Her name was Daisy!!
After doing the AncestryDNA thing, I started clicking around and looking at some of the records associated with my Father and his side of my family. I was actually able to find census, military, and death records for my grandfather and my great-grandfather.
My great-grandfather married my great-grandmother in 1915 and her first name was DAISY!! I don’t why that tickles me pink but it does. Maybe because it reminds me of Downton Abbey Daisy Mason and she married Our William most likely sometime between 1915 and 1918.
I’ve lost the trail of the family name with my great-grandfather and will have to figure a different way to find the information. The 1900 census shows that he was the “step”-son of the head of household and although this record gave me his mother’s married name - she doesn’t appear on any other records in the database under that married name or under the family name when she would have been married to my great-great-grandfather.
Yes, I considered that perhaps she might have had him out of wedlock and therefore the family name would be her maiden name. But there was a younger sister in the census record with the same last name and I doubt that she would have had two children out of wedlock - not and had someone willing to marry her and take on that ready-made family back in the day.
I think that ultimately, I’m going to have to try and find a birth record to continue this search.