When Sorrows Multiply

 

When, in wandering the path leading backwards through the generations, we encounter an impassible roadblock, it sometimes works to step to the side, rather than stubbornly press against the immovable. Thus, when I couldn't make any research progress on Delaney Townsend, wife of Andrew Charles of Madison County, Florida, I searched for a bigger picture.

Perhaps this can be dubbed genealogy-by-poking-around. Collateral lines may provide an escape route by enabling the researcher to do an end-run around the point of no answers. But it seems so very uncertain. Nondescript. Vague. Perhaps even mis-directed.

Call it what you may, I started looking at all the siblings I could find for the Charles couple. Of course, in Delaney's case, I have yet to determine who she might have been related to among the many Townsend families in Madison County. But I did already know quite a few details about Andrew Charles' side of the family, so that's where I began my exploration.

Andrew likely had many more siblings than I've been able to find, but that was no problem: I started with what I did know. Andrew, son of Reuben and Rebecca Charles, had at least two sisters of interest for our purposes today: Drucilla and Mary Ann.

Drucilla was the sister who eventually took in her brother Andrew's orphaned children Benjamin, Fanny, and Emma. We can see that was so, at least in 1860, from her household's entry in that year's census, under her husband's name, Melburn Odum. What also became clear from that enumeration: the household was home to children with three different surnames. There was Drucilla's daughter Mabel Odum, apparently a newborn at the time the census was taken. Then, the three Charles children of Drucilla's brother Andrew. And a set of Hines children: Emma and Mary.

As it turns out, Drucilla was mother of the Hines children, as well, whose father was Thomas Hughs Hines. Though the 1860 census gave daughter Mary's age as five, the 1870 census indicated she was likely born in 1858, not 1855—helping to pin an estimated date for her father's passing before her mother's subsequent marriage to Melburn Odum by 1859.

As for the other Charles sibling, we've discussed Mary Ann Charles in the past. She was the one who may have been the subject of the Charles legend of the red scarf. Hers, too, was a life story of multiplied sorrows. She had married William McLeran of neighboring Suwannee County and, no sooner than giving birth to their daughter Fannie, lost both husband and daughter within months of each other.

It was in reviewing these sad details that the ton of bricks finally hit me: why were all these people dying around the same time? Drucilla Charles' first husband Thomas Hines had to have died barely two years before 1860. Mary Ann's husband died at the end of May, 1860. Though I can find no burial information for their daughter, she died less than a month after her father, according to Mary Ann's appeal to the Suwannee County court requesting appointment as administratrix of her daughter's inherited property.

Although the best I can do in estimating the dates of death of my original research focus, Delaney Townsend and her husband Andrew Charles, is to circle a span of time stretching nearly a decade—after 1850 but before 1860—I'm beginning to wonder what might have been going on in northern Florida, leading up to those several deaths in the extended family in such a brief time period. Could there have been a widespread cause resulting in many deaths—especially deaths not documented in a readily-available form?

Taking that question to the search engines, I ran across one list of epidemics in the United States, but it didn't include any details involving the decade leading up to 1860. Although one article indicated the nineteenth century was a transformational period in medical history, we do need to remember that Florida, unlike the rest of the eastern seaboard of that time period, was still very much a frontier. In addition, Florida's near-tropical weather combined with ample water sources could have yielded conditions ripe for illnesses such as malaria.

There was, however, one other list of epidemics which seemed to provide an answer. A worldwide timeline of epidemics indicated an influenza epidemic in both Europe and the Americas from 1857 through 1859. Could that have been the cause of the family's many losses?

Whatever the case, besides Mary McLaren's husband and daughter, plus Drucilla's first husband, Delaney and Andrew Charles disappeared from view without a sign that I can find—so far. Of course, understanding the possible turmoil swirling around these families may help me understand the risks they faced, but it doesn't tell me the answer to my research goal of discovering Delaney's parents. We'll have to turn to yet another consideration in our continuing exploration.

On Guardians

 

There are certain set procedures with which a family historian is most familiar, mainly by reason of frequent use. To go through the process to find a death record or a census entry, most of us experience no problems. We know the routine. But to find any record of court-appointed guardianships may be a different issue.

Guardianships, according to the Florida courts website—hopefully the repository of the very document I am seeking—involve court-appointed "surrogate decision-makers" who act on behalf of minors for personal and/or financial decisions.

In the case of Emma, Frances, and Benjamin Charles, minors left without their parents some time before 1860, someone needed to attend to their care. Not just because of their ages—barely emerging into their teenage years—but because of their parents' financial condition, there surely was a paper trail to indicate how to properly oversee the transfer of property as well as parental care. The challenge: how to find a document outlining such a plan.

For one thing, each state has its own procedures to follow for the recording and filing of such documents. Beyond that—and here, especially, is the rub—each state has its own policy for how to preserve such records from centuries past. The question becomes one of access, especially if we are fortunate enough to discover that the records in question happen to have been digitized and made available at repositories in addition to the county courthouse.

So here I sit, stuck in California in the midst of a pandemic, right at the time when I would otherwise have been visiting Florida and looking up records on what became of my third great-grandmother Delaney Townsend Charles. More to the point, since I'm wondering what became of her children when she and her husband disappeared from sight before the 1860 census, I'd be thinking about what legal procedures might have taken place to assure continued care for her three orphaned children.

Surely, someone would have drawn up records designating who the guardian was to be—especially considering that Delaney's husband, Andrew Charles, had claimed real estate in the Madison County, Florida, 1850 census valued at four thousand dollars. Considering a Townsend family member's claim that Delaney's brother had taken in the children—and a contradicting record in the 1860 census showed Delaney's sister-in-law and her husband to be the ones actually housing the children—it was time to look for some court documentation to provide directions on who would be responsible for the orphans.

Time to look for those guardianship records. However, when we, as family historians, repeat such searches only infrequently, it helps to have guidance, such as the FamilySearch Wiki for finding general records in Florida—even more so for drilling down to the specific state's probate records or other court records. Of course, there are sometimes other resources for finding court cases, though none will be so thorough as the county's (or state's) own archiving system for local records.

In the end, having the current limitation on travel, I resorted to the FamilySearch catalog, checking the box for online resources only. Fortunately, there was indeed a collection of Letters of Guardianship for Madison County, the last place where I found Delaney and Andrew Charles in 1850. Unfortunately, the microfilmed collection was browse-only—worse, buried behind mortgage records. But I did find the index for the specific guardianship court cases.

Once locating the indexed names, the first stumbling block was discovering that the alphabetical listing was not for the surname of the minors, but for the guardian. That left open three possible choices. Any record filed on behalf of the Charles orphans could have been drawn up by Light Townsend, Delaney's brother. Or they could have been filed by the husband of Andrew Charles' sister Drucilla.

That led to a secondary problem, because I don't yet know the date—or dates—of Andrew and Delaney's passing. You see, Drucilla was married to Thomas Hughs Hines up until about 1858, and to Melburn Odum from about that year onward. Depending on when Drucilla's brother and his wife died, the guardianship papers could have been drawn up listing Thomas Hines, or Melburn Odum.

While there were no guardianship entries for Townsend or Odum, there was one line entered for a man by the name of Hines. However, no matter how abysmal the handwriting of the court clerk, it would take more imagination than I could muster to morph the given name of that Hines gentleman into Thomas, leaving me with a null set for my search efforts.

Of course, given that the Odums lived in a different county by the time of the 1860 census, it is possible that the guardianship records could have been filed—or amended—in that county, rather than in the 1850 home of the now-deceased Charles couple. There are far too many other details which could impact that legal process, leading me through a guessing game to determine where to pick up this cold trail. In the meantime, that doesn't mean all other research possibilities have dried up. There's always another resource to help lead us to answers, even with our mystery ancestors.  

Fact Checking Delaney

 

The best jumping-off place for a deep exploration of the genealogical unknown is to start with what we do know. In our earliest beginners' training sessions, for instance, we were always told to "start with yourself"—and certainly not to pass "go" or even collect two hundred relatives before we have done our due diligence with each step through the generations.

With Delaney Townsend, however, there is precious little to know. And yet, that is precisely where we need to begin our search: with what we know.

I already know, thanks to family reports, that Delaney's daughter, my second great-grandmother Emma Charles, married William Henry McClellan in Suwannee County, Florida, on October 23, 1867. Thus, I have a toe-hold on this line to enable me to start with what I know. Emma was the "baby" daughter I mentioned yesterday—the youngest of at least three children who became my only means of tracing what became of Delaney's family.

The problem is that, although I can find Delaney with her family in the 1850 census, I can only find her children by 1860. Even that was a challenging chase. From the 1850 census, I could see Delaney—recorded under the nickname Lania—in the household of her husband, Andrew Charles, along with three children, listed as a four year old son named Francis, a six year old son named Benjamin, and a two year old daughter "Emily."

But even tracing the children in 1860 was challenging. Not only were they not living with their parents, but the names and ages weren't quite right. There were three Charles children, alright, but they were fourteen year old Rupert, thirteen year old Fanny, and eleven year old Emma. 

Fanny? This begins to border more on "messy" than "challenging."

The only restraining hand that kept me from tossing out the entire find was that the head of that 1860 household, Melburn Odum, was husband of Andrew Charles' sister Drucilla. And Drucilla had been married before, to a man named Hines, which explains the surname of the other children in the household. It took a long meander through several probate and other court records to piece together that story—and it looks like we may have to repeat that process yet again for the missing Andrew and Delaney Charles.

We can assume that the names and ages of the 1850 report could be chalked up to an inept enumerator, perhaps, but you know that isn't a convincing argument. We'll have to check that discrepancy further. But the discrepancy also makes me hesitate to rely on the other information provided in that 1850 census report: that Delaney was then thirty four years of age and born in South Carolina.

The only bright spot for inquiring about the Charles' whereabouts in 1850 is that the county where they then resided may actually still have records of some marriages from that time period—if, in fact, Andrew and Delaney were wed in Madison County in Florida. Looking for any other Townsends—if, indeed, that was her maiden name—in Madison County might help, as well.

Otherwise, our challenge is to search for a Townsend family somewhere in South Carolina, back where Delaney was supposedly born around 1816. And that is just too wide a parameter to tackle, even back in that era. 

 

Exploring Research Dilemmas by Wandering Around

When it comes to my mother's southern roots, the research dilemma—or at least one of them—is finding a way to connect my third great-grandfather, Andrew Jackson Charles, with the previous generation. When a direct path isn't evident between the generation I know—that would be Andrew Jackson Charles' daughter Emily—and the generation that draws a complete blank, it's time to strike out in every direction.

I'm not even sure how I first stumbled across Andrew Jackson Charles' name. Someone—one of those helpful volunteers who sometimes are right, but sometimes are wrong—entered a note on my second great grandmother's Find A Grave memorial that she was daughter of Andrew Jackson Charles and Delaney Rosella Townsend.

She—that would be the future Emily McClellan, wife of William Henry McClellan—was born April 24, 1849, according to the dates engraved on her headstone. That, of course, meant I could look her up in the 1850 census and see what I could find about her parents.

Sure enough, there was an Emma residing in the household of one Andrew J. Charles, although she was listed as a child of two years of age, not the toddler we would have expected. Along with his (presumed) wife, listed as Lania, there were two other children: six year old Benjamin and four year old Francis.

All would go swimmingly in this research journey if only we could replicate that household ten years later. But unfortunately, neither Andrew nor Delaney were anywhere to be found in 1860.

What I did find, in that 1860 census, was "Emma" Charles along with a brother and a sister, in the household of Melburn and Drucilla Odum. Along with the Odums' infant daughter Mabel, though, there were several other children, presenting a number of differing surnames. There was an Emma whose last name was Hines, along with her sister Mary. Of special interest in my research situation, there were also two teenagers by the surname Charles, along with my Emma Charles, who at this point had appropriately aged to be eleven in 1860.

It took a lot of document wrangling to uncover the connection between the Odums, the Hines, and the Charles children. Drucilla, apparently, was a widow when she married Melburn Odum. Emma and Mary Hines were her two daughters by her 1852 marriage to Thomas Hughs Hines—making the girls half-sisters of Mabel Odum. As for the Charles children, they were likely in the Odum household because of some familial obligation. I guessed it was either because the Charles children were related to the Odum line or Drucilla was, herself, a Charles.

Discovering the Charles-Hines marriage, it turned out to be the latter, giving me one more key to unlock the mystery of the previous generation. Now, instead of looking for the unnamed parents of Andrew Jackson Charles, I was on a mission to uncover the parents of Andrew and Drucilla.

Because I knew that history of a Charles family in the area of my maternal roots in north Florida, of course I felt there might be a likelihood of such a connection. But googling for the history of the specific Charles family whose name was bestowed to the Charles Spring we mentioned yesterday did not bring up anything more interesting than a river guide's blog on Charles Spring and the historic Bellamy Road. Interesting diversion, but not enough to provide traction to my own adventure.

Switching to a different approach, I visited FamilySearch.org to see what I could find on Andrew and Delaney there. A handwritten document issued in Madison County by the Territory of Florida verified their marriage in 1841, but was not the type of duty-bound governmental document which would include useful details like parents' names. Name of the groom, name of the bride—take that and consider myself lucky to have found even that much on the territorial frontier.

While I was at that website, though, I fell to the temptation to see if anyone was researching that line. FamilySearch, after all, hosts a tree-building program. Although I don't, at this point, use the FamilySearch tree myself, I couldn't help taking a peek.

Sure enough, there he was in the FamilySearch tree, Andrew Jackson Charles, with enough detail to assure me this was the right individual. But when I took a step backwards in time to see if his parents were listed, all I found was a blank. I am, evidently, not the only one stumped by this line.

That didn't conclude my business on that website, however. I went back to the full listing of hits for my search on Andrew Charles and noticed one unusual entry tucked away among the results from my search on Andrew's name and dates.

One thing I had previously noticed about Andrew and the sister I discovered—Drucilla, later the wife of Melburn Odum in the 1860 census—was the disparity in their ages. Andrew was likely born in 1814, while Drucilla was born twelve years later. A whole host of other children could have fit into a time gap that wide. Perhaps I could find some others.

That unusual entry I found in the search results happened to point to another Charles living in the same region. Her name was Mary Charles and she was even younger than Drucilla Charles. Here was the link to her entry in the 1850 census. I'm not sure why her entry came up when I was specifically searching for Andrew Charles, but this was a clue worth following. I'm a nosy type and researching by wandering around is not beyond me.

What was absolutely tantalizing about this 1850 census entry was that not only Mary Charles was mentioned—remember the Mary who ran out to meet the arriving stagecoach without grabbing her red scarf?—but the 1850 Charles household included two other significant names. One was that of Drucilla herself. The other was the head of household: a woman by the name of Rebecca.

Granted, census records in that time period did not indicate relationships. But chances are fairly good that there was some sort of connection between that Rebecca Charles of the trading post and ferry at Charles Spring, Mary Charles—whom we've already seen listed as her daughter, at least in the legendary sense—and the Drucilla whom I've lately learned was my Andrew J. Charles' sister.

Of course, this Rebecca could have been their aunt, doing just as Drucilla later had done, in taking in her nieces and nephew after her brother Andrew died. Still, this does give me a clue that there is some sort of relationship between these people, even if I can't yet declare them to all be children of the legendary Ruben and Rebecca Charles.

So Close…

In following the career tracks of Mabel Davis Hines Martin over the years—from her home in Erwin, Tennessee, to Detroit in 1920, then Baltimore in 1930, and ultimately New York City—there was one issue that, for me, was strangely missing: whatever became of Mabel’s daughter?

Much as I had first found out about the rest of the Davis sisters—from my mother, in my younger years—I remember having the same experience with Mabel’s story when putting that family line to the test in my own research. Just as my mother had dismissed Mabel’s sister Chevis’ first husband by intimating he had less than sterling character, she had led me to believe Mabel’s first husband had been much the same company.

And about the daughter? Oh, she was a “wild thing,” my mother would say. When pressed for what she meant by that, she really couldn’t say much more than that the girl wasn’t willing to stay at home.

Well, I thought, where did she go?!

I never got any satisfactory answer to that question.

It was many years after that conversation that I found him—LeRoy Okeson Hines, the missing husband who “left” poor Aunt Mabel. As we’ve already seen, he was a civil engineer whose job likely kept him moving from place to place, seeking better pay and better prospects.

When I discovered him, I was, frankly, quite surprised to see his daughter living with him, even after he and Mabel had officially gone their separate ways. That discovery started me thinking, again, about the impressions we pass along to the next generation through comments that more closely resemble hearsay than actual facts. Once again, I have to remind myself that, in all fairness to my mother, she was speaking about a cousin who was nearly twenty years her elder—how was she to know, at that time, what I’ve since found in the 1920 census or the 1930 census?

LeRoy and Mabel’s daughter, Stella Mabel, stayed with her father and paternal grandmother for all those years Mabel was pursuing her own career.

And then? I lost her—until I obtained a copy of Mabel’s own obituary. Here’s what I found out about Stella’s whereabouts in September, 1984:

            ERWIN—Mrs. Mabel Jean Martin, 96, 237 Second St., died Saturday in the Unicoi County Memorial Hospital. She was a former buyer for Macy's Department Store, New York City, and also worked as a model. Mrs. Martin was a member of the Newcomer's Club of Erwin, Erwin Women's Club and the Erwin Bridge Club.

            Survivors include one daughter, Mrs. Mable Hines, Sacramento, Calif.; one brother, Jack Davis, Columbus, Ohio; several nieces and a nephew. Erwin Memorial is in charge.

She practically lived next door to me! And I had no idea. Of course, Stella most likely wasn’t Mrs. Mabel Hines; Hines was her maiden name—if she even got married at all.

Interestingly, she chose to go by her middle name, Mabel—the name representing the woman who never took her place as Stella’s mother.

I scrambled, of course, to find any record of a Stella or Mabel Hines in Sacramento—after all, it isn’t very far from here. Nothing turned up—at least, nothing I could find once I discovered the near-miss.

And then, one day while poring over possibilities on Ancestry.com, I ran across a listing in the Social Security Death Index. It was for a woman born on the same day as my Stella—November 17, 1907—and using the same form of her name as appeared in Stella's mother’s obituary: Mabel Hines.

According to that record, she had obtained her Social Security number before 1951 from Washington, D.C., which I wouldn’t doubt, remembering that her father had served in the military and was actually buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Then, too, she had an uncle on her father’s side—Paul A. Hines—who had also lived in or worked in Washington, D.C. Perhaps she, too, pursued a path as a career woman and got her start from her father and uncle in the nation’s capital.

The record showed a date of death in May, 1993. The last residence showing was far, far afield of Stella’s place of birth in Erwin, Tennessee, or even her last childhood home in Virginia. I couldn’t help but doubt the listing of the residence in Deming, New Mexico—what if this were a married woman? Or someone coincidentally possessing the same name? Why didn’t the name include “Stella”?

To no avail, I tried locating an obituary for Stella. Or even a burial record.

Perhaps this will have to remain one of life’s little mysteries, this story of what must have been the bittersweet growing-up years of the little girl who wasn’t raised by her mother when everyone else’s mom was always at home for her.

The Genial Jean

What mysteries were conjured up in my researcher’s mind about Mabel Davis Hines Martin, thanks to lack of official documentation or vital records, were somewhat soothed over by the fortunate discovery of a newspaper clipping tucked away in the personal papers my own aunt left behind at her passing.

It took a lot of looking to find the date for that newspaper clipping, but when I figured it out, it provided a helpful framework for my grand-aunt Mabel’s personal timeline.

It was the kind of newspaper clipping people snip from the page to send to friends or relatives to say, “Look, I’m in print.” Mabel most likely quickly clipped it out of the local paper—only coincidentally capturing the name of the publication and its date on the reverse—to send in a letter to her brother Jack and his wife, after Mabel moved back home to Erwin, Tennessee.

A half-page article, complete with two captioned photographs, had appeared in The Erwin Record on September 13, 1967. Who knows what the page number was—it got snipped from the enclosure she sent with her letter. Little did Aunt Mabel suspect that her grand-niece would, forty six years later, find the article and wonder about it.

Under the rather pedestrian title of “Erwin Resident has Antique Collection,” Mrs. Bede Webb had composed her report on Mabel’s unique possessions. Of course, each one had its own story, and each story found its place in the newspaper article. Perhaps that is why the author characterized Mabel as “the genial Jean Martin.” Mabel evidently knew how to spin a story. Or perhaps she was just a gracious hostess. You can get the lady out of the South for much of her adult life, but perhaps it was near impossible to get the southern hospitality out of the lady—at least, this one.

In sharing this article with her sister-in-law, Mabel—who by now was evidently going by the thoroughly-more-modern name Jean—inadvertently aided me in pinpointing the date of her return from New Jersey to Tennessee. It was much sooner than my grandmother’s address book had led me to believe.

In her gracious visit with the Record writer, she also allowed me a glimpse into, at least, what she felt were some key highlights in her family history—as well as that of her late husband, Horace L. Martin.

The article, of course, is too recent to reprint without violating copyright laws—but that won’t stop me from trying to contact the newspaper to see if they have retained copies of the two photographs of my grand-aunt featured in that 1967 article. I’ve heard encouraging stories of others who have attempted obtaining old newspaper photographic proofs, with better-than-expected results. It is certainly worth the try. And, as I’ve just seen, the newspaper is still in circulation in Erwin—sporting not only a website but a Facebook page as well.

That is a good thing, for unlike other historic newspapers featured in pay-per-view collections online, back issues of the Erwin paper don’t seem to be accessible through any such means—at least, not any that I’ve discovered. Yet.

This is the type of scenario when a researcher may have to develop a working relationship with the local genealogical or historical society. Finding an index of names mentioned in the newspaper within a date range roughly matching that of my family’s tenure there would be optimal. There are surely many more mentions of the Davis family’s names in those pages, over the years.

Of course, if none of that becomes available, you know what that means: someday, a trip to Tennessee will have to find its way onto my travel calendar.

It’s All in the Dash

When we look at genealogical records and see a date of birth flanked by a specific place, then view the date of death and see that same location listed at its side, we presume we are considering a person who lived and died in his or her hometown.

That is not always necessarily so.

My grand-aunt, Mabel Eugenie Davis, was born August 16, 1888, in a tiny place called Erwin, Tennessee. Ninety six years later, on September 1, 1984, she died in the same town.

As far as that little dash in the middle of those two dates goes, Mabel was anything but a homebody. In fact, she wasn’t even a resident of her home state for most of her adult life.

Where she did live during those many years is not entirely clear to me—yet. Thankfully, decennial records pinpointed her whereabouts, after her marriage, for 1910, 1930 and 1940—but as for the rest of those years, there is no guarantee she remained in the same location.

The Unicoi County census records for 1900 captured her name in the household of her parents, William D. and Martha C. Davis, along with her siblings, “Lumie B.,” Mary Chevis, and “Robie J.” (my grandfather, Jack).

That was the last time that family unit would be registered together in the same household. On October 28, 1906, Mabel married LeRoy Okeson Hines, a man from Virginia, and shortly after the November 17, 1907, birth of their daughter, Stella Mabel Hines, the new household had moved out of the state of Tennessee.

Thankfully, online resources helped me pinpoint the family in the 1910 census. Listed as lodgers in a boarding house in the Adkin District of McDowell County in West Virginia, the civil engineer and his wife were entered in the record as Leroy and “Mable Hins.” With the addition of their daughter’s entry as Stella M., as well as correct entries of states of birth, approximately correct ages, and LeRoy’s occupation, I can say I’m fairly certain I have the right family.

It all disintegrates from that point onward. Come 1920, I can find LeRoy and his daughter Stella living with his mother, sixty seven year old Sarah M. Hines, in Norfolk, Virginia.

Where was Mabel?

I have my guesses—thanks only to digital records and online search capabilities at our fingertips nowadays—but I would have been hard pressed to come up with this possibility only a few years ago. And I’m still not certain this is a valid possibility.

Listed in the 1920 census in a boarding home in Detroit, Michigan, there was a single woman by the name of Mabel Hines. She was working as a saleswoman in a local shop. Of the right age, born in Tennessee with both parents from that same state, this entry looked promising—but I can’t yet be sure it was the correct one. What would she be doing in Detroit?

Looking back at LeRoy’s entry for the same census, he listed his marital status as married—which indicated some problems, since his wife was obviously not listed in the same household.

Putting life’s little mystery for the 1920s aside, I moved on to the 1930 census, where Mabel Hines had advanced to buyer for a department store in Baltimore, Maryland. By the time of this census, she was brave enough to declare her marital status as “divorced.” She was living alone.

Meanwhile, by 1930, LeRoy Hines had left his old position as a civil engineer for the City of Norfolk, and was now living—along with his daughter Stella and his new wife, Louise—in Virginia Beach. He was still employed as a civil engineer, this time for the County of Princess Anne. (Apparently, the information for this census was provided by LeRoy’s second wife, who either neglected to ascertain where her step-daughter was born, or proved by her answers that there are two civil engineers in Virginia named LeRoy Hines with daughters named Stella.)

By the time of the 1940 census, things had changed for Mabel—well, that is, if you can believe in mis-entries in governmental records. Mabel had shown up in South Orange, New Jersey, as the wife of a railroad agent. The only drawback was that her first name was entered as Joan, rather than the shortened form—“Jean”—of her middle name. Fortunately, I can say that I’m fairly confident of the entry, though, thanks to other records the family had of the Martins’ residence, and Mabel’s second husband’s name: Horace L. Martin.

How long Mabel lived in New Jersey, I can’t yet be certain. I do know, thanks to my grandmother’s address book, that she had returned to Erwin by the late 1970s—long after her husband’s passing in 1959. I am beginning to find hints of what life was like for Mabel in New Jersey—living an easy twenty mile commute (no doubt by rail) from downtown Manhattan—as I go through family papers left behind by both my mother and my aunt.

If I had only assumed, from the vital statistics given for her birth and for her death, that she was a Tennessee native who never left home, I would never have gotten any idea of the collage of experiences that were represented by that tiny dash separating those two all-important life dates. Even now, I’m not entirely sure, despite hints of a career in the fashion industry (including, possibly, a stint as a model in New York City).

People have likened the difference between “genealogy” and “family history” to the difference between knowing the dates—in Mabel’s case, 1888 and 1984—and knowing the stuff squeezed into that dash in between those two dates. Just like the well-known poetic description of that concept, aptly entitled, “The Dash,” I often wonder just how it was that my grand-aunt Mabel spent her “dash.” There is just so much more of her story yet to be discovered.    

Meeting Aunt Mabel

Four more years and she would have lived to be one hundred. Of course, Mabel Davis Hines Martin wasn’t quite that age when I first met her—but then, I wouldn’t have remembered that, anyhow. I was still a baby.

My mother used to tell me that, when I was a newborn, her Aunt Mabel would come to visit us and provide home remedies for my “condition,” massaging my spindly arms and legs and, no doubt, advising my newbie mom from her vast store of mountain-folk wisdom. Surely insecure and lacking experience in her new parenting role, my mother nevertheless thankfully balanced Mabel’s sage advice with the more newfangled ways of modern medicine.

As I grew up, I was quite aware of Aunt Mabel despite the rarity of her visits. While I always thought of her as my mother’s aunt from Tennessee, she actually lived not far from our New York home when I was still in grade school. Once, she even came for an overnight visit, arriving (of course) by train from her home in New Jersey—the only time I recall seeing her in our home.

I remember a woman tall, erect, thin, but not quite as stern as all that sounds. I remember being so curious about her, wanting to get to know more about this stranger who claimed to be a relative. I probably asked more pesky questions than the lady cared to answer.

When it came time for all obedient, darling children to retire in the evening, I remember taking that inopportune moment, bounding into the guest bedroom, only to find the elderly woman already getting ready for bed. She had let down her long, long hair and was brushing it out so she could braid it for the night. I found that to be quite a backwards approach—thinking, “Why braid it at the end of the day? Shouldn’t that be what you do first thing in the morning?”

It wasn’t until much later that I discovered she likely adhered to the old-fashioned custom of never cutting her hair, putting it up, as married women of that time did, in an understated bun at the back of her neck—or, if she were feeling particularly elegant, in a French roll. What a contrast to my grandmother—Mabel’s sister-in-law—who bobbed her own hair and knew every dance step in vogue in the 1920s. No wonder my grandmother never saw eye to eye with the Davis family.

As conservative as that may sound, Mabel was no less a career woman than her older sister, Lummie. Along with the letters from Mabel, full of recipes and domestic advice, that I found saved in my mother’s belongings after she died, I also found articles and details of Mabel’s life tucked into my aunt’s files as well. Like fragments of a shattered portrait re-assembled into a mosaic, these few slivers of information I’ll piece together to see if we can catch a better glimpse of who this woman was—and perhaps discover why she chose such a different life path.

Mother of the Oldest Grandchild

How many families have siblings who race to see who will give their parents the first grandchild?

I don’t know if that was the case for Will and Cassie Davis’ daughters—their lone son, the baby of the family, was out of the running from the start—but from my vantage point, ’way on the far side of the finish line, I can see the oldest daughter did not win the First Grandchild prize.

The oldest Davis daughter, Lummie, as we’ve already seen, had her sights set on world travel and adventure. Perhaps because she was career-minded, even in such an era as the turn of the last century, she didn’t have her first—and only—child until she was forty years of age.

Though Chevis, whom we’ve just finished discussing, was seven years younger than Lummie, she had her first child a full fifteen years before Lummie’s daughter was born.

But that wasn’t the eldest Davis grandchild.

The daughter who presented Will and Cassie with their first grandchild was their second-born daughter, Mabel.

The youngest of the Davis girls to have married, Mabel made that commitment at the age of eighteen. Her beau was a civil engineer from the state of Virginia named LeRoy Okeson Hines. According to Tennessee State records—and, of course, the Davis family Bible—the two exchanged their vows on October 28, 1906.

A little over a year later, on November 17, 1907, Stella Mabel Hines heralded the start of a new generation for the Davis family of Erwin, Tennessee—nearly seven and a half years before the arrival of the next grandchild.

Much as I had first found out about my grand-aunt Chevis, I first knew these details about Mabel and her husband and daughter from the Davis family Bible. Once again, just as had happened when I asked about Chevis, my family was at a loss as to how to explain what happened to Mabel’s husband—and even her daughter.

The only difference in this case was that I did get to meet Aunt Mabel, myself. Although she morphed into that fuzzy stuff that childhood memories are made of, at least she had a place in the panorama of recollections I had of family members from long ago. I can remember her face, and remember those few visits she had made to our home, from my youngest years.

It feels very different to be able to write about a family member I have actually “known”—though what can a child of that age really know about life? After years of research, trying to find what became of her fractured family, I find I really knew very little about even this relative whom I had actually met.