Happy Birthday Maria Taylor Dye

Dear Grandmother Dye,
Today we celebrate the 206th anniversary of your birth.  The reminder of your birthday, has me looking again for information on your family. I believe your parents were Richard Taylor and Freedom Carpenter. The 1850, 1860, and 1870 census records list your birth place as New York. The 1880 census however says you were born in Canada. Your father Richard Taylor is listed in Ludlow, Washington County Ohio, in the 1820 census. The enumeration on August 7, 1820 lists 2 'Free White Persons, females 10 to 15 which would include you.

Image from www.ancestry.com

You were one of a household of 12, including 2 males and one female over 25, and 7 children under the age of 16. Most family researchers report that your family arrived in Washington County in 1818, so I imagine that the cabin in which you lived was crowded indeed.

Ludlow township was adjacent to Lawrence Township the area that was settled by the Dye clan as early as 1800.  We don't know how you came to meet Amos Dye, the youngest son of John Dye, Sr., but on September 12, 1826 you were united in a marriage that would last 50 years.

Your long marriage produced at least 11 children including my 2nd great-grandfather Amos Dye, Jr. You were already 40 when he was born. It was quite an accomplishment in the 19th century to have 11 children survive to adulthood.

In the 1860 census, your family is listed as living in the 3rd Ward of Marietta and Amos' profession is listed as tobacco packer. That sounds like a laboring position, which might have been difficult for a man who was already over 60. The next column lists the 'value of Real Estate' and 40,000 is entered, followed by 1500 for "value of Personal Estate'. Today, that seems like a lot of property for a tobacco packer.

Image from www.ancestry.com

I found an article in the Commercial Gazette published in Marietta, Ohio on April 1, 1883 that states, "Mrs. Maria Dye, relict of the late Amos Dye, died in this city this morning aged seventy eight years." You had been widowed for nearly seven years.

My husband and I visited Marietta last summer and took a photograph of your and Amos' headstones standing side by side in the Oak Grove Cemetery. It was early in the morning and the light was not good and the grass quite wet and slippery, The obscured engraving on the headstones reminds me that I have much left to discover about your family.

Headstones of Amos and Maria Taylor Dye









Love,

Your third great granddaughter,

Cecily Cone Kelly

 

P.S. for family members Amos and Maria Taylor Dye's son Amos Dye, Jr. married Martha Jane McCowan, their daughter Ida Mae Dye married Chester Bynon Allen, their daughter Hazel Bynon Allen married Charles Newton Cone.