From Clarissa to Clema

Clarissa Jane Wishon (DNA match confirmed) was my 4x great grandmother; she was born in Kentucky in 1830, the last of seven children for Adam and Nancy Miller Wishon (5x great grandparents). Adam was a plasterer and later a farmer. The Wishons moved to West Central Illinois shortly after her birth from Kentucky, from North Carolina before that. Clarissa first married at age 14 to a man named Joseph Nelson. It’s unclear what happened to him. At 18 she remarried to Henry Hoots, my 4x great grandfather with whom she had 10 children in 15 years, including my 3x great grandfather Edward Hoots. The family lived in Scott County Illinois, just west of Jacksonville. Henry was known to be a drunk and a womanizer and Clarissa finally divorced him in 1867. The State of Illinois sued the family of Henry Hoots to force them to support him as he was an inmate of the work farm, but too feeble to work and his brother was wealthy. His brother was forced to support him until his death in 1866. Clarissa remarried William Jackson with whom she had two more children. The first, Cora died in infancy, but the second, William Jackson Jr. survived and we have photos of her and her youngest shared on ancestry.com. After William died she remarried one final time, to a Hayward Pride, whom she also outlived as she was listed as widowed in the 1900 census. She died in July of 1904 at the age of 74.

Edwin “Edward” A Hoots was born 11 Feb 1959 in Alsey, Illinois, Clarissa’s 7th child. After Clarissa remarried to William Jackson, Edward and his siblings lived with him in Glasgow, Illinois. The census in 1870 show no one in the family had the ability to read or write. William was a farmer, his estate estimated at 150 dollars. (3,600 in today’s dollars). By 1880 twenty one year old Edwin had moved to Roodhouse Illinois in Greene County, working as a hired farm hand. Roodhouse was incorporated as a city that same year, having been founded back in 1850 at a crossroads of two major highways. in 1871 the Louisiana branch of the railway boosted the Roodhouse economy and it became a bit of a boomtown. It was there that Edward married Lucille Tetterton, my 3x great grandmother.

Lucy Tetterton was the daughter of Kentucky natives James and Almirene (Reynolds) Tetterton, my 4x great grandparents. James came to Illinois with his parents as a child in 1830. Almirene’s origins are unknown. The Tetterton’s farmed near Glasgow just as the Jackson’s did.

Lucy and Edward had three children together, Herman in 1883, Margaret Lee Hoots, my 2x great grandmother, in 1885 and Robert in 1889. Robert died when he was not yet 2 years old and is buried in Alsey, Illinois.

At 17 Margaret Lee Hoots still lived in Roodhouse where she married William Henry Thompson, my 2x great grandfather, a painter, and gave birth to her daughter Margaret Evelyn Thompson, my great grandmother in 1903. William didn’t stick around long, eventually moving to Indiana and having very little contact with his daughter her entire life.

Lucy and Edward divorced around 1910. Edward remarried straight away and began having children with his new bride, Anna Belle who was twenty years younger than he was. Anna Belle gave him three more children before she died in 1918 at just 39 years of age. Lucy moved to Peoria and opened a boarding house on Adams Street, her son Herman living with her. Herman was a car mechanic.

Margaret Lee, or “Maude” as she is often called, possibly to avoid confusion with the daughter she named after herself, had moved to Peoria and was remarried by 1910 to a German immigrant called Claus Eken with whom she had another daughter, Garnita in 1911. The family lived together in Peoria on Cornhill St, Claus listed as working for the railroad and later a car inspector. Claus died in 1930.

When Margaret Evelyn was just fourteen years old she eloped to Topeka Illinois to marry twenty year old Raymond Jasper Myers, my great grandfather. Raymond was born in Edwardsport Indiana in 1898, the only child of Sam and Ida “Addie” (Godfrey) Myers, my 2x great grandparents. Sam came to Bear Creek Illinois to work as a carpenter and later took on the role of Village Marshall in Palmer Illinois. Raymond must have moved to the boomtown of Roodhouse for work.

7 months after their marriage their first child, Marjorie was born in Palmer Illinois. In 1920, their son Raymond Orlando Myers was born and then in 1923 their youngest child, Clema Alberta Myers, my grandmother was born in Danville. Shortly afterwards the Myers clan, Sam and Ida and Raymond moved to New York, leaving Margaret and her three children in Illinois.

A 1920 newspaper clipping shows that Lucy had taken in a ward, a George Thomas Lee, son of JC Lee. George had gotten into trouble for truancy the year before, and was ordered to report to the Peoria courts once a week. He grew tired of doing so and asked his father for a ticket to Dupo, Illinois to live with him. They failed to tell Lucy any of this and she reported the boy as being kidnapped. Meanwhile George didn’t like the way his father treated him and had decided to return to Mrs. Hoots but was arrested for stealing a horse. The judge sent him to county home. I don’t know if Lucy and he were ever reunited.

Thus by 1930 we find my grandmother, my great grandmother, my 2x and 3x great grandmothers all living together. Lucy, still running a boarding house, had remarried to Louis Dewoski, a polish immigrant who arrived in America in 1899. He was a cook in a cafe. They were renting a home on First Avenue and had one boarder. Maude was widowed by Claus Eken and living with Lucy along with her daughter Garnita Eken who was working as a nurse. Margaret was working in the hospital laundry. Her children, Marjorie, Ray and Clema enrolled in the local Catholic school.

Lucy, who I have no pictures of, died in 1937 at the age of 77. After Lucy died, Maude lived with Garnita and her family until she died in 1964 at the age of 71. Margaret remarried to John Hounihan in 1939 and they came to live next door to Clema and Ken Starr in Sunnyland soon after. In 1971 Margaret died at the age of 68, Clema dying in 1986 at only 62.