Calling new on object with pointer to of same type, seems to allocate memory to pointer - c++

Question

I'm trying to implement a Trie data structure on my own, without looking at other implementations, so simply based on my conceptual knowledge of the structure. I would like to avoid using vectors, simply because they are easy to use... I prefer to use pointers for dynamically allocating memory for arrays when I'm programming as practice. That said, with the structure that I currently have, I have a Node class that contains a pointer to a Node array, a letter (bool), and a marker (bool). My Trie class has a pointer to the starting Node array. Each node array has 26 elements to refer to each letter of the English alphabet from 'a' to 'z' lowercase (I convert each word inserted to lowercase). When a letter is set to 'true' then its letterArray is allocated new memory. Node has a constructor to set letter and marker to false and letterArray to nullptr. I can insert the first letter no problem and go to the next letterArray (which is nullptr at this point) after which memory is allocated to the new array. The problem is, the next letterArray of each Node is also allocated memory, but the constructor is not called on them, resulting in their letter and marker containing garbage, and I'm wondering what is the reason the constructor is not called? Hopefully the code will make this more clear:
class Node {
private:
bool letter;
bool marker;
Node* letterArray;
void initNode();
public:
Node();
bool setLetter(bool set);
bool setMarker(bool set);
bool checkLetter();
bool checkMarker();
char getLetter();
Node*& getNextLetterArray();
};
class Trie {
private:
Node* start;
int wordCount;
int letterCount;
const int totalLetters = 26;
void destroyTrie();
bool initBranch(Node*& nextBranch);
void insertCharAndMove(Node*& ptr, int, int, int);
public:
Trie();
Trie(string firstWord);
~Trie();
bool insertWord(string word);
bool deleteWord(string word);
bool getToLetter(char letter);
string getLowerCase(string word);
bool wordExists(string word);
};
insertWord:
bool Trie::insertWord(string word) {
Node* ptr = start;
string wordLower = getLowerCase(word);
int wordLength = word.length();
if (wordLength <= 0) return false;
for (int i = 0; i < wordLength; i++) {
int charIndex = (word[i] - 'a');
insertCharAndMove(ptr, charIndex, wordLength, i);
}
wordCount++;
return true;
}
void Trie::insertCharAndMove(Node*& ptr, int charIndex, int wordLength, int i) {
if (ptr[charIndex].setLetter(true)) letterCount++;
if (i < wordLength) {
ptr = ptr[i].getNextLetterArray();
initBranch(ptr);
}
else ptr[i].setMarker(true);
}
initBranch:
bool Trie::initBranch(Node*& nextBranch) {
if (nextBranch != nullptr) return false;
nextBranch = new Node[letterCount];
return true;
}
Trie Constructor:
Trie::Trie() {
start = new Node[totalLetters];
wordCount = 0;
letterCount = 0;
}
Node Constructor:
Node::Node() {
initNode();
}
void Node::initNode() {
letter = false;
marker = false;
letterArray = nullptr;
}
getNextLetterArray:
Node*& Node::getNextLetterArray() {
return letterArray;
}