Dorothy Pearl Layton
Dorothy Pearl Layton was born on 14 March 1903 at Tanners Falls, Wayne County, Pennsylvania. She was the eldest child of Earl C. Layton and Margaret Ada Kemp, who was called Maggie. Her father was a son of William Layton and Ruth Burdick, and her mother a daughter of James C. Kemp and Ruth Calista Edwards. The family lived in the neighboring hamlets of Union, Lookout and Equinunk, on the Pennsylvania side of the upper Delaware.
Four more children followed her. Frances Bessie was born in 1905. On 20 March 1907 her mother bore twins, Harriet and Helen. Harriet lived to be ninety. Helen died the day she was born and lies under a small stone marked "BABY" in the family plot at Union Cemetery. Ernest was born in 1909.
Her mother died on 12 August 1914, at thirty-two, when Dorothy was eleven. A stillborn son may have been born twelve days before. No second marriage is known for her father. He was left with Dorothy, Frances, Harriet and Ernest, aged eleven, nine, seven and four.
On 23 January 1925, at twenty-one, she married Coe Finch Young Jr. at Hancock, across the river in Delaware County, New York. The clergyman Harry Williams married them. Coe was a dairy farmer at Stalker, nineteen years older than she was. He had already buried two wives. His first, Margaret Maudsley, died in 1909 after childbirth, and their newborn son was buried with her. His second, Lizzie Minckler, died in 1920. In the house were his daughter Ada, sixteen, and his son Horace, who was nearly six. Dorothy raised them both. Ada's obituary in 1962 and Horace's in 1976 each name her as their stepmother.
She had six children of her own, all of whom grew up. Dorothy Mae was born on 14 May 1926. The Hancock Herald announced her with the note that "Mrs. Young before her marriage was Dorothy Layton, daughter of Earl Layton." Vera Ellen followed in 1927, Everett in 1928, Margaret Jean on the last day of 1930, Madelyn Adele in 1934 and Charles Edgar in 1937. In 1930 the farmhouse held her, her husband, the two stepchildren, three children of her own under five and a hired man.
By 1940 they had moved to Equinunk. Coe died on 23 December 1940, when she was thirty-seven. Her youngest child was three and the eldest of her own was fourteen. The 1950 census, taken on 19 April, shows her as the head of the household at 47, widowed. Everett, 21, was working as a handyman at a camp, and Madelyn, 15, and Charles, 12, were still at home. Ada and her husband Raymond Bauer lived a few houses away.
She lived at Equinunk the rest of her life. She belonged to the Braman United Methodist Church and its United Methodist Women. She outlived Ada, who died in 1962, and Horace, who died in August 1976. She died four months after Horace, at 11:30 on the morning of Monday, 13 December 1976, at Grover Hermann Hospital in Callicoon, New York, after a long illness. She was seventy-three.
The funeral was held at the Braman United Methodist Church on Thursday, 16 December, with the Rev. KeeChong Ryu officiating. The bearers were Frank Tyler, Laverne Layton, Eugene Branning, Wellington Lester, George Snyder and Earl Schulman. She was buried at Braman under a stone that reads "MOTHER / DOROTHY L. YOUNG / 1903 1976". Her four daughters, two sons, two sisters, her brother, ten grandchildren and three great-grandchildren survived her.
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Cite: Heirology, "Dorothy Pearl Layton (1903-1976)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/dorothy-pearl-layton-1903-1976-53ef8f.