Mardisha

Made some actual progress on the family tree yesterday!  I decided to focus on the story of Mardicia Allen (Mordicia, Mardecia, Mardisha, Murdista - just a few of the ways I've found her name spelled).  I wrote about her daughter Rose in a previous post this week.

Mardisha (which is the way she actually signed her name) was my 2nd great aunt, sister of Augustus D. Allen.  She was born in Kentucky in 1835, the second oldest of nine children of Robert Scott Allen and his wife Elizabeth.  The family moved to Illinois in the early 1850's, where she met and married John Nash.  Her two youngest brothers, Harrison and Augustus, were born in Illinois.

A while ago, I found a History of Hancock County that told of a Miss Rose Spitler whose birth parents were John and Mardisha Nash.  It said that Rose was orphaned at a young age; her findagrave.com bio states that John and Mardisha both died in 1858.

Yesterday, I found the probate record for John Nash.  He did indeed die in 1858, leaving Mardisha to be his executrix.  Though her name was spelled Mordecia in the document, her signature was "Mardisha." The record mentions that they had three children. With the information from this record, I was able to search and find Mardisha (spelled Murdista) in the 1860 U. S. Census for Hancock County, Ill., also listing her three children, thus proving that she did not die in 1858 as her daughter Rose's findagrave account states.

The 1880 U. S. Census for Hancock County shows Mardisha (M. Z. Nash) at age 45 living with her mother (Elizabeth Allen), grandmother (Sarah House), and brother, John Watson Allen - no mention of her children, though they would have been adults by this time. The Census document indicates that both Mardisha and her brother John were "ill." Some family trees on Ancestry give her date of death as November 1, 1892, but I have not yet found supporting documentation of this.  These family trees give her middle name as "Zerush," also an unverified fact.

So now I am wondering what sad story caused Mardisha to give up her children (at least her baby Rose).  Rose was still living with her mother at age 3; the other sisters (Frances and Ro...[undeciferable]... were 7 and 8. Could she no longer support a young child on her own? When did she move in with her mother and brother? I sense a heartbreaking situation here.

The larger question for me is:  why did Augustus Allen move so far away (to Kansas), while his mother and brothers and sisters remained in Hancock County, Ill., all their lives? Did they remain in contact somehow?  His mother, Elizabeth, died in 1896 - did he return to Illinois around that time? There was a newspaper story telling of a business trip to Iowa in 1903, but this was to western Iowa, not close to Illinois.