Sunday, July 22, 2012

There's More to Me Than Being a Drake

Sometimes I get hung up on my families.  It's fun researching the Drake side of me for several reasons.  First, there is a paper trail.  When we start getting way back, many of my family were men who owned their own businesses and men of the sea -- not just sailors, but men who owned their own boats.  Later we became farmers, but that was much later.  Most of the men in the family read.  We came from money and I think we treated our women -- wives, mothers and daughters as equals.  There has been a lot of stuff written about the Drakes.  And, you can spend weeks and weeks jumping from Drake family tree to Drake family tree on Ancestry.com.

But sometimes I've got to suck it up and spread my time around.  I mean, why continue to go over someone else's research on an already well documented family.  So today I'll give you a little background on Illda Martha Austin Hughes.  

Considering she lived with me for about a year, I really don't know much about her.  I know that she was born 15 Mar 1895 in Toledo, Lucas, Ohio.  Her mother was Minnie M Daniels, a milliner, and her dad was Dennis E Austin, a railroad man.  As a kid, I knew that Illda LOVED Texas.  I remember them closing the store for a few weeks and racing off to Texas.  Galveston.  I knew that Illda and her husband Cleo, had bought land in Texas and were planning on retiring there.  I knew that at one time, Illda had been a nurse.  She had bad eyes, she had bad feet, and she had bad legs.  She was a good cook and a good artist.  She was very quiet and shy, but every once in a while, she would whisper a zinger that would have me laughing all day.  She had a temper.  She always told me that she was Irish.  She worked like a dog in their grocery store.  She wasn't very tall.  By the time she came to live with me, I towered over her.  I'm thinking she was around 5'0" or 5'2"

Here is a picture of her:


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2 comments:

  1. Grace MatherJuly 23, 2012 at 5:35 AM

    I noticed the name Scovill among your ancestors and since there is a NY connection, I have to ask. My grandfather - not great - was born in West Bloomfield, NY in 1827. He married 4 times as his wives kept dying. His brother Gurdon Clark Mather, married Eliza Scovill in 1851 possibly in Lima, NY. Wondering if there is a connection?
    Grace - amzgrace@comcast.net

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  2. Martha Drake BishopJuly 23, 2012 at 12:16 PM

    Miss Grace: I had to get back into the office to see what I had in the files. I don't really know much about that branch of the family -- yet. My dad's mom was Ruth H. Scovill Drake and she died when he was very young. Somewhere around 1934, my dad along with his brother and sister, were dumped on Ruth's parents -- William Henry Scovill and Martha Reyer Scoville.

    The following is information I've found and not yet validated myself. I've got this branch of the Scovills back to 1445. Amasa Scovill (born in 1815) married Clarissa E Guymnon -- her dad was involved in the forming of the Mormon church and these people, as well as anyone who marries in -- have a pretty extensive background research done on them.

    With that being said, I've found that most of my Scovills come from Waterbury, New Haven, CT. From there, the moved to Vienna, Trumble, Ohio probably in the 1840s. My triple great grandfather, Henry Roswell, moved to the Ypsilanti, Michigan area in the late 1880s or early 1890s. And that's where they were for many, many years.

    I looked through all I've got, and I don't have one single Scovill from New York, and I have no Eliza's or Elizabeth's or Lizzie's or any name like that.

    It's too bad. I would have loved to have found a long lost cousin on this rainy day in Florida. I will keep your email, and if I do run across anything regarding Miss Eliza, I will let you know. Right now I am reading the tome "The Scovills by Richard Peck." Are you familiar with that? Over 1000 pages of Scovills, Scovilles, Scovils and on and on. You can probably find it on line.

    Good luck.

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