truthfully. Clifford grew up believing his father had died before he was born. The DNA evidence now points strongly to one man: Clifford McDowell Pitts of Akron, Ohio, known to family and friends as Mac.
For the full investigation, start with: The Mysterious Mr. Max, then Genetic Breadcrumbs: Following DNA to Find the Mysterious Mr. Max, The Secrets We Keep: Myrtle’s Hidden Truth, Cousins: 3 Lessons From My Most Surprising DNA Matches, and finally, A Brick Wall Revisited: Ten Hours, Seven Suspects, One Direction.
Clifford spent his whole life with a name his mother gave him and a story she invented. His father, she said, had died before his son was born. His name was Clifford, same as the son. That was all Clifford ever had: a name, a story, and the particular kind of grief that comes from losing someone you never got to know.
What he didn’t have was the chance to ask his own questions. Someone had already decided what he would be allowed to believe.
What We Know Now
In April, my son and I spent ten hours working the case. We laid out all seven sons of Abel Montezuma Pitts, the man the DNA pointed to as patriarch, and worked methodically through each one. Five were eliminated. One remains an open question. And one, Clifford McDowell Pitts, known as Mac, remains our strongest candidate, stronger now than when we started.
The name connection still stops me cold every time I think about it. Myrtle put Clifford Max on the birth certificate. She told her son he was named after his father. The DNA points to a man named Clifford McDowell Pitts, who went by Mac. She kept the first name true. She turned the nickname into a surname. Max for Mac.
That is not coincidence. That is a woman doing something careful and deliberate and, in its own way, kind. She gave her son a thread back to his father: too thin to follow, but real enough to hold.
The Gap That Remains
Here is where we stand. Clifford McDowell Pitts was twenty-one years old in the summer of 1928. He was unmarried. Records place him in Akron, Ohio, working for Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in 1926, and still listing Akron as his residence on his April 1929 marriage license.
What we do not yet have is documentary proof explaining how a young man from Akron and a young woman from Edwardsville crossed paths. Whether it was work, family, or simple circumstance remains unknown.
We also have not found a DNA match to a known descendant of Mac’s who tests at a range consistent with a half-sibling to Clifford or first cousin relationship to Clifford’s son.
That record may not exist. That DNA match may not have tested. This is the particular difficulty of researching unknown parentage cases: you can do everything right, narrow the field to one man, build a case that is coherent and evidence-grounded, and still be left with a gap you cannot close on your own.
What Clifford’s Possibilities Might Have Been
I find myself thinking about what might have been different if Clifford had known.
He might have reached out to the Pitts family. He might have had cousins. He might have known his father’s face from a photograph, his voice from a phone call, his character from a letter. Mac lived until 1995. Clifford Frank Max died on March 22, 1996. There was, in theory, time. If Clifford had known where to look, if anyone had told him, if the name Max had been a door instead of a wall.
It wasn’t. Myrtle made sure of that, and I don’t say that with judgment. She was nineteen years old, unmarried, and living in a world that had very little mercy for women in her situation. She gave her son what she could. She gave him a first name that was true. She gave him a story that held.
What she couldn’t give him was the possibility of knowing.
What Our Possibilities Are Now
My son is the one pursuing this. Clifford was his grandfather, and the question of who Clifford’s father was belongs, in the most personal sense, to him.
The DNA evidence is the strongest tool we have. The matches at the second cousin, second cousin once removed, and third cousin level, all clustering to the Pitts family, tell us the relationship is real. What they can’t tell us, on their own, is which specific man in that family is the one.
What we need is one of the following: a descendant of Clifford McDowell Pitts who has tested and whose result is consistent with a half-sibling to Clifford or first cousin relationship to Clifford’s son. Or a record, a company travel log, a letter, a photograph, a newspaper mention, that places Mac near Edwardsville in the summer of 1928.
Either is possible. Neither is guaranteed.
That is the nature of genealogy at the edge of the evidence. You do not get to decide when the case closes. You follow the leads, document the gaps honestly, and keep the door open.
Clifford never got to know who his father was. The opportunities he never had are gone. But the possibility of knowing the truth, for the people who came after him, is still open.
That’s where the work lives.
Research Note: If you are a descendant of Clifford McDowell Pitts, or of any of his siblings, and you have taken a DNA test, I would very much like to hear from you. The case is not finished. But with the right match, it could be.
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