Martha’s Grandkids Are Gone

I was looking over my past few posts to see which family group I should write about.  I was somewhat surprised to see how few Keys family stories I have posted this year.  I don’t know how I let that slip by.  Maybe it’s because I wrote several last year when we had the family reunion and the next reunion isn’t until next year.  But that’s no excuse!  I need to dole out my stories in such a way that no one is neglected!  I know it is the highlight of your week when you are part of the family history!

Martha Lillian Bryan Boose (third from the left at top) died on June 23, 2018, in Bossier City, Louisiana. She was the last surviving grandchild of Martha Ann Cook Keys.  This photo is from the 1976 Keys Reunion.

And this week is a good week for this particular post.  That is because this past week saw the passing of the last grandchild of Martha Ann Cook Keys (1836-1896).  Surely you remember her?  She was that feisty woman who crossed the Atlantic with her five young children in tow in 1887.  She is the most recent immigrant in my family tree.  She was married at age 33 and had her first child at age 36, so her children weren’t that old when she died in 1896 just before she turned 60.

In fact, she did not live to see any of her children get married or have children.  Too bad for those grandchildren, because she seemed like she would have been an interesting woman to have for a grandmother.  But they heard stories about her from her children Henry “The Judge”, Leonard, Daisy, Ruth, and Mabel.  Seventy years later saw the passing of the last of Martha’s own children.

So a few years after that, Martha’s grandchildren (with the urging of one in particular – family historian Edith Keys Segraves) decided to get together to celebrate the Cook-Keys family in the Unites States.  The first reunion was in 1973 and several more followed.  In the first photo you can see the grandchildren who were alive and present at the 1976 reunion.  Most of them were grandparents at the time, including my own grandmother Myrtle Sylvia Phenice Bucklin.  She’s in the front row in a striped dress.

I will now name them all, starting with the back row.  Henry Phenice and Marguerite Phenice Hill – children of Daisy, Martha Bryan Boose – daughter of Ruth, Chester and Frank Keys – son of The Judge, Orville Phenice – son of Daisy, Seidel Keys – son of Leonard, Alford and Norman Miller – sons of Mabel.  The front row has Edith Keys Segraves – daughter of Leonard, Grace Phenice Sowder and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin – daughters of Daisy, Hazel Bryan Derouen and Elsie Bryan – daughters of Ruth, and Isaure Zoe Keys Adams  – daughter of The Judge.  (Thanks to the relatives at Facebook for helping me get all of Martha’s grandkids named.)

1985 Keys family reunion showing the cousins who were grandchildren of Henry Keys and Martha Ann Cook Keys.

I thought I’d go ahead and post another photo from the 1985 reunion.  That’s what I used to get the names for the other photo.  There is a similar photo in the Keys update book by Marilyn Phenice Thurmond Strickland from 2000 and it had all of the people labeled.  Very helpful.

Martha’s grandkids were a good group of people.  She would have been proud of them.  They were salt of the earth.  I’m proud to be a grandchild of one of them.