History and lore
Annie Luiza South was seventeen, living with her family in South Lebanon, Warren County, Ohio, when she married George D. Malott, then 22 and working as a laborer, on 19 July 1921. Because she was under age, her father, Lowel F. South, signed his consent on the application. Neither had been married before. The marriage did not last. When Annie applied to marry again, in April 1924, she was 20 and gave her name as Annie Luiza Malott, “married once” and divorced. Exactly when she and George divorced is not known. On 14 April 1924 she married Jay Orin Kinner, 24, a laborer from Morrow, Ohio, born at Williamsburg, the son of William Kinner and Ida Kratzer; her parents again gave their consent. George later married Mildred Adams.
Annie and George had a daughter, Helen, born in 1922 or early 1923, who grew up as Helen Kinner.
Her third marriage, and her children
On 4 October 1932 the Dayton Daily News listed a marriage license issued to “Bufford C. Griffin, 23, of R. R. 11, and Annie L. Kinner, 28, of R. R. 11.” Her obituary in the same paper forty years later, on 1 May 1972, confirms that this was Annie: “Griffin, Annie, age 68,” of Miamisburg, survived by her husband Bufford, with her funeral at Lebanon and burial in South Lebanon Cemetery, where she was born.
The obituary names four surviving children: sons Frank South and Bill Kenner (surely Kinner), both of Dayton, and daughters Mrs. Barbara Deaton and Mrs. Robert Gallaher, both of Tampa, Florida. She also had fifteen grandchildren. Bill was presumably a son of her second husband, Jay Orin Kinner; Frank carried her own maiden name, South.
“Mrs. Robert Gallaher” was George’s daughter, Helen, as her own obituary of 1991 shows. The boy listed with Annie in 1930 as “Burlan (?) J.” Kinner, aged 1½, is very probably the Bill (William) Kinner of the obituaries.
The daughter found: Helen
George’s sons knew they had a half-sister named Helen, but never met her. In 2026 her records were found: the 1930 census lists Helen, aged 7, as Lowell South’s granddaughter, living with her divorced mother under her stepfather’s surname, Kinner. Born in 1922 or early 1923, she married Robert Gallagher and died in Tampa, Florida, in 1991. See Helen M. (Malott) Gallagher c. 1922–1991.
