Mary Ann Loy

From obituary (The Daily Independent, Ashland, Ky., Wenesday, November 8, 1989)

Mary Loy

Mary Ann Moore Loy, 90, of Jeffersonville, Ind., died Tuesday in the Providence Retirement Home at New Albany, Ind.

Mrs. Loy was born May 28, 1899, in Columbia, Ky., a daughter of the late William and Margaret Ann Dillingham Moore. Her husband, William Marvin Loy, died in 1936.

She was a retired clerk from the former Jeffersonville Quartermaster Depot and a member of the Wall Street United Methodist Church in Jeffersonville.

Surviving are two daughters, Mrs. David (Joyce A.) Welch of Ashland and Genevieve Loy of Jeffersonville; a brother, William Moore of Rantoul, Ill.; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

The funeral will be conducted at 10 a.m. Friday at the E.M. Coots Funeral Home, 120 W. Maple St., Jeffersonville, Ind. 47130, by the Rev. David Lee. Burial will be in the Walnut Ridge Cemetery at Jeffersonville.

From Joyce Loy Welch Narration recorded October 2, 2008

Mary Loy’s upbringing

My mother was born in 1899. I’m going to give a little bit of her background before talking about her family. She was the daughter of William Alexander Moore and Margaret Ann Dillingham Moore. Everybody called my grandmother Magaraet Ann “Belle.” That’s what’s on her tombstone in Kentucky. Mother’s grandfather was John Wesley Moore and he was born in 1844. He had seven children. One was Sally Jane Moore (Aunt Sally). She married a man with the last name of “Robertson”. William Alexander Moore was my grandfather whom I, of course, did not meet. Loretta Susan Moore (Aunt Susan) married James Curry. Vina Elizabeth Moore (Aunt “Viney”) married Ben Morris. Eliza Ellen Moore married Steve Absher. Druman (“Drury”) Moore, the only other son, married a sweet lady named Minnie V. Ellison, and I knew them very well and spent a lot of time on their farm in Indiana. And Mary Bell Moore was the last one, born in 1878 (about every 2-3 years they had a child). She married Mr. Joe Henry Morris. She was my mother’s favorite. When Mother’s family passed away, she spent a lot of time with Aunt Mary. Aunt Mary had some girls and the happiest time Mother had after her parents passed away and the family was broken up was when she spent time with Aunt Mary.

My grandfather, William Alexander Moore, and his father, John Wesley Moore, had a country store in Adair County, around Vester or Egypt. Both little towns are still there today. They also worked as farmers. I think it got to be too much for them, so they sold the store and then my grandfather and father farmed. I’m not sure what caused my grandfather’s death, but when he died, my grandmother (Belle) tried her best to keep the farm. But it was too much for her. Mother always said that Belle simply worked herself down, and eventually she caught pneumonia. And when she died, there was nobody to look after the children except, hopefully, an honest and caring relative, and that’s what happened.

Uncle Drury, the only other man in the family, took over settling all their debts. He had to sell the farm in order to do that. There was very little money left, if any. The children (my Mother’s family) had to be taken care of. The oldest in my Mother’s family was Ethel Moore, the only other daughter. Then there was Edwin Moore (the oldest boy), Otis, Lewis, Mother, and Bill Moore (Uncle Bill). The last 3 or 4 were too young to go out on their own just yet. My grandmother died in the early 1900s. Aunt Ethel and Uncle Bill had gone to Berea College for a little while, trying to get some education. They were not in a position to take the younger ones, so the younger ones stayed different places. Mother always said, though, that she never felt really comfortable anywhere except with Aunt Mary. Aunt Mary had 3 girls, I think. Mother always had a good time there and felt very cared about and at home there. Uncle Otis was sent to a farm (perhaps in Carter County). Those two boys had to work. Uncle Lewis was treated so badly that he ran away to Illinois for years before he was ever heard of. In fact, all of the siblings did not get together until 1948 (thereafter, they would get together every 2-3 years and they really enjoyed each other). Uncle Lewis felt that he had been treated very badly. I never heard much about Uncle Otis. I think he lived in the vicinity of where his wife, Florence Carter, was from. Uncle Bill had a rough time too. He was with uncle Drury most of the time. He was really a little guy and he wasn’t very happy there. I think they were hard on him for a while but that changed eventually. They grew up as best they could.

Mary Loy and William Loy

Mother met my Daddy, my father, around the same area. They were raised together. They didn’t know each other real well at first, but eventually they got to know each other well. My father had not had a happy childhood either. His mother had died early. There were only one or two children in that family. My father wanted to get away. And Mother wanted to get away. They both needed some kind of independence, so they married. They loved each other, but they also married to get their own independence.

They moved to Missouri for awhile, but that didn’t work out. Mother said that the storms out there scared her to death and she spent most of the time in her storm cellar. Eventually, they settled in Jeffersonville, Indiana. There was a lot of building going on then. My father was trained as a crane operator and he helped build the Clark Memorial Bridge. There was no OSHA to protect workers, and cranes were kind of dangerous. There were times when the crane would jump out of gear and hit him if he didn’t jump quickly. Mother always felt that was part of his problem. He died of kidney failure but had problems long before he died. Of course, that’s just surmising.

Anyway, they married and lived in Indiana. They had one little girl named Carmen. She only lived a few hours. Then Genevieve Loy was born (“Gennie”). Gennie was my second mother, in a way, when I was growing up. Then they had a little boy named Raymond. It’s so sad. People used to come and visit as a custom. One day this lady came to visit mother, and unbeknownst to anybody, her little boy she brought with her had whooping cough. And so that meant that Raymond was exposed to it, and caught it. And he died. Then I was born in 1932.

Joyce Loy Welch Childhood

We lived on Indiana Avenue at that time. That street was close to the bridge. Sometimes when Daddy was working, Mother would fix lunch, and we would walk up and have lunch with him. Sometimes he would come home and run to the little store down the street and get things Mother needed. I would go with him, and I thought it was a great big thrill to cross that great big street. Other kids would stand there watching because we were told never, never to cross that busy street.

By the time I was four, my father was having health problems. He died in 1936. And here shows what a strong person my mother was. In 1936 Daddy died. She immediately went to find work. In 1937, we had the great Ohio River flood. We lost everything we had. Jeffersonville, Indiana, across from Louisville, was badly hit. There were 15,000 people living there and 3,900 residences. 3,800 of those residences were inundated and ours was one of them. It was just devastating.

They sent me to Georgetown, Indiana, with my Uncle Drury and Aunt Minnie. I stayed there while they cleaned up the mess. Uncle Ed, the oldest of my male Uncles, came down from Toledo, Ohio and they went through the house. The house was covered in mud. Uncle Ed felt it was so dangerous and possibly contaminated that he had them break all the plaster off the house. They knocked everything down, re-plastered, checked it out, cleaned it, and dried it. Even after that, he wondered about the house, but we survived in it. I guess it was the thing to do. Mud was a foot thick in that house after the flood. There’s a picture of me and I look like a little urchin playing out in the backyard in all that mess.

That was terribly hard. We got help from the Red Cross. They gave us a bed and a table and chairs. The piano we used – we threw it away. It was a total loss.

When things got settled back, Mother continued work. Something else was happening at the time. The storm clouds were gathering in Europe. Hitler was beginning to rise. People were getting very concerned. During this time, because of the Depression, President Roosevelt started the “alphabet” organizations (CCP, WPA, and so on). Mother was a very good seamstress and needed work. This was mainly what she did for her job. She was hired to teach classes on food preparation and sewing to girls and women for the NYA (“National Youth Administration”). Mother had no formal education in that but they gave her books and she read them and knew what to do. It was very successful. Also, the program was integrated, which was very unusual for that time. Years later, when Mother passed away, some of those ladies came to her visitation and told me who they were, and it meant a lot to me that they still remembered her and they cared. She really liked them a lot and they were really nice people. Every one of them really learned something. I used to go there after school and I got to know them all too. That was the beginning of my awareness of African American people in our neighborhood. It started me off on the right foot. I never had any doubt that everybody should be treated equally. Mother made that abundantly clear. So it was a big advantage for me to be a part of that also.

The Depression and World War II

Now I’ll tell you about the Depression. I was just a little kid. My sister, Gennie, talked about how Daddy would sometimes go down to the dairy and they would have milk that they would give away. But it was milk that had practically everything taken out of it. It was kind of blue. There was no fat – nothing. Everything had been taken out that could be used to make cheese or ice cream, or anything like that. But there was a certain amount of nutrition in it and he would go get that to save the money of buying milk. And she said it was so humiliating. He wasn’t the only one – the country was full of people doing this kind of stuff. But Gennie felt so bad about it. Daddy was well trained. He built the first radio the family owned and he had a lot of ability, but nobody was hiring. There were no jobs. That’s why people were in the state that they were in.

My Mother and Daddy rented a little old shotgun house with some friends, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Young. I called them Granny and Granddaddy. They were the most perfect grandparents anybody could ever want. They just were so sweet to me and spoiled me to death. But they all four put their money together to rent this house. And whoever could get work took the job, and whoever was at home took care of me. So if Mother got a little job someplace, she would take it and “Granny” or “Granddaddy” would take care of me. I called her “Granny” so it means a lot for me to be called “Granny” by my grandchildren. That went on until finally they all were able to get enough work. Then we moved away into another house. Of course, with Daddy’s death, that changed everything too. But “Granny” and “Granddaddy” were still there for me. They were always so sweet to me, all through my growing-up days. And I still love them when I think about them.

The NYA was doing very well. But as I said before, things were beginning to happen in Europe. Then came December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Of course, that changed everything, and we were on a war-preparatory basis.

In Jeffersonville, there was a huge government depot, covering acres. They had everything there and they made a lot of stuff. They were gearing up to produce everything soldiers would need, like uniforms, blankets, packs, and so on. The NYA closed about that time, and Mother applied there. She was hired (helped by her NYA experience and ability to sew) and she worked there until she retired. She was very good at making all kinds of things, such as uniforms. At one point, she was promoted to be an inspector, checking other peoples’ work to make sure there were no unacceptable flaws. She received a certificate when she retired there. Her job there helped us out a lot because she had benefits. After that, she worked in a little dress shop in Jeffersonville and I think she got Social Security also. She was in much better shape than we’d ever been in.

The Depression really did not stop until the war. It was a slow process. All the things that the government did helped but things did not really hum along until the war. And then, of course, after the war, things took off because everybody wanted so many different kinds of things an production was good. We never really had a problem after that.

But the Depression was quite a time. It was a hard time. Mother worked long hours. She liked the work, but the hierarchy of semi-military government work frustrated her. But it benefitted her and we did well. From then on, we were okay.

During the time when we didn’t have very much, I never felt poor. I guess part of the reason was that so many people were in the same boat, coming out of the Depression. There was only one time in my whole school experience where I felt like I wish I had some better clothes. That was around my first year of Junior High. But I never felt deprived, or anything like that.

Final Thought

This has been a tribute to my mother, in a way. She handled everything that came her way. I don’t know how she did it. I was too little to understand the difficulties that she faced and the stress she was under, but she did a remarkable job for us. I’ll always be grateful to her and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve appreciated her more. Mary appears in the 1900 census at age 1 living in Columbia KY with the following family members: Billie age 30, Margaret,23, Ethel,8,Estes,6,Otis5,Louis,4 and John W.56. By the 1910 census she is shown at age 10 living with an uncle in Egypt, Adair Co. Listed are Joe H. Marris,39 (note the misspelling of Morris),Mary Marris 21,Eva Marris,10, Annie Marris,3 ,Thelma Marris,9. and Otis Moore (Mary's brother)15. Her parents had died and she was living with relatives. The family was split up.