The Orphans

Despite having nine children from three marriages (see The Mysterious Tillman), James Jordan Summers, Lucinda Russel, Rosetta Cole, and Tillman Andrew were short-lived. Tillman lasted the longest, dying (by his own hand) around age 48. Lucinda passed around 45, James Jordan about 38, Rosetta under 25. By 1897, or so, all four parents were dead. And what happened to the orphans? Here are their stories, combined with charts in hopes of simplifying things.

In 1900 William and Mary were living with their Aunt and Uncle.

In 1900 James Jordan and Rosetta (Cole) Summers’s children, William and Mary Elizabeth had moved in with (or been "farmed out" to) their aunt and uncle Amanda and Squire (also, “Esquire”) Mooney in Lisman, Webster Co, Kentucky. Amanda was Rosetta Cole’s sister.

Albert and Mary Elizabeth Craig.
 (Katharyn Silva Belew, Ancestry.com.)

Born 23 Oct 1884, in McLeansboro, Hamilton Co, Illinois, Mary Elizabeth Summers lived only briefly with her aunt and uncle. On 16 Nov 1900 she married William David Keller in Henderson Co, Kentucky, a marriage that ended in divorce in 1910. Mary next married Joseph Eich in Knox Co, Indiana, 5 Nov 1917, and when Joseph died on 13 Jan 1944, she married Albert Granville Craig in 1948. Mary died 22 Dec 1965 in Vincennes, Indiana. Despite three marriages, Mary Elizabeth had but a single child, Carlus Clinton Keller, product of her first marriage.

We know a lot about Mary Elizabeth but almost nothing about her brother, William Summers, who is found in the 1900 census as a nephew living with Amanda and Squire Mooney and is never seen again. That census gives his date of birth as Oct 1881 with Kentucky as his unexpected birthplace.

By the time that Lucinda, the last living parent, died, some of the orphaned descendants were no longer children. Tillman and Lucinda’s three oldest were married, all three in Franklin Co, Illinois—William Andrews to Hester Hutchcraft on 5 Jun 1894, Lewis Robert Andrews to Nancy Ella Kerney on 11 Jul 1895, and Thomas B. Andrews to Marjorie M. Waller on 3 Dec 1896.

By the time their parents had died, the three oldest Andrews were married.

And by 1900, the unmarried Andrews, the three youngest—Lawrence, Nora, and Anna Mae—were living with their married brother Lewis Robert in Northern Twp. Franklin Co. Also living with Lewis Robert in 1900 was his half brother, ten-year-old John William Summers, the youngest of all the offspring. That John William was taken in by Lewis was probably the reason that John and his future wife, Verne, maintained contacts throughout their lives with Tillman’s children and grandchildren. And many of John and Verne's descendants did the same.

The subject of our next blog is where John William Summers and his Andrews half-siblings ended up.