Bessie E. Merica, my second cousin twice removed on my
mother’s side, was the youngest of 8 children born in 1895 to John and Victoria
Frazier Merica. The farming family lived
surrounded by other Merica families in the Shenandoah district of Page County
in Virginia.
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| 1900 Page County, Virginia census |
By the time Bessie was thirteen, her mother had died and
had been replaced by an 18-year old bride and stepmother, Ila Anne Meadows. It was rather common (at least in my research
on my family lines) for a much older widower with a passel of kids to take on a
young bride, someone with energy to keep up with the demands of laundry and
cooking for a crowd, someone who hadn’t already been dumped on
thoughtlessly. Ila might have seemed more like a big sister
than mother.
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| 1910 Page County, Virginia Federal Census |
In 1915, Bessie, age 21, married William Henry Cardin, 22. One month shy of their first anniversary, young Bessie died despite receiving treatment in the hospital for three weeks.
Meanwhile, back at the Merica ranch, Bessie’s father John
and his replacement wife, the young Ila, probably provided quite a bit of
comfort to their widowed son-in-law. So when
John died in 1920, it probably surprised no one that the widowed stepmother-in-law
and widowed stepson-in-law found comfort in each other. And if truth be told, age-wise they made
more sense together than Ila and John ever did.
So on August 7, 1921, Ila Meadows Merica and William
Henry Cardin were united in marriage, a marriage that was a “till death us do
part” kind. William Henry died in
1948.
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| William H. Cardin Jan 6, 1893 - Mar 13, 1948 Photo courtesy Jan Robinson |
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| Ila Merica Cardin Feb 8, 1890 - Dec 7, 1974 Photo courtesy Jan Robinson |
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2014, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
