section_path: Personal life/Family
section_name: Family
paragraph_text: Family
  
  Armstrong was performing at the Brick House in Gretna, Louisiana when he met Daisy Parker, a local prostitute, and started an affair as a client. Armstrong returned to Gretna on several occasions to visit her. He found the courage to look for her home to see her away from work. There, Armstrong found out she had a common-law husband. Not long after that fiasco, Parker traveled to Armstrong's home on Perdido Street. They checked into Kid Green's hotel that evening. On the next day, March 19, 1919, Armstrong and Parker married at City Hall. They adopted a three-year-old boy, Clarence, whose mother, Armstrong's cousin Flora, had died soon after giving birth. Clarence Armstrong was mentally disabled as a result of a head injury at an early age. Armstrong spent the rest of his life taking care of him. His marriage to Parker ended when they separated in 1923.
  
  On February 4, 1924, Armstrong married Lil Hardin Armstrong, King Oliver's pianist. She had divorced her first husband a few years earlier. Armstrong's second wife helped him develop his career, but they separated in 1931 and divorced in 1938. Armstrong then married Alpha Smith. His relationship with Alpha began while he was playing at the Vendome during the 1920s and continued long after. Armstrong's marriage to her lasted four years; they divorced in 1942. He then married Lucille Wilson, a singer at the Cotton Club in New York, in October 1942. They remained married until his death in 1971.
  
  Armstrong's marriages produced no offspring. However, in December 2012, 57-year-old Sharon Preston-Folta claimed to be his daughter from a 1950s affair between Armstrong and Lucille "Sweets" Preston, a dancer at the Cotton Club. In a 1955 letter to his manager, Joe Glaser, Armstrong affirmed his belief that Preston's newborn baby was his daughter, and ordered Glaser to pay a monthly allowance of $400, $ 5,687 in 2023 dollars, to mother and child.