Cora Orr of the Gerrardstown district was 11 years old when her 37-year-old mother died in 1913.
Four years later, Cora’s older brother Raymond died at age 19.
By 1920, Cora was sent to live with her middle-aged aunt Elizabeth Tobin and her aunt’s elderly husband, James Tobin, also in the Gerrardstown district.
It is unknown when Cora married, but she and her husband, James Seaton Mason, a Bunker Hill farmer, had something in common: He had also lost a parent young. He was 6 when his 54-year-old father Joseph Mason died.
James was descended from the Ritter, Hess, Brown, Clarke and Gageby families. Cora had Triggs, Light, Talley, Clark and Hess in her ancestry.
Cora and James had a total of eight children in the 1920s and 1930s, but two died as infants, and another died as a very young man during wartime service. A fourth son, James Jr., their oldest, may have also died young, as there are no records of him past age 7.
They lost their first daughter, Margaret, when the little girl was just two weeks old.
A year later, Cora’s sister Pauline Shank died at age 33, leaving behind a 10-year-old son.
In 1934, Cora and James lost their 4-month-old son Joseph to enterocolitis, an intestinal inflammation common in premature babies. The child had been named for James’ late father.
Almost exactly ten years after baby Joseph’s death, Cora and James lost another son, 20-year-old Donald, who was killed in Germany while serving during World War II.
Their son Billy lived till his mid-60s, daughter Virginia Hess to her early 70s, son Oscar to his mid-70s, and daughter Pansy to age 80.
Cora was widowed in 1967 at age 65 when James died after complications from a hip fracture. Cora lived to be 80 and died in 1982 in Martinsburg.
My Mom’s Aunt Cora and favorite cousin Pansy.