Hannah Mae Depew was the oldest daughter of William Depew. Tragically, like her mother, Tilda, Hannah did not have a very long life. None of her grandchildren ever had an opportunity to know her, and even her own children had few memories of her. As a result not much is known about Hannah.

When Hannah Mae was born on April 6, 1894, in Hancock County, Tennessee, her father, William, was 20 and her mother, Tilda, was 18.  Three younger siblings followed her. Old pictures show that she looked very much like her mother as she was a little woman (120 lbs) with brown hair. Her son, Addison, remembered her hair color as being slightly reddish or auburn. She was called Hannie. After moving with her family to Campbell County, she lost her own mother when she was just 10 years old. Then, when Bill Depew married Florence Ayers and started a second family, Hannie and the other children from the first marriage continued to live with them.

As previously mentioned, by 1910 the family moved next to the farm of Florence’s father, William Riley Ayers, on Hickory Creek.  Like most mountain families, both had a bunch of offspring, and of course there had to be some romance. William Riley’s oldest son, Martin Van Buren Ayers, took a fancy to Hannie and they were married on November 10, 1912.  They had four children by the time she was 25: Two boys, Ira and Addison, and two girls, Rose and Mary.  Hannie and her family lived a very simple, hard working life in the mountains with no conveniences. Their contact with the outside world was sparse. She probably didn’t even know that women had won the right to vote in 1920.  Somehow Hannie contracted Tuberculosis and died as a young mother on March 18, 1926, one month short of her 32nd birthday. She is buried in Hall Cemetery in the Stinking Creek area.

There was a striking similarity to Hannie’s life and that of her mother, Tilda. Both were married when they were 18 years old, and they looked very similar. Both had two boys and two girls. Both of them died as young mothers with Hannie being 31 and Tilda being just 29.  At their time of death, Hannie’s oldest child, Ira, was 12, and Tilda’s oldest child, Hannie was 10. Tragically, both left 4 young children behind to be raised by single fathers living in a remote area. It was a hard life in the mountains.

I wish we had known grandmother, Hannie.