January 1935
Clara Olive Blaise , Marie Blaise
Xochimilco, Mexico,D.F - 1938
Joplin - 1944
view of model view of interior
Paseo de la Presa
Guanajuato, Gto., Mexico
mother of Clara Olive
Joplin - 1953
father of Clara Olive
Joplin - 1928
Wedding vows were exchanged between Clara Olive Snyder and Dudley E. Blaise at First Presbyterian Church, Joplin, Missouri on December 26, 1934. Rev. Dr. Otto Seymour officiated. The bride is the daughter of Mabel Mitchell Snyder and the late John Abbott Benham Snyder, Joplin bus line founder. The groom is the son of Greek Miller Blaise Canterbury, Chicago and Los Angeles real estate developer; and of Eugene Frank Blaise, Tulsa banker, oil producer and mining company president.
A reception followed at the home of Mrs. John Abbott (Mabel Mitchell) Snyder, mother of the bride. Those in attendance included Mrs. Snyder; E. F. Blaise, father of the groom; Marie Blaise, stepmother of the groom; and Helen Mitchell, aunt of the bride.
Following the reception the bride and groom departed on a honeymoon, stopping off at the home of Mrs. Van Lear Black Jr. in St. Louis. Mrs. Black, the former Helen Mitchell Frampton, and a cousin of the bride, hosted a reception in honor of the couple, before they departed for a cruise of the West Indies.
The bride is a graduate of National Park Seminary, Forest Glen, Maryland. The groom attended Colorado School of Mines. He is connected with the Admiralty Zinc Mining Company, of which his father is president.
El Cedro Mining Company
In 1936, the Blaises established El Cedro Silver Mining Company at Guanajuato, Mexico, where they established a home the following year. They sired two sons, Dudley Jr. (John), born in 1937, and Tom, born in 1938.
In March 1938, Mexican Fascist President Lazaro Cardenas expropriated foreign-owned petroleum companies and forced the closure of El Cedro and other foreign-owned mining companies via a lengthy and violent miner's strike.
During the political turmoil, Dudley abandoned Clara Olive, John and Tom in 1939, taking with him an inheritance Clara Olive had received from her father and grandmother.
In December 1940, Miss Alice LeRoi Jordan gave birth to a son in California, allegedly fathered by Dudley. Miss Jordan and Dudley began living together as man and wife, although he was still legally married to Clara Olive. Miss Jordan and Dudley eventually fled to Bolivia in order to avoid paying wife and child support to Clara Olive.
After he was ordered by a Bolivian court to pay child support to Clara Olive, Dudley immediately left Bolivia and returned to Mexico, where he found lucrative employment as an engineer, yet he discontinued paying the child support to Clara Olive. He eventually headed the Mexico City firm of Drilmex, S.A. as president. In his spare time he coached Mexican Little League baseball.
Clara Olive, who never again saw her husband, was awarded a divorce on grounds of desertion by a Missouri court in November 1949. She married Charles M. Shepherd, director-treasurer of the Empire District Electric Company on December 3, 1949. His body was recovered from the East River in New York City in 1955, an apparent suicide.
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Blaise Estate Tops $1.8 Million
story
Clara Olive & Dudley
The West Indies 1935
Eugene Frank Blaise
Tulsa Oil Man
Portrait and Biography
John Abbott Snyder
Jopin Bus Line Owner
Portrait
and
Biograhical Sketch
Mabel Mitchell Snyder
Homemaker
Portrait
and
Biographical Sketch