Ancestors

Mamie Christine Townsend

1911-1991 · Kentucky or Missouri → East Prairie, Mississippi Co MO → Wolf Island Township, Mississippi Co MO → East Prairie, Mississippi Co MO
Born 1911
Died 1991
Mother: Alice Higgins
Children include Ruth

Mamie Christine Townsend was born 8 November 1911. The censuses split on where: the 1920 and 1940 returns say Missouri, the 1930 says Kentucky. The East Prairie memorials name her mother as Alice Higgins, and the January 1920 census bears the memorials out: it finds Christine M., aged eight, in the St. James Township household of George A. Futrell, twenty-four, and his wife Allie H., twenty-six, written down as a daughter beside the couple's own infants J. W. and Dorothy M. George Futrell was about sixteen when Christine was born, so the eight-year-old daughter of that new household was the wife's child, carried into the marriage.

Her father is less settled. Her name makes him a Townsend, and the memorials say he was James Townsend, who died 8 May 1914, aged 28, when Christine was two. But James's own death certificate names Clara Townsend as informant, and the 1910 census gives him a wife named Clara B., so the man the memorials chose may be the wrong Townsend. The question is open.

She married Fayette Marshall about 1926, and their first child, Ruth, was born in April 1927, when Christine was fifteen. Seven more children followed across two decades: Doris, Ross, Billy, Joy, Judy, Brenda and Dennis. The family farmed at Wolf Island Township and later lived at East Prairie.

Widowed in April 1986, she died 15 December 1991 at East Prairie, aged 80, and was buried in Memorial Park Cemetery there, beside her husband, her mother and her stepfather.

Sources

Social Security Death Index; the 1930, 1940 and 1950 federal censuses; obituary of her daughter Ruth E. Brown, 2022; Find a Grave memorials 143466105, 83568636, 147143301, 149536956

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Cite: Heirology, "Mamie Christine Townsend (1911-1991)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mamie-christine-townsend-1911-1991-a223f5.