So 1871 proved to be a rough year at the Drake Farm.
Bird is 14 years old, Allison is 12 and Jane is 10. John Stout Drake manages to wait a whole 13 months before he remarried. To me, this implies that John Stout was back in the courting game within a few months after Lucia's death.
The kids were busy with school, church, chores and farm work. Allison and Bird were the only male youngsters left to pull the load and they also probably spent time helping out at their grandfather's (Amos Stout Drake) place as he was still farming.
Second oldest sister, Mary Serenus, married Ira Charles Hill in 1875 and moved away.
In 1879, 22 year old Bird married Eugenia Priestly and the 1880 United States Census shows Bird in residence at the Priestly Farm. Why the Priestly Farm where there were two grown farmer sons living there as well? That left only Allison at the Drake Farm. Was John Stout becoming a tyrant as he got older? Or was the new and younger wife, lazy or bitchy or a bossy boots?
The 1880 United States Census enumerates both Allison and his sister Jane aka Jen with a farmer named John Sprowle or Sprowls. John had a wife Elizabeth and an 11 year old daughter, Mary. Allison is listed as a farm laborer and Jen as a domestic servant.
I wonder how this came to be because John Stout Drake is still listed in the 1880 Federal Census as being a farmer with his wife, Mary and his two daughters: Ann who is 30 and Lucy who is in school. there are no farm laborers recorded with the Drakes.
The Sprowls and the Drakes live and farm in Hillsdale County, Michigan.
Did Papa John throw Allison out? Allison was, after all, 21 years old. Did Allison get tired of working for free? Did new wife Mary finally convince John that Allison caused too many problems. Jen went with Allison to the Sprowls. Maybe she thought Allison was getting a raw deal on the family farm. Maybe she was having problems herself with her dad and/or her step mom.
Jen married George Priestly (Bird's brother-in-law) on 25 December 1881. Her sister Lucy was a witness. Allison Drake married Jane Myers in June of 1882 in Camden, Hillsdale, Michigan.
