Mattie Elizabeth Turner
Mattie Elizabeth Turner was born on 8 March 1883 in Douglas County, Missouri, in the Ozark hills around Ava. On 22 January 1900, in Douglas County, she married John Thomas Blalack, a blacksmith. She was not yet seventeen.
Their first child, Agnes Christine, was born at Rogersville on 20 January 1901. George Thomas followed on 24 May 1903 and Lawrence Jack on 9 January 1910. That spring the family was living at Iola, Allen County, Kansas, where the census listed Mattie as 25. By 1912 they were back in Webster County, Missouri. John died there on 6 August 1912, aged 37, and Mattie was a widow at 29 with three children.
She married again, to a man named Duke, and was known for the rest of her life as Mattie E. Duke. Her three children all settled at Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and in time she did too. Her son George died there in 1941 and her son Lawrence in 1977.
Mattie Elizabeth Duke died at Bartlesville on 5 April 1984, at 101. Her daughter Agnes died in the same town fifteen days later. Mattie was buried at Ochelata Cemetery under a small grey stone with praying hands, carved "Maw" above MATTIE E. DUKE, MAR. 8, 1883, APR. 5, 1984. A granddaughter's obituary of 2013 still remembered her by every name she had carried: "Mattie Elizabeth (Tuner) Blalack Duke".
Sources
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Cite: Heirology, "Mattie Elizabeth Turner (1883-1984)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mattie-elizabeth-turner-1883-1984-9c9102.