Earl C. Layton
Earl C. Layton was born on 10 August 1876 at Equinunk, in Wayne County, Pennsylvania. He was the youngest known child of William Layton, a farmer, and his second wife Ruth Burdick. Equinunk sits on the Delaware River in the far north of the county. Union, Lookout and Stalker, the other places of his life, are small neighbouring hamlets in Manchester and Damascus townships, a few miles back from the river.
He grew up in a crowded, blended household. His father had been married before, to Elizabeth Teeple, who died in 1862. His mother was a widow when she married William that year, and she brought Teeple daughters from her first marriage to Ellison Teeple. Earl's full siblings were Henry Layton (1863-1913) and Maude B. Layton (1868-1952), who married a Teeple of her own.
About 1902 he married Margaret Ada Kemp, called Maggie, a daughter of James C. Kemp, an English-born farmer at Stalker, and Ruth Calista Edwards. The date of the marriage is not known. Their first child, Dorothy Pearl, was born at Tanners Falls on 14 March 1903. Frances Bessie followed in June 1905. On 20 March 1907 Maggie gave birth to twin girls, Harriet and Helen. Helen died the same day and was buried under a small stone that reads "BABY." Ernest was born the day after Christmas, 1909.
Maggie died on 12 August 1914, at 32. A note on the grave of the infant twin says a stillborn son, born 31 July 1914, may be buried in the same plot. If so, Maggie died twelve days after that birth. Earl was left at 38 with four children aged eleven, nine, seven and four. Three months later Maggie's father died too. No second marriage for Earl is known, though none has been ruled out.
He stayed in the same few miles and kept his parents close. In March 1917 he was the informant on his father's death certificate, giving his address as Equinunk. In March 1921 his mother died in his home at Lookout, and he signed her certificate as well. His answers on those two forms are the only surviving statement of who his grandparents were: David Layton and Loretta Billings on one side, Joshua Burdick and Mary Kenyon on the other.
The Hancock Herald, the paper that covered the upper Delaware valley, caught the family now and then. In September 1922 it noted "Earl Layton and family of Union" visiting. In January 1925 a cottage prayer meeting was held "at the home of Earl Layton." That same month, on 25 January 1925, his eldest daughter Dorothy married Coe Finch Young Jr. at Braman. When her first child was born in May 1926, the Herald identified the mother through him: "Mrs. Young before her marriage was Dorothy Layton, daughter of Earl Layton."
Earl C. Layton died on 12 February 1950 at Stalker, aged 73. He was buried in Union Cemetery, Manchester Township, beside Maggie and the baby. His stone reads "EARL C. LAYTON 1876-1950." All four of his surviving children outlived him by decades. Frances lived to 101.
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Cite: Heirology, "Earl C. Layton (1876-1950)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/earl-c-layton-1876-1950-5cdf8f.