Lucy Tetterton

Lucille Tetterton Hoots was my 3x great grandmother. Her daughter Maude Hoots Thompson/Eken was the mother of my great grandmother, Margaret Thompson Myers/Hounihan who was the mother of my paternal grandmother, Clema Myers Starr.

Lucy was born 26 July 1860 in Alsey, Illinois. Alsey is in Scott County. It is 22 miles southwest of Jacksonville, IL on Illinois Route 106, It was orignially called Smithfield, for Alsey R Smith. The Alsey post office was established in 1872. It’s near Winchester, Glasgow and Roodhouse, Illinois. In 1880 there were 6 families living in Alsey. At its peak in 1980 there were 318 people in Alsey. Today there are about 190.

Scott County was established in 1839 from a portion of Morgan County. Its name came from a county in Kentucky where many of the settlers originated. The Tettertons were among those settlers. Lucy’s father, James Perry Tetterton, was born in Greenville, Kentucky, which is in Muhlenberg County. His father, Richard Tetterton, brought the family to Illinois about 1830 when he was just 8 years old. The Tetterton’s were farmers. James was the oldest of Richard and Nancy (Ash) Tetterton’s 8 children.

Lucy was born the year before the civil war started. Her father was forty in 1861 and so did not join the war. But his two younger brothers did. 28 year old Jackson Clark and 25 year old Jesse W. Tetterton mustered into service on Sep 8 of 1862 at Camp Butler in Illinois. Jesse had married just 5 days earlier. They served with Company G of the 91st Illinois Infantry. Jackson was discharged with a disability in Oct of 1864, but Jesse died Nov 18, 1863 in Carrolton, Louisiana of disease. (The regiment suffered 12 enlisted men who were killed in action or who died of their wounds and 1 officer and 131 enlisted men who died of disease, for a total of 144 fatalities.) The pension records for his wife’s widow pension states he contracted chronic “dirrhea” while a scout near Morganzia on or about 9 Sep 1863, from which he never recovered and which caused his death on 18 Nov 1863 at Carrollton LA.

His sister, Margaret (Tetterton) Alred named her son born in 1864 after Jesse. Tragically he too died, in infancy.

Lucy was likely named after her father’s sister, Lucy Octavia Tetterton. This Lucy was married three times, to a James Douglas, and Enoch Killebrew and a Sanders Coats. This Lucy died in 1922 in Alsey.

Lucy was the 5th of James Perry Tetterton and Almirene Minerva Reynolds Tetterton’s 6 children. Her oldest brother was Stephen. Stephen was born in 1848, making him 12 years older than Lucy. He married at 20 and worked as a farm laborer in neighboring Glasgow, IL. He and his wife raised 3 children in Scott County. Lucy’s oldest sister was Mary Ann. Mary was nine years older than Lucy and married Scott County farmer John Day in 1871 when Lucy was 11. They raised 4 children in Scott County. When Lucy was 7 her brother Perry was born. Perry married and raised a family in Scott County, but did not stay there. He first ventured to Nebraska in 1885, but continued farming in Alsey until after the death of his parents. Then he and his family settled in Lincoln County Nebraska where he died in 1924. Similarly, Eliza Tetterton, the sister 5 years older than Lucy ventured to Nebraska with her husband, William Ambrose about 1880 but then returned to Illinois. And then after her parents and husband died she moved to Yuma Colorado where her oldest son had relocated about 1910. Lucy’s baby sister, Sadie, born 9 years after her in April of 1869 married John Hubble in Scott County in 1889. In the 1910 Census Sadie’s daughter Ethel Hubble, only 17 at the time, and her future husband, Harry Thomas- 23, are listed as roomers living with Lucy and Herman on Adams St. in Peoria. Sadie died sometime between 1904 and 1910.

Lucy married Ed Hoots when she was 20 years old. They had three children together, including my 2x great grandmother Maude and her older brother Herman. Their third child, Robert died at 13 months old. They lived in Roodhouse in 1900. Roodhouse was a bit of a railroad boomtown then, but in the 1900 census Ed is recorded as having been out of work for 7 months; his occupation was day laborer. Her seventeen year old son, Herman is also listed as working as a day laborer, out of work for 7 months. 15 year old Maude is listed as at school, attending 8th grade.

In July of 1903 seventeen year old Maude gave birth to my great grandmother, Margaret Thompson. There’s no record of Maud and William Thompson ever marrying.

Lucy’s father died in 1905 when she was 45. He left his estate to her mother, Almirene until her death 5 years later in 1910. It is at this time that Lucy and Ed split ways. Ed remarried right away and had 3 more children with his second wife. Lucy moved to Peoria where Maude had moved with her husband, German immigrant, Claus Eken. Lucy also married an immigrant, Louis Dewoski. Louis immigrated from Poland in 1899. He lists Chef as his occupation in the 1931 Peoria city directory, cook in the 1930 census. Lucy’s son Herman lived with her in the 1910 census. He is listed as a car mechanic and she is running a boarding house.

In the 1920 Belleville paper Lucy is mentioned as having a ward named George Thomas Lee who was arrested for stealing a horse. The article explains the 13 year old was left in the care of Lucy at her boarding house on North Glendale Avenue in Peoria. He got in trouble for truancy and wrote to his father, J.C. Lee of Dupo, IL asking to join him, without informing Lucy. She assumed he had run away and reported him as missing to the Peoria police. Meanwhile the child didn’t get along with his father and was trying to get back to Peoria when he stole the horse. Lucy is listed in the article as Mrs. Lucy Hoots, not as Lucy Dewoski.

In the 1930 census Lucy is living with Louis Dewoski, renting a house on First Avenue which she is running as a boarding house. Louis is working as a cook. Her daughter Maude is living with her as is Maude’s daughters Margaret, working in the laundry at the hospital, and Garnita, working as a nurse. Margaret’s three small children are also living there, my grandmother Clema, and her sister Margie and brother Ray.

By 1930 Herman has moved back to Alsey with his second wife. In 1936 there was a terrible heat wave. Herman was working on a farm in Alsey and was overcome with heat exhaustion. He died on 19 July 1936. He was 53.

The following year Lucy died at the age of 77. She’s buried in Peoria’s Springdale Cemetery, the Washington Heights Section which is across War Memorial Drive from the rest of the cemetery.