My
gt-grandmother, Mary Magdalene Hockett was born 4 Sep 1855 in Lee
County, Iowa, the daughter of Francis and Rebecca (Hartley) Hockett.
Mary was the 10th child out of 11. It was a Quaker family and her
parents were married in Indiana and came with a number of other
Quakers, including many family members, to Henry County Iowa in the
late 1830's. They moved to neighboring Lee County a few years before
she was born. It was 1863 when they moved farther north to Hardin
County Iowa and it was there she met Nathan Elias Albertson who was
also from a Quaker family.
It
was just a little over a month after her 15th birthday, 8 Oct 1870,
when she and Nathan were married. I think she looked very young in
their wedding photo. I have always wondered why they chose to be
married by a justice of the peace rather than the traditional Quaker
way. Maybe her parents didn't approve. It was her older brother
Thomas who gave testimony about her age.
They
apparently made amends with their
Quaker congregation because they are listed there with some of their
children in 1891 and granted a certificate to the meeting in Sherman
County, Kansas.
It
was about 1875 when this photo was taken with Mary, Nathan, and
their 2 oldest children, Lenah and Calvin. Two more children were
born,
Arthur and Oran (my grandfather) before they moved
to Kansas when Nathan applied for a homestead in Sherman County and
moved onto 160 acres in March 1887. It must have been interesting for
Mary to live the life of a homesteader.
I
expect she missed her daughter when she was married in 1891, a few
days after her 20th birthday. Maybe Mary missed her even more when
her youngest child, Ernest, was born in 1893.
It
has always made me a little sad to realize that Mary died when she
was just 45 years old, 10 Jul 1901.
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