Marion Virginia "Mayme R" Hardesty

Indiana, Death Certificates, 1899-2011

• Name: Marian R. Hardesty[Marian R. Ray]
• Gender: Female
• Race: White
• Age: 82
• Marital Status: Widowed
• Birth Date: 28 Nov 1892
• Birth Place: West VA.
• Death Date: 10 Mar 1975
• Death Place: Sullivan, Sullivan, Indiana, USA
• Father: Joseph Ray

U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014

• Name: Marian Hardesty
• SSN: 315-01-9920
• Last Residence: 47882 Sullivan, Sullivan, Indiana, USA
• BORN: 28 Nov 1892
• Died: Mar 1975
• State (Year) SSN issued: Indiana (Before 1951)

A BIOGRAPHY OF MARIAN RAY HARDESTY

by Paul Hardesty

As a little boy I used to listen to my mother tell of her childhood and home in

West Virginia, of people who were fairies and giants and all sorts of queer

beings to me then. Many years have passed and today it seems fitting and

beautiful to draw aside the curtain of memories and invite you to be a guest,

a wedding guest at a home in Virginia.

Heavy snows fell early in 1838 in Virginia; the scene was as beautiful without

as within the home of Joseph Curtis at "The Pines". This night Emily Jane

Curtis was to become the bride of Edward Ray. Merry laughter and huge

blazing log fires greeted the Ray family as they came into this happy home.

There were Edward, the groom, William and Nancy, the parents, William,

Charles, and Nancy to help make merry this event. Other neighbors and

distant friends and relatives had come long tiresome miles to make merry at

the wedding.

Reverend Lester, the United Presbyterian minister, pronounced the simple

ceremony, and after the wedding feast, which consisted of wild turkey,

venison, and sweets of every sort, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ray left for their

naively built home in the extreme western part of Virginia. It was a happy

home, where hospitality abounded, where neighbors gathered, and this

gracious hostess always kept some hidden surprise for the neighbor children

when they came to visit.

Nancy missed her home and mother, but her husband's four sisters came

often to visit her. Julia, her favorite, came more frequent as the time for the

first born baby's coming drew near, she helped prepare for the great event.

After weeks of ill health when the Ray family, as well as the Curtis family

despaired of this favorite daughter's life, there came not only Sarah Emily but

also Anna Deborah as well-twins-to bless this husband and wife. With every

attention, after weeks of illness, this mother's health began to improve and

mid June found Nancy Jane doing her routine work again.

Sarah and Anna, as they were called by the family, were normal healthy

children and grew rapidly from boyhood. Their place was taken by another set

of twins, Kathryn and Kay, then Mary Jane, Laura, and George, which made

the total seven of my Grandmother's family. My grandmother, Sarah, was a

great out-of-door girl, and always had her own riding horse. She and her only

brother, as he became older, were very close. He became as much a

horseman as grandmother was a horsewoman. When he became of age he

owned several good race horses, and before he was thirty-five he operated

large racing stables. My grandmother was his most ardent admirer and

adviser.

On Sunday mornings it was a splendid sight to be a bystander and witness the

arrival at The Old Stone Church of the Ray girls for morning services. Many

willing young men were waiting in readiness to assist these girls from their

side saddles, and to hitch the horses to the hitch-rail.

While this family lived a normal happy life in Virginia, another family of Rays

were becoming rooted in the rich prairie lands of Illinois. This family was

unrelated to my mother's mother; however this Ray lived about thirty miles

from my mother's family. This Ray family consisted of three sons, William,

Joseph, and Moses. William, even as Edward Ray wooed and wed Mary Jane

Curtis, from a family unrelated to the family into which mother's grandfather

married; unless there were a relationship further back than could be traced.

The Curtis family, on my mother's side, came from England; while on my

mother's father's side the Curtis family came from France. It is extremely

difficult to trace these families because of the similarity of names, conditions,

and homes.

Of this latter family, William after marrying had visions and a great urge to join

an expedition going to Illinois. I have no proof that they were members of the

Lewis-Clark expedition but it is very likely because it was about the year of

that expedition when my great-grandfather made the trip to Illinois in a

covered wagon. Before reaching their destination the party was attacked by

Indians, and several families were killed and children were carried off. My

great-grandfather and great-grandmother reached their destination in the new

Northwest Territory; my great-grandfather carried scars from an Indian's

tomahawk all through his life which were inflicted on this trip to the

Northwest.

Let us go back to the home in Virginia from which William Ray left to settle in

this new Northwest Territory. There were two brothers left at home; young

men, with visions not of securing land in this Northwest Territory, but who did

farm work halfheartedly. They went to the field at noon to hoe corn and at

dusk their father went in search of them and found them not on their last row

of corn, but sitting under a tree with sheets and sheets of closely figured

mathematics problems. So it was that Joseph Ray, assisted by brother

Moses, worked many mathematical problems and the vision of these young

men became a reality in a few years. Joseph Ray had written almost his

entire first arithmetic book, not in a college, but under an oak tree on the

edge of a corn field in Virginia.

I wonder what beautiful things must have been inspired these men, for only a

few miles distant in the edge of Pennsylvania the McGuffy Readers and

Spellers were being written by another man who was to be outstanding in the

Hall of Fame. These two books were used together in many schools.

So Joseph and Moses Ray went to college; Joseph later becoming president

of Woodward College, Cincinnati, Ohio. Today a large bronze statue stands in

Cincinnati in memory of this great mathematician.

Out in this Northwest Territory my great-grandfather had built a large log

house. He had been used to severe winters in Virginia, but in that

mountainous country there were wind breaks and Virginia knew no such

blizzards as roared across those prairies of the Northwest Territory. In spite

of wild cats, timber wolves, coyotes, and even deer that hounded these

settlers for food and made life extremely hazardous, spring always came.

Every season brought its work for women as well as the men.

Children were born without the aid of medical skill. Many wives were assisted

only by a neighbor woman and many precious hours lapsed before a husband

could bring a neighbor woman at such times. With only horses for a

conveyance and many miles between farms, also no roads it was extremely

difficult.

There were born to this William Ray and Mary Jane Curtis Ray ten children.

There were seven boys and three girls, My grandfather, David, being the

youngest of this family. When he became twenty-five his mother's brother

visited those remaining at home of the children who were unmarried, and

urged this handsome young man to return to Virginia with him.

The Civil War had been over several years at this time, and weary sadden

men were these brothers of my grandfather's. Curtis returned with impaired

health and deafness from which he never recovered, Joseph also was entirely

deaf. Alonzo without hearing and only one eye returned. Clinton returned

with a leg injury from which he never recovered. Nathan was killed during the

war. Edward returned in good health. My grandfather was too young to enlist.

My great-grandfather died during the first year of the war. He gave his sons

for the North and watched them march away, but a heart ailment prevented

him from seeing their return. It was a grave shock to these war weary boys to

find the vacancy left by their father upon their return home. They marched to

the burial plot and watched over by tall evergreens fired a salute across their

father's grave.

My grandfather returned with his uncle, Joseph Curtis, to Virginia. To him this

country was as a homeland to a traveler. He became a member of his uncle's

household and found much happiness there. The house, a structure of

fifteen rooms, was of Colonial style with evergreens guarding it like sentinels.

It was rightly named, since one wishing to reach "The White Oaks" one was

met at the door either by Joseph Curtis or his daughter, Julia. There was

always a genuine hospitality, a sincere welcome, and one felt honored and

greatly exhilarated after a visit to this home.

David Ray was favorite everywhere he went, six foot three, of splendid

physique, and handsome. At a neighborhood dance he seldom danced with

any but Sarah Emily Ray. In time their engagement was announced, but their

marriage did not occur for three years. They too went to housekeeping near

where my great-grandparents had gone to housekeeping. In a few years after

their marriage a son was born; Claude Clifton. Twelve years later Marian

Virginia was born (Nov. 28, 1892).

My grandmother was still a lover of horses, and previous to my mother's birth

she spent much time in the saddle. This caused a complication which was

the direct cause of my grandmother's death nine years later. She had been

unable to do the things she so wanted to do for this tiny daughter because of

ill health and this daughter wanted a mother so badly. She stood, a tiny mite

in a blue silk dress and white apron and watched the last rays of a sun sink

on a cold November evening, her ninth birthday; that sun slowly descending

behind the western hills shone for the last time on this mother whose face

could scarcely be discerned from the pillow which she lay.

My grandmother was greatly loved by all who knew her and among her and

grandfather's closest friends were the families about whom Zane Grey wrote

in his book Betty Zane. The McCullochs, many families of Zanes, the Boggs,

and the territory about which this book is written was also the same location

where my mother's childhood was spent.

Heart breaking days followed days of awe and wonder for my mother. Then

came the cold snowy day and my grandmother went again to the Old Stone

Church, but not as of old, rather by a beneft husband and two children and

there in the beautiful rolling country on a high knoll my grandmother was laid

to rest.

My grandmother's twin sister took my mother home with her. She and her

husband were without children and since she was the twin it seemed her

right. After having been married twenty-five years and with no children, it

must have been a queer home for this small girl to enter alone. This greataunt

was an artist and had a studio in her home very expensively equipped.

My mother learned very soon that nothing should be touched in this studio.

My mother's room was upstairs in the west wing of this house, and every day

when the sun shone she looked forward to slipping quietly to her room and

catch a vision of her mother. Somehow she felt the nearness of this mother

in those last rays of the evening sun; then the sun sank behind the Ohio hills

across the Ohio river and a feeling of utter desolation was my mother's. A

private tutor was hired for my mother's grade school years since her health

was not good. My grandfather and uncle lived together for many years until

my uncle found employment to his liking and my mother seldom saw either of

them.

My mother's uncle, Joseph Reed, with whom she lived soon learned to love

this new member of his household and they were very fast friends as long as

he lived. They spent their winters at winter resorts perhaps in Florida but

more often in California. Mother studied music and elocution. She had been

trained in art but was no artist. She had lived with it, breathed it, and talked

it, but no desire to apply brushes on anything.

In 1905 mother's aunt and uncle sold their home and other real estate in this

small town in West Virginia, between Wheeling and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,

and moved to California for my mother's health. Her uncle died there in 1907.

The following summer mother and her aunt returned to this home town in

West Virginia. In a few years this aunt's health failed and she was removed to

the home of a sister and my grandfather took mother to his sister in Illinois.

Mother had seen none of these Illinois relatives, and shortly after her arrival

there, was nicknamed "Dixie" from her southern brogue.

My mother's life was as different in this Illinois city as it could be from her life

in her Virginia home. After one year in Decatur she went to Chicago and spent

the summer with an uncle. In late summer she returned to Decatur and

entered W&T College in Tennessee, where her cousin taught Home

Economics. Mrs. Cyrus Hall McCormick Sr. endowed this college and since

Mrs. McCormick was a friend of mother's aunt it seemed very fitting for her to

enter this college and major in Home Economics and English, where she

graduated from a two year course with splendid standing.

Mother returned to Decatur after graduation planning to enter Pratt Institute,

New York, New York, in the autumn. My mother wore an engagement ring

home from college of Wilson Saylor from Kentucky, whose family was one of

the oldest in Kentucky, and had lawyers and statesmen as long as the family

had existed. The last of July, on a rainy, sultry day, while my mother and her

aunt awaited her uncle's arrival to lunch, the door bell rang. Mother answered

it. Two men had dropped in to see her uncle on business. She invited them

to come in and await his arrival to lunch. She sat down and talked to the

men. Somehow she was greatly impressed by one of the men. Her uncle

came shortly so she left the room and dismissed the man from her mind. The

man had not dismissed my mother from his mind however, so the following

Sunday while my mother was at church this man called by phone and invited

her to accompany him to a show.

On September 1st my mother returned Wilson Saylor's engagement ring

without regret. On November 28, my mother's birthday and the date of my

grandmother's death, my mother and father were married at the Episcopal

Rectory at Decatur, Illinois (This probably in the year 1911). It was a cold

snowy day and after their wedding breakfast, prepared by the colored

cateress whom the family claimed as their property, my mother and father

went to their new home in Terre Haute, Indiana. At that time my father owned

and operated a cigar store on Wabash Ave., which he later sold to DeAnnott

Bros. and is still in operation under the same ownership.

My older brothers (Herman, Robert, Walter, and Richard) were born in West

Terre Haute. At the end of an intensely hot summer in 1920 during which

time my brother Richard had died and my mother's health was broken, in just

a little more than a month I was born. Following me there were two more

children (Leon and Mary).

My father, Elza Madison Hardesty, was born in Lawrence County, Indiana near

Bedford. He was one of three children. About the age of 12 during the

summer vacation my father working at a mine at Cannelton, Indiana in the

coal fields, and in coupling a car he mistook the signal and two cars came

together crushing his right hand until it had to be amputated. He went

through life a cripple. He was a man of good education and who had many

friends. For a number of years before his death he was employed in different

capacities by the National Drain Tile Co.

I can say of my father as I remember him, he was a gentleman, affectionate,

a good father, and was happiest when he was at home with his family. A

lover of good clean sports, clean in character and speech. My father died

June 28, 1931.

Note: The above is taken from a paper which I wrote for a College class in

English in the winter of 1939. Mother furnished the material for the paper

and I can only vouch to its authenticity as it came from her mouth.

Mother's brother Claude Clifton Ray preceded her in death by about 25 years.

He was living in Wellsburg, West Virginia at the time of his death. Mother

passed away at the age of 82 on March 10, 1975. She is buried in Roselawn

Cemetery in Terre Haute on the lot of her son and our brother Robert who

passed away in 1960.