Maude Alice White was born on December 14, 1886, near the town of Hunter in Carter County, Missouri.  Carter is in the Missouri Ozark mountains, mostly inside Mark Twain National Forest, and is one of the poorest counties in Missouri;  its primary industry is timber.  Maude's parents were Charles White and Joannah Mallory (see below for more on Charles and Joannah).  She had twelve older brothers and sisters.  Her granddaughter Joan wrote of her:

She had been a genuine beauty, my grandmother -- high cheekbones, almond eyes, oval face, very fair -- and she'd run away from home at twelve;  by the time she was thirteen she was making her living as a telegraph operator.

Maude Edie, the thirteenth child of a poor family, was a self-educated woman who had become an expert railroad telegraph operator at age twelve.  A perfectionist who felt she must continually prove herself, she instilled in her children the same need to excel.

Soon after that he met Maude Alice White, who was still in her late teens, and on July 12, 1905, they were married.  Stewart bought the first in a series of eight drugstores that he would own over the next two decades, a career which would move the young family around a great deal.  Their first child, a daughter named Mildred, was born on June 3, 1906, in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Their next, a son named Stewart Carson, arrived November 10, 1908 in McComb, Texas.  They returned to Missouri in time for their third and last child, a son named Leslie Charles, to be born November 21, 1914 in Kansas City.

Whether or not the need to excel was instilled in them by Maude, it is indisputable that all three of Stewart and Maude's children grew up to lead lives of dramatic achievement.  Mildred became a consumer rights journalist and founding member of the Consumers Union, and to this day is greatly resented by fans of Wilhelm Reich.  Stewart Carson Jr. became a noted Depression-era American painter.  Leslie became a traffic engineer who supervised the construction of the third tube of the Lincoln Tunnel and the lower deck of the George Washington Bridge, and who wrote a seminal paper on tollbooth control.

Stewart was deeply devoted to his work, as the article to the left documents (from a Kansas City newspaper as quoted in John W. Edie's genealogy of the Edie family).  It is possible that this contributed to the ups and downs of Stewart and Maude's marriage;  their granddaughter Joan wrote of them:

My mother's father was a druggist, a quiet, gentle man with white hair and a beard;  he loved my grandmother dearly [...]  She divorced him three times in the course of their life together, and he courted her four, beginning patiently each time with roses and chocolates and chaperoned evenings;  he married her four times too, three of them in church with bridesmaids and only the last in the registry office.

When I was 12 years old I spent the summer with grandma and grandpa Edie and that summer forms the locus of my memories of them.  This was in 1957.  She was kind and caring.  She kept a very clean house and had charge of caring for the yard.  He worked.  He left and returned.  When he returned he went into his bedroom and spent his time there.  I had very little interaction with him.  I presumed that he continued to work all his life because it was hard for him to socialize with people.

Joannah Josephine Mallory and Charles Prentice Moss White

Joannah Josephine Mallory was born on September 26, 1844, somewhere in Kentucky.  Her father, according to the International Genealogical Index (IGI), was Joseph Nathaniel Mallory, and her mother's last name was Craig.  At present it is not known whether she had any brothers or sisters, or whether she came to Missouri on her own or with her family as a child.  Her first name has also been spelled Johanna, Joanna, and Joanne;  the spelling used here is the one that Maude Alice White used on her SS-5 form.

Charles Prentice Moss White was born October 10, 1842, in St. Louis, Missouri.  The IGI says that his parents were John Payton White and Eleanor Buck of St. Louis.  This may well be correct, as John and Eleanor had a son Charles of about the right age, and there are other IGI records that suggest that the full name of Charles' son John was also John Payton White;  however, census records show John and Eleanor as both born in Ireland, but show Charles as having parents who were born in Kentucky and New York (or possibly Nova Scotia).  This is not beyond the range of plausible census error, however.  If Charles was indeed the son of John and Eleanor, then he had four younger siblings:  Sophia, Thomas, Emma, and Rebecca, and by the 1860 census he had left his parents' home, possibly taking his younger brother with him.

It is not known where Charles and Joannah met and married, but by 1865 they had settled in Carter County, Missouri, where later census records show Charles as a farmer.  Their first child, a daughter named Elizabeth Ellen, was born there on April 23, 1865, soon followed by Charles Leslie born in 1867, Idena May born January 13, 1869, Thomas Chilton born in 1870, Amanda Samantha born in October 1871, John Payton born in September 1875, Alberta born in 1876, Mary Ellen Bice born in 1878, Minnie Adele born in September 1879, and Maude Alice born December 14, 1886 (see above).  Maude is said to have been their thirteenth child, so there were probably other babies born who did not live.

We have no definite record of what happened to Charles and Joannah after 1880;  there is a 1900 census record that may be them, but there are enough discrepancies to make the identification pretty shaky (one possibility is that it is in fact Charles, but with a new wife, as the woman's name is given as Sarah).

Of their children (other than Maude), the following is known.  Elizabeth "Lizzie" married M. Jeff Markham on December 24, 1885.  Idena married James Henry Ethel on May 22, 1892, and they had three children:  Beatrice, Veva Sophia, and Garland Oral.  Garland became an English professor at the University of Washington who played a heroic role when anti-communist investigations took place there during the McCarthy era.  Amanda married George E. Grafues on May 22, 1892, and they had eight children:  Jessie Albertie, Fidela Mae, Thomas Calvin, Joseph Harold, Pearl O., Neomia Eleanor, Adela M., and Maude Adelaide.  John Payton married (probably) Ella May Proctor in June of 1902.  Mary Ellen married Pinkney William Hanks on February 2, 1898.

Martha Jane Stewart and William Wallace Edie

Martha Jane Stewart was born on February 22, 1854, in Kings Creek, Hancock County, in the panhandle of West Virginia.  Her parents were John Stewart and Jane Melvin (see below for more on John and Jane).  She was the second of nine children.  When she was still a small child her family left West Virginia and went west, stopping for a while in Illinois before finally settling in Clinton County, Missouri.

William Wallace Edie was also born in Hancock County, in the town of New Cumberland, on October 19, 1852, and was also the second of nine children.  His parents were Thomas Jefferson Edie and Nancy W. Carson (see below for more on Thomas and Nancy).  Like the Stewarts, the Edie family left West Virginia in the late 1850s and travelled west to settle in Clinton County, with a stop along the way in Illinois.  It is possible that the two families travelled together, and at the very least they probably knew each other well.

William and Martha married in 1875 (it is possible that the families were still in Illinois at that time).  Their first child, Ernest M., was born on December 16, 1876, followed by Stewart Carson (see above) on December 18, 1878, Clara on October 7, 1880, Bertha M. on October 29, 1882, and Albert Lawrence on July 30, 1886.

William's profession was stonemason;  he worked for the Sloan Marble Works in Cameron for several years.  In his thirties, however, the family decided it was time for a change of pace.  They sold their home in Cameron and moved across the state to Howell County, where they bought 80 acres of timberland which they turned into a fruit farm.  In their later years they sold the farm and retired to Willow Springs.

William and Martha's oldest son Ernest married Jo Ellen Miller on June 21, 1899, and they had five children:  Paul Miller, Otis S., Lillian Mae, Rae Albert, and Clara Bess.  Their oldest daughter Clara married W.R. Cobbs and had three children:  William C., James, and Bertha Alice.

Martha died on April 15, 1932, and William on March 22 two years later.  They are both buried in Burnham Cemetary in Burnham, Missouri.

John Stewart and Jane Melvin

John Stewart was born on September 1, 1823, somewhere in Pennsylvania, probably in Washington County.  His father's name is said to have been William.  Current speculation is that he was the oldest son of William Stewart and Martha Alexander, of Washington County and later of Hancock County, West Virginia, but this remains far from verified.

Jane Melvin was born around 1824, also in Pennsylvania.  There is a good chance that she was the Jane who was the youngest daughter of William Melvin and Margaret McCraig.  If so, she had six older siblings:  James, John, William, Samuel, Robert, and Margaret.

John and Jane married around 1848, and settled in Kings Creek, Hancock County, West Virginia, where John followed the profession of cooper (barrelmaker).  Their first child, William Harvey Stewart, was born there on March 14, 1849, followed by Martha Jane (see above) on February 22, 1854, John M. in 1855, Sarah Elizabeth on January 19, 1856, Maggie in 1857, and Alice and Albert both in 1859 (it is not known whether they were twins or just born at the beginning and end of the year).

Around 1860 the family packed up and left Hancock County, travelling west to Illinois where they settled temporarily in Concord Township, Warren County.  Their last two children were born there:  a daughter named Hadasah on July 7, 1863, and a son named Chalmers.

By 1876 the family had moved on to Cameron, Clinton County, Missouri.  Their daughter Sarah died there on June 1, 1876, at age 20, and was buried in the Old Plattsburg Cemetary.  John died on February 8, 1888, and was buried near her, as was daughter Hadasah who died as a young married woman on August 27, 1891.  It does not appear that Jane is buried there, so I have hopes that she lived into the twentieth century and may yet be found in a 1900 census record.

John and Jane's oldest son, William Harvey, married Mary Elizabeth Mehaffie on May 27, 1875, in New Market, Missouri, and had five children:  Modena, Albert Ross, John Russell, Ralph Clark, and Flora Loyola.  The images in this section were generously sent to me by Gale Stewart-Boyle, granddaughter of John Russell Stewart.

Thomas Jefferson Edie and Nancy W. Carson

Thomas Jefferson Edie (see photo above) was born on March 24, 1824, in New Cumberland, Brooke County, Virginia (which is now Hancock County, West Virginia).  He was the second born child of Alexander Edie and Margaret J. Moore, who had eleven children, and who lived and farmed on the Edie family homestead, which had originated as a land grant to Thomas' great-grandfather from Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia.

Nancy W. Carson was born on March 15, 1831, in Pennsylvania, probably in Washington County.  She was definitely the daughter of William Carson and Martha Haney, later of Hancock County, despite some apparently contradictory information given in J.W. Edie's Edie genealogy, and in the obituary for her husband reproduced at right.  Until recently my only evidence of this was an IGI record, to which I gave somewhat more weight than I would usually give the IGI because the record in question contains accurate records for other children of William and Martha, has no apparent connection to any Edie family record, and matches the name and birthdate for Nancy exactly.  I have now made contact with a descendant of Elizabeth Carson, another known daughter of William and Martha.  That descendant's father personally remembers family gatherings in Missouri with Edie and Lawson cousins.  Since Ethel Edie Lawson was the granddaughter of Nancy and Thomas (she was the daughter of John Starr Edie, and married James Lawson), I regard this as definite confirmation of Nancy's parentage.

Much of the seemingly contradictory information can be plausibly explained when we note that, although William Carson was not a physician, one of his descendants has stated that he supposedly dabbled in herbal medicine, and also that census records show that the Carson family lived in Ohio for most of the 1840s (as per the birthplaces given for their children who were born during that decade).  There are indications that Martha Haney's relatives may have removed to Ohio from Pennsylvania, and that may have contributed to the impression that Nancy was from an Ohio family.  Finally, most Edie family genealogy databases currently have Nancy's name as "Nancy Herron Carson", because J.W. Edie stated it that way in the heading of his entry for Thomas Jefferson Edie.  Everywhere else, however, he referred to her as Nancy W. Carson, and that is how she is listed in every census record and in the record of her death, so I believe that the "Herron" was simply an odd mistake.  One theory might be that her middle name was something like "Warren" and that a typist mistranscribed it from a handwritten manuscript.

Thomas and Nancy married on August 30, either in 1847 or in 1849 depending on the source.  They were living in Hancock County at the time of the 1850 census, with their infant son Alexander, born on June 1, 1850.  Thomas' profession was listed as farmer.  They had four more children while in Hancock County:  William Wallace (see above) born October 19, 1852, John Starr born October 2, 1853, Abraham born April 22, 1855, and Lawrence Arlen born February 8, 1858.  Soon after Lawrence's birth they left West Virginia and went west, travelling through Illinois before settling on a new farm near Osborn, in DeKalb County, Missouri.  There they had four more children:  Vesta born October 1, 1859, Benton born October 19, 1867, Leonard born in 1868 (and died in 1869), and Everett born October 14, 1872.

Their son Benton died in 1885 at age 18.  Alexander married Laura Belle Shreve on October 23, 1878.  John married Louise Emma David in 1875.  Abraham married Edna Roberts.  Lawrence married Katherine "Tashie" Johnson in 1887.  Vesta married Daniel Colby Munsell, and Everett married Flora Youngman on October 24, 1894.

In later years Thomas and Nancy sold their farm and moved to Cameron, where they bought a few acres near town and started a dairy.  Nancy died on October 22, 1894, and was buried in the Packard Cemetary in Cameron.  Thomas outlived her by twenty years, dying on March 18, 1914 of pneumonia, just short of his 90th birthday.  He was reported to have worked right up until the day before he died.  He is buried in the Packard Cemetary with his wife.
 

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