Otillie Audrey Lieberknecht. What a mouthful. Her New Jersey birth certificate said "Otille Lieb," born on September 20, 1908, in Jersey City to Wm. C Lieb, 39, and Florence Wenzel, 25. They lived at 243 Montgomery St. She was the second child and the only one living. I suspect the first child was named Dorothy as Momma Audrey said I was named after her sister. Audrey was the 2nd or 3rd female child of William's, the first two, John and Olive, were with Mary A. Carter, his first wife. William's mother was named Ottilie. There's a little discrepancy here with his supposed first child, Ollie, who was born five months before the marriage, and the DNA doesn't match with William's sister's (Agnes) line and mine. 

William liked to be called Lieb, and that is what Florence called him. Lieberknecht was his step-father's name, and William used that most of his life having grown up with George Lieberknecht as his father since he was seven years old. But that's another story when I write about William.

I don't think Audrey liked the name Otillie. She was known as Ottilie Lieb in grammar school in Oxnard and at Santa Barbara High School. She changed her name to Audrey Otillie around the time she married Philip Grosvenor Jones in 1930 in Ventura. From then on she signed Audrey O. Jones in her books and watercolor paintings.

Sometime soon after Audrey's birth in 1908, the family left for Detroit, Michigan where they appear in the 1910 US Census. From there they traveled to Santa Barbara where Aunt Barbara was born on September 9, 1911. Barbara's birth certificate says "unnamed," and her parents were Wm. C. Lieb, 42 and Florence Wenzel, 27. They were living at the Anapamu House. Years later in 1971, my sister Phyllis and Barbara filed an affidavit to amend the birth record to show Barbara's name as Barbara Rosemarie Lieb Tuttle to enable Barbara to apply for Social Security benefits.  The family must have traveled quickly to Santa Barbara from either Detroit or El Paso, Texas in order for Florence (we called her Mimi) to give birth to Barbara in 1911, and then they traveled back to El Paso, Texas. This is where it gets confusing. Here's where a timeline helps:
1908 - Jersey City, New Jersey
1910 - Detroit, Michigan
1911 - Santa Barbara, California
1912 - El Paso, Texas

1920 - Oxnard and Santa Barbara

Audrey may have been a sickly child. I heard once she had rheumatic or scarlet fever. The Oxnard Courier reported her as having pneumonia. Audrey had complained that she never got to go anywhere with her parents because she was often sick.

sickly child
rheumatic fever?
high grades in Oxnard school
She rode on the train from El Paso to Oxnard alone as reported in the Oxnard Courier.

Plays that Audrey was in:

Officer 666, Apron Strings

at the Playbox Theater 1408 State St., 

Playbox Players
1939