Today’s entry could also have qualified as “C Is for…Centenarian.” My fourth cousin three times removed, Maude Viola Botkin, was born on 24 July 1884 and died 1 January 1993 at the age of 108. She is descended from various Lippencott/Maxson/Sutton/Davis branches of our Seventh Day Baptist ancestry. Her parents were Curtis S. (or Samuel C.) and Carrie Belle (Lehman) Botkin; her father lived to be 91, but her mother only 82.
Maude first appears in the 1900 census, living in Bethel (Clark County), Ohio with her parents, sister Myrtle (born October 1882), and brother “Harrold” (born December 1898). Her father was a fruit grower. In 1910 the family was still in Bethel, and Samuel is listed as operating a fruit and truck farm. Myrtle was no longer living at home, and Harold’s name has now lost its superfluous “r.”12
On 15 December of that year, Maude married Raymond E. Click in Clark County, Ohio. Raymond is listed on their marriage license as being born 6 September 1887 in Clark County; Maude was a little more than a year older than her husband.3 In 1920 Raymond and Maude, along with daughter Violet P. (age 7) and son Everett D. (age 1 3/12) were living on a farm on New Carlisle Pike in Bethel. 4In 1930 the family was enumerated in Springfield, Ohio, which is also in Clark County. No longer on a farm, they were living at 823 West Pleasant Street. The census record states they owned their home, and it was worth $4000 at the time. Raymond was a bakery salesman. Both children now appear under their middle names: Pauline and Dale.5
Ten years later the family appears to have moved back to the country; they are now listed in German Township (still Clark County), Ohio, and Raymond is described as a farm manager. Violet Pauline is no longer living at home; Everett Dale is still at home, having completed 2 years of college and now working as a department store salesman. 6 In 1950 Raymond and Maude are empty-nesters in German, Ohio. Raymond is still listed as a farmer.7
Daughter Pauline had married Wilson Matthews in 1937, and son Dale had married Martha Jane Gray in 1944. Maude’s sister Myrtle died in 1957 at age 75. Harold lived until September 1980. That would have been a hard year for Maude, for in November Raymond died at their home at 2415 Shrine Road, Springfield, after a month’s serious illness. He was 93, and the couple had been married for 70 years. At the time of his death he was listed as being survived by children Dale and Pauline, as well as three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.8
Despite being older than her husband, and her husband dying at age 93, Maude outlived him by more than 12 years. She died on New Year’s Day 1993 in Leewood Nursing Home in Annandale, Virginia. Her obituary states that she and Raymond had lived on their farm on Shrine Road for 50 years before his death, so they must have moved there shortly after the 1930 census enumeration on West Pleasant Street. She is noted as being survived by daughter Pauline of Alexandria, Virginia (which explains why Maude was living in Annandale) and son Dale of Moorpark, California; three married grandsons; and eight great-grandchildren. Her funeral services were to be held at Rockway Lutheran Church in Springfield, where she had been a member for 82 years.9 She was buried at Enon Cemetery in Clark County, Ohio, next to Raymond.
- Year: 1900; Census Place: Bethel, Clark, Ohio; Roll: 1245; Page: 12; Enumeration District: 0001 ↩︎
- Year: 1910; Census Place: Bethel, Clark, Ohio; Roll: T624_1158; Page: 10b; Enumeration District: 0001; FHL microfilm: 1375171 ↩︎
- Ancestry.com. Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774-1993 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. ↩︎
- Year: 1920; Census Place: Bethel, Clark, Ohio; Roll: T625_1353; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 26 ↩︎
- Year: 1930; Census Place: Springfield, Clark, Ohio; Page: 24A; Enumeration District: 0054; FHL microfilm: 2341491 ↩︎
- Year: 1940; Census Place: German, Clark, Ohio; Roll: m-t0627-03038; Page: 3A; Enumeration District: 12-9 ↩︎
- National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: German, Clark, Ohio; Roll: 1427; Page: 34; Enumeration District: 12-13 ↩︎
- Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun, 24 November 1980 ↩︎
- Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun, 4 January 1993 ↩︎