Fearless Females - Day 14 - Ada Merritt Hobbs Matthews

Lisa Alzo, The Accidental Genealogist, started a blogging-prompt series in 2010 in honor of Women's History Month and our female ancestors. If you would like to participate also, you can find the prompts on her blog here.

News-makers? Did you have a female ancestor who made the news? Why? Was she famous or notorious? Did she appear in the social column?

Ada Merrit Hobbs Matthews

My paternal grandfather's mother, Ada Merritt Hobbs Matthews, appeared several times in the Pittston Gazette/Evening Gazette over the years between her marriage in 1876 to her death in 1919.

She was neither famous nor notorious but she was well known in the small town of Pittston, PA where her husband was the owner of two businesses and the director of the choir at the Methodist Episcopal church.

Although I cannot reproduce the articles here, having found them on Newspapers.com, I can tell you that while Ada did not make the social column, per se, most of the articles pertained to social matters.

There was one appearance in the paper that surprised me, a notice that Ada and Arthur were being sued by the bank and that the sheriff would be auctioning of two parcels of their land. Then again, Arthur certainly had an entrepreneurial spirit. Perhaps he just wasn't as successful in real estate as his other businesses.

The rest of the notices were much more humdrum and every day, reflective of the times and the place. The Pittston and Evening Gazettes were like the Facebook of their day.  There were announcements of trips to visit family at Falls and Scranton, of Ada having the grip (which she once had while pregnant with my grandfather according to my calculations) and being taken to the hospital for an operation. There were also notices of upcoming meetings of the Ladies' Aid Society at Ada's home, descriptions of entertaining (feeding) the church choir after practice and the time she gave a banquet for the employees of Arthur's shoe factory.

Other than notices of births, marriages and deaths, Ada is the only female ancestor I have found in newspapers so far. It isn't earth-shattering news, she wasn't famous, notorious or wealthy, but these little articles are like gold to me because they help flesh-out an ancestor I never knew.

Sunday's Obituary - Mrs. Arthur Matthews

Matthews Obsequies

The funeral of Mrs. Arthur Matthews will be held tomorrow afternoon at 2:30 o'clock, from the home of her daughter, Mrs. Floyd Hunter, of 301 Philadelphia avenue, West Pittston. Services will be held at the home and will be in charge of Rev. A.D. Decker. Interment will be made in the Pittston cemetery.

This week in my Amanuensis Monday posts of my grandfather's auto biography we came to the death of his mother, Ada Merritt Hobbs Matthews.  During the week I have posted her headstone (Tombstone Tuesday) and photos of her (Friday's Faces from the Past) and now we come to her obituary from The Scranton Republican which I found on newspapers.com.

Newspapers.com has been an amazing source of information for me about my grandfather's family and even some of his cousins because they have the local paper from Pittston, PA and others from the area.  Aside from the usual obituaries and marriage announcements, I discovered that my great-uncle Fred Matthews lost a home and business to a fire in 1910 when he was married with two children, that my grandfather's family were victims of a burglary in 1908 when my grandfather was only 7, I found advertisements for my great-grandfather's shoe factory, the "Want Ads" they placed when they were looking for house help and even my grandfather's letter to Santa in 1909 when he was 8 years old! 

Even with a common last name like Matthews, I was able to find all this in part by limiting searches to just their local papers.  Additionally, I soon realized that most articles referenced their street name as in "Arthur Matthews of Nafus street.".  Having this unusual name in my searches was also a help, and once I started using it I found a host of things I wouldn't have found otherwise.

By the way, I am not being paid or compensated in any way for this post, I am just a grateful fan.


Obituary from The Scranton Republican, 3 Sep 1919, Wed, Page 4; Newspapers.com, accessed 12 Feb 2015.

Friday's Faces From the Past - Ada Merritt Hobbs Matthews

First, a shout out to the cousin who found me through my blog earlier this week.  I got your email but it had no return address and I could not reply.  Please email me again or check your facebook, I sent a message there, too.

This week's installment of my grandfather's autobiography included the death of his mother when she was 64 and he was 18.  He was the youngest of her six children, born 22 years after her first child, Lillian.

The three photos above were the only I had ever seen of her until recently (the woman on the right is her sister Elizabeth Hobbs Snell).  My grandfather had written that he had a photograph of her as a child in London but I did not remember ever seeing it and had no idea if it still existed.  Then in December, with my birthday card, my stepmother sent me some photos she found while cleaning out a desk.  Among them were these:

 

Well, you'll just have to imagine my excitement, but I can tell you I was practically shouting out loud.  I couldn't believe I was finally holding not only the photo I had been hoping still existed somewhere but another of her as a young woman.

I am so amazed and grateful to have all these images of my great-grandmother.  While I am fortunate to have at least one image of each of my great-grandparents I don't have anything like this range in ages for most of them, this is such a gift.

Tombstone Tuesday - Ada Merritt Hobbs Matthews

Yesterday's installment of my grandfather's autobiography included the death of his mother, Ada Merritt Hobbs Matthews.

She died in Carbondale, Pennsylvania in 1919 and was buried with her husband Arthur William Matthews at the Pittston Cemetery.

ADA HOBBS MATTHEWS

WIFE OF ARTHUR W MATTHEWS

SEPTEMBER 1, 1919

AGE 64

As I related shortly after my visit, I was able to find their plot with the help of Ron Faraday, President of the Greater Pittston Historical Society.