More pictures of Raynor and Lilas and their family can be found here. There is also more information about their four children, eight grand children and great granchildren’s families on that page.
Raynor Earl McLain was the 3rd McLain son born in 1903.
A brief history of Raynor’s life
Raynor was Henry and Mary Helena’s third son born in 1903 in Raisin Township near Tecumseh, Michigan. He, like his two older brothers attended the one room school house that Fulton McLain (II) built. Raynor was a farmer and bought and sold several farms over the years around Tecumseh, Michigan – the family moved many times during the 1920s to 1940s. He married Lilas May Hammel and had four children, Ruth, Muriel, Robert and Fulton. He farmed mostly corn and built most of his own houses.
Raynor worked for a time as a streetcar conductor in Detroit. This is how he met Lilas. She was a passenger on a streetcar and started flirting with her when they were pretty young. He is shown in the left in his conductor uniform.
On the right is a picture of Lilas, which is funky because she apparently moved before the photograph was finished reading a book in the McLain house in around 1918, when she still had long hair. Lilas was the adopted daughter of Dr Hammel, the only doctor in Tecumseh. Her brother also became a doctor so for a while the only doctors in Tecumseh were Hammels.
Raynor worked several farms throughout the area – he would work the land for a few year, and presumably improve it and then sell it on and do it again. He, Lilas and their four children moved often during the 1920s and 1930s. Farming included taking food off the land. Apparently Raynor was partial to eating muskrats which he could easily shoot on his land.
Marriage to Lilas
Raynor married Lilas May Hammel (b. 1901) in 1922 and they had 4 children. Ruth Lois McLain (b. 1923), Muriel Helene McLain (b. 1924), Robert Hammel McLain (b. 1927) and, yes another, Fulton Earle McLain (b. 1933).
Henry's boys 