An interesting bit of information is worth noting about the complicated relationship between Ira Ayers and Florence Depew. On his father’s side, Florence was Ira’s Aunt since she was his father Martin’s sister. However, on his mother’s side, Florence was also Ira’s Step-Grandmother after she married Will Depew, who was Ira’s mother’s father.
Nothing irregular here, but it kind of makes you think of the humorous country song “I am my own Grandpa”.
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.
Ira Ayers’ grandfather on his mother’s side was William Lafayette Depew. Some called him Bill, but most folks called him Will. He was born in 1872 in Hancock County, Tennessee, as the oldest child of Henry and Sarah Depew. Will grew up farming and raising and shearing sheep with his brothers on his father’s farm. However, he eventually developed skills that would lead him into other occupations. Although various records indicate that he was a farmer his whole life, his daughter, Elizabeth Suckel, claims that although they lived on a farm, he never did very much farming. Instead, at various times, he was a butcher, a grocer, a surveryor and a carpenter.
In 1893 at age 20, Will Depew married Matilda Seal who was two years younger. Very little is known about her. She apparently was mostly called Tilda, but maybe also Grilla at times. Her grand daughter Rose Jordan never knew her, but remembered the name sounded like “Gorilla” to her as a little girl. Will and Tilda had four children until Tilda’s tragic death around 1904, perhaps as a result of her last childbirth. No record of death is available.
The Louisville & Nashville (L&N) Railroad was one of the first railways built in the South starting in the 1850s. After the Civil War it grew rapidly and by the turn of the century it had pushed into the coalfields of the Southern Appalachians. At Jellico, a small town on the KY and TN border, the L&N tied into the Southern Railway and continued down through the Elk Valley in Campbell County on the way to Knoxville and then Atlanta. Because of his grocer experience, around 1900 Will Depew was hired by the L&N to run its commissary at the train depot in Jellico. So, he moved his family from Hancock County to Campbell County, TN.
Unfortunately, in September 1906 Jellico was the scene of a horrendous disaster when a train car at the depot loaded with 11 tons of dynamite exploded killing 12 people nearby, and wounding some 200 more. 500 people were left homeless as the town of 3000 was devastated. It was very fortunate that Will was not a victim, but the incident apparently ended his job with the railroad as the town of Jellico had to be rebuilt.
After Tilda died, and about the time of the Jellico incident, Will met Florence Ada Ayers and they were later married in 1907. Florence was a loving and loyal wife. Between 1909 and 1932 Bill and Florence had seven daughters and two sons. Tragically, one daughter died at only one year old from measles and whooping cough, one son died from typhoid at age 20 and one son died at age 15 when struck by a car while riding a motor scooter to school. Two of their daughters, Estelle and Ethel, were twins. Their youngest daughter, Lena Elizabeth, born in 1926 still lives in Long Beach, California. She is a delightful lady and loves to talk about her memories of earlier times.
Will Depew was about 5 foot 9 inches tall with a slender build. He never was called to serve in any military capacity. According to Elizabeth, he was a quiet man who only spoke as needed. He was strong willed, determined, and sustained by his faith and perseverance. He was very strict with his children as he was raised himself. Will did all the shopping for the family. While attending a turkey shoot in his thirties, he was shot in the hip, but recovered. Elizabeth, also remembers him playing the fiddle and the organ, so he must have had a good ear for music.
After Will married Florence, he continued working as a grocer, but also learned carpentry. He eventually went on to build houses and restore churches. By 1910 Bill and Florence and their family were living in the Hickory Creek area next to Florence’s father, William Riley Ayers. In the 1920s, when Florence’s brother, Martin, decided to build a new house on Walnutt Mountain, Will helped with the carpentry work. He told Elizabeth that when work became scarce during the 1930s Great Depression, he “nickeled and dimed’ to keep the family going by fixing up places, sharpening tools and saws, and helping neighboring families with “how to” advice on many things.
Unfortunately, as he grew older, Will became badly crippled with severe rheumatoid arthritis in his hips and legs, and needed to depend on canes and crutches to get around. By 1940 he was unable to work. It was hard for him to sit with one stiff leg, so he designed a special high stool/chair to be able to sit at the table. He designed, built, stained and polished the chair with a cane seat to match the other dining chairs. Will was very innovative that way.
Florence died of cancer in 1942 and for awhile Will lived in an “old folks” home. However, about 1945 he moved to LaFollette to live with his daughter, Della Cornelius. That’s where he later died in 1956 at age 84 from a heart attack. Will is buried in the Hall Cemetery on Stinking Creek where both of his wives and both sons are also buried.
As mentioned earlier, Isaac Newton Depew and his wife, Betsy, had a total of 16 children.
With so many names to hand out they became quite creative with some. For example they named two sons George Washington Depew and Thomas Jefferson Depew after famous presidents. Their fourth son was Henry Eli Depew born in 1848 in Harlan County, Kentucky. Some records show his name as Eli Henry while some other records show his name as Henry Eli. So, what was his true name? Unfortunately, without a birth certificate we will never know for sure. However, in the end his headstone shows the name as Henry Eli, giving whoever provided the headstone the last word in the matter. Besides, everyone just called him “Hen”.
By 1860 when he was 12 years of age, Hen had moved with his family to Hancock County, Tennessee, near Sneedville which is where he remained for most of his life. When the Civil War brokeout, he was too young to join the fighting like his two older brothers, William and Joseph. This no doubt was fortunate for us descendants since we would not be here if he had fought and perished like so many did. Hen became a farmer like most everyone else in the county, and he grew everything possible to make a go of it. According to his granddaughter, Elizabeth Suckel, he also raised sheep to sell wool.
Henry Depew married a number of times. At age 23 his first wife was Sarah Ellen McCollum whom he married in 1871. As an interesting side note, Sarah’s father James McCollum had left home in the 1860s to venture to northern California to try his hand at gold mining. When that didn’t work out so well he still remained there as a farmer for a few years. Finally, he returned to Hancock County, Tennessee after being away some 20 years. Together, Henry and Sarah raised ten children. Unfortunately, Sarah died in 1909, but by then all their children were grown with the youngest being 15.
According to an article published in a Hancock County newspaper in 1999, Hen soon married a second time to Myrtle Johnson who was 47 years younger. This marriage did not go well for reasons unknown today, and it was not long before Hen fell in love with Virginia (Vergie) Rhea who was also very young, but 4 years older than Myrtle. However, when he asked Myrtle for a divorce she did not want to easily give up her new home and refused. Following some poor advice from his brother Thomas, Henry thought he could avoid legal complications by going to another state to get married. So, in 1910 Henry went just across the border to Lee County Virginia with Vergie, and apparently got married under the name of Henry D. Pugh. When he returned to Hancock County, Hen learned that the Sheriff was soon coming to arrest him. Since he and Thomas had heard from others about the good life in Texas and the fortune they could make growing cotton there, they decided it was a good day to depart for Texas. The trip took them six weeks.
Myrtle got everything Henry owned but his land. Somehow Henry’s son James was able to save the 
land from Myrtle. According to letters he wrote back to his son, Henry did not fare well in Texas being sick most of the time. Eventually, he and Virgie were able to move back to Hancock County, Tennessee, and they were officially married in 1912 in nearby Grainger County. Hen had three more daughters with Virgie before he died in 1925 at the age of 76. He is buried in the Depew Cemetery in Sneedville where his first wife, Sarah is also buried. Vergie lived for over 50 years longer and died at the age of 88. She is buried in the Burke Cemetery.
In the Derrie chapter of our family history, I told the story about the William Derryberry family in Greene County, TN having sons who fought on opposing sides in the Civil War. Read on and you will hear another similar story about Isaac Newton Depew’s family.
First, it is worthwhile to set the scene. Isaac and his wife Betsy were married and started their family in Hawkins County, TN. However, in 1844 the part of the county where they lived was removed from Hawkins and became Hancock County. The new small county was nestled up against the Virginia line on the north and separated from Hawkins County and most of East TN by Clinch Mountain on the south side. The seat of the new county was originally called Greasy Rock, but the name was later changed to Sneedville. Consisting of small valleys and hollows squeezed in between 800 foot taller mountains, Hancock County was from the onset very rural and very poor. Still there were some slaves, even in an area that was comprised mostly of small farmers. In 1860 there was a total of only 66 slaveowners and 243 slaves.
Isaac’s two oldest children were sons. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, William Rufus was 20 years old and his brother Joseph was 19. Like the rest of East TN the county was divided by the war. With slavery not a big issue for county residents
there was not much at stake except perhaps southern pride. You can imagine the Depew family conversations or arguments over the war especially since Isaac was a preacher. Being very close in age, William and Joseph must have been very close brothers, but they ultimately decided to choose different sides of the conflict.
William was the first to jump in when he joined the Confederacy along with some others from the county by enlisting as a Private in the 29th Regiment Tennessee Infantry in Nov of 1861 at Knoxville. The 29th Infantry was part of the Army of Tennessee and it participated in various campaigns in central TN including the Battle of Murfreesboro in late 1862. Around that same time records show that William appears on a list of casualties as slightly wounded. However, he actually died later on Jan 28, 1863 from measles while in the hospital in Chattanooga. He 
was buried in an unmarked grave at the Chattanooga Confederate Cemetery. More than 135 years later, a Depew descendant sought to rectify the injustice of William Depew’s unmarked gravesite. Billy Edwards took action to have authorities erect a nice headstone for William at the Cemetery in Chattanooga.
When Joseph Depew decided to join the fighting he enlisted as a Private with the Union Army. He joined the 47th Kentucky Mounted Infantry Regiment at Irvine, KY in Sept 1863. His unit operated mostly in Eastern KY during the war guarding the railroads and saw little fighting and almost no casualties. Finally, Joseph was mustered out unharmed in Dec 1864. Since Joseph didn’t even join until months after his brother William had died in a hospital farther south, they never came close to opposing each other in battle. Still this story is similar to that of many families divided by the Civil War.
Isaac Newton Depew was born in 1818 in Hawkins County, TN, according to records. He was apparently named after the English Physicist and Mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton who lived 1642-1727. He also had one brother named George Washington Depew and another named John Wilson Depew. As you will see going forward, the Depew line of men were often named after famous people before them. At the age of 22, Isaac married Mariah Elizabeth Setzer, born 1822 in North Carolina. Over the next 30 years, they had a huge family of 16 children with about half of them being male and half female. They lived in Hancock and Hawkins counties in Northeast TN and Harlan and Clay counties Southeast KY. Perhaps so much moving around was because in addition to being a farmer, Isaac was a Circuit Riding Preacher.
In the earlier frontier times, Circuit Riders were clergy in the Methodist Episcopal Church who were assigned to travel around specific territories to minister to settlers and to organize congregations. Because of the distance between churches, these preachers rode on horseback. Popularly called Circuit Riders or Saddlebag Preachers, th
ey were officially called Traveling Clergy. Always on the move, they traveled with few possessions, carrying only what could fit in their saddlebags. They traveled through wilderness and villages, preaching every day at any place available. Typically they traveled the same circuit for a year before being reassigned to a different territory. There is some evidence also that Isaac served as a contract mail carrier for at least part of the time, perhaps along with his circuit riding.
There is an amusing story provided by Bruce Johnson which has passed down through the generations about when Isaac was a preacher. Once when he was away on one of his trips, a man came to his log cabin during the night. Mariah and the children heard the man walking outside and were afraid to go out. It was customary for visiting neighbors to call out their name when approaching someone’s house in the dark, but this person did not do that and they knew he was up to something. The man stuck his bare feet between the logs to climb the side of the house to get at their corn stored above the ceiling. The house had eves under the roof left open for ventilation and it was easy for the man to reach in and get the corn. Also, the mud chinking had been removed between some of the logs to allow the flow of air in to relieve them from the summer heat. They heard the man filling his sack with corn and he left when it was full.
Isaac came home after a few days and was told about the incident. Apparently the man did not know that Isaac had come home and he returned the next night for more corn. As he stuck his toes between the logs to climb up the wall, Isaac gave both feet a good whack with a hammer. The family heard a scream followed by a thud as the man hit the ground.
The thief left in a hurry. Isaac suspected the person who did it, and a few days later Isaac was at a local store when he saw this man hobbling around with both feet bandaged up. He asked him what happened to his feet and the man replied, “A cow stepped on them.” Isaac said, “Yes, and I know exactly which cow it was too.”
Isaac died in Clay County, KY in 1890 at the age of 72. His wife, Mariah Elizabeth, called Betsy who had bore him sixteen children died the following year.
Note: This is a new post inserted in January 2021
Isaac Newton Depew (IND) was born out of wedlock to Edward H Depew and Abigail Cupp. Without records, this parentage cannot be proven. However, it is highly probable based on DNA Forensic Analysis. Capt Isaac Depew was an uncle and William G. Depew was his cousin. Many researchers had previously thought William G. was his likely father, but the DNA, plus time and place strongly points to Edward.
Born around 1800 in Botetourt County, VA, Edward was the only son of John Depew Jr., and Mary “Polly” Seagraves. When John’s family migrated to Illinois, the first leg of their long journey followed the Wilderness Road through Southwest Virginia. There were encampments and resting stops along the way, as they traveled by wagon.
One regular resting stop was the settlement where the Wilderness Trail passed over Clinch Mountain through Moccasin Gap in Scott County. Today that settlement is called Gate City.
Abby Cupp was born about 1800 probably in Grayson County, Virginia. She was the daughter of Jacob S. Cupp and Sibitha “Sibby” Breeding. As a young woman, Abby lived as a single mother in Scott County, VA, through which the Wilderness Road passed. She apparently never married since she is found in every census from 1820 through 1850 as a single person. Although unmarried, Abby had a least six children by various partners.
One of her first partners around 1818 was evidently Edward Depew. Both still in their teens at the time, Edward and Abby would have had the opportunity to meet and interact during the Depew’s journey though Scott County. Whether this was a short romance between two young people, or just a transaction is up for conjecture. Their circumstances at the time are totally unknown. Regardless, Edward eventually continued on his way to Illinois, probably not realizing he had fathered a child, which would take the Depew name. This coupling scenario aligns very will with a story passed down through various Depew families that IND’s mother was a cook in a Virginia logging camp, and had a child with a man named Depew who subsequently left her.
Edward ultimately settled in Fayette County, IL. He married Priscilla Williams there in 1828 and had eight children with her before dying in 1848. The 1820 census for Scott County shows Abby living as a single mother with no young male in her household. However, her parent’s nearby household shows a very young male living with them. So, it is quite possible that IND spent part of his life living with his Cupp grandparents.
By 1830, the Jacob Cupp family along with many of their offspring, including Abby, had relocated to Claiborne County, TN, in an area which came to be known as Cupp Ridge. However, Abby still lived unmarried in a separate household up until she died before 1860. It appears that IND may have spent most of his early life in Claiborne County.
Note: This is a new post inserted in January 2021.
While Capt Isaac Depew migrated to East Tennessee after serving in the Revolutionary War, some of his siblings took a different route, choosing to migrate westward in the early 1800s. Two took up homesteads in Kentucky, two went on to Indiana Territory, and two went even further into Illinois Territory. They traveled the Wilderness Trail through Southwest Virginia and the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. Those who ventured further went across the Ohio River at Louisville into Indiana, and then some on to Illinois.
This was a dangerous time as these lands were still part of the old Northwest Territory, and heavily populated by the Confederacy of Indian Tribes lead by Tecumseh. The Indians were not happy about new settlers coming to their lands and began resistance efforts. They increased their attacks against American settlers and against isolated outposts, resulting in the deaths of many civilians. US militia forces lead by William Henry Harrison battled with them, but the land was not totally safe in which to live until Tecumseh’s death in 1813 and the Indian Confederacy ceased to threaten the settlers.
Our ancestor, John W. Depew, Jr. was one of those brave souls who took his family all the way to Illinois after first stopping for periods of time in both Kentucky and Indiana. Back in Botetourt County, VA, in 1792 he married Mary “Polly” Seagraves, the daughter of Samuel Seagraves a Revolutionary War soldier. John and Polly had three children by 1810 and sometime after that began their travels westward. Apparently they spent several years in Kentucky, perhaps waiting for the Indian matter to be resolved. The family finally settled in Fayette County Illinois around 1821 where they lived the rest of their lives. In Fayette County, John was a Methodist minister and the first Methodist meetings were held at his house. As a Justice of the Peace, he married many couples in the county, but was unsuccessful when he ran for other offices. Since there is no estate record for John, it appears he had given everything he owned away before his death.
Note: This is a January 2021 revision to the original post from 2013.
As with earlier depictions of ancestor lineages, I have used a timeline chart below, to show the life spans of each Depew ancestor over the last three centuries. In the chart you can see Walter (Gaultier) Depew on the left who was our ancestor living first in France and then England. He is followed in line by his son, John Walter Depew, who was our immigrant ancestor to America arriving in New Jersey, before the Revolutionary War, and then by his son John W. Depew Jr., and then his son Edward and so forth.
Dozens of dedicated researchers tried for many years to identify the parents of Isaac Newton Depew (IND), but without success due to lack of records. Circumstantial evidence of the right time period and the right location in East Tennessee seemed to point to a connection with the John W. Depew line, but without hard proof. Recently, however, I was able to use DNA forensic analysis to develop a very strong case that the connection was through John W. Depew, Jr., and his son, Edward H. Depew. Although this analysis is still not absolute positive proof, it is still the best currently available identification without records. My DNA forensic analysis was based on the same approach and technology now being used by some law enforcement agencies to solve cold case crimes.
Again to give a better perspective of when our Depew ancestors lived across the three centuries, I’ve added major wars to the timeline. As I continue to describe family stories of this Depew lineage, you might find it useful to refer back to this chart to get a feel for the time period in which they lived.
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