12 February 2010

Obituary of Hannah Maria Evans Haynie

The Save Austin's Cemeteries organization is preparing to give a tour of Oakwood Cemetery, which will feature early Austin residents including Dr. and Mrs. Samuel G. Haynie.  Their historian happened to find the obituary of our great-great grandmother and sent me a copy.

The following was published 112 years ago today in the Austin Daily Statesman, on February 12, 1898, a Saturday.  I've corrected only the error in her initials; the newspaper printed N.M. instead of H.M.  (In the 19th century, women didn't use their maiden name as a middle name.)

2017 NOTE: Please refer to the comments I posted below, as to other discrepancies.

The town in upstate New York where she was born is called Evans Mills, possibly founded by her family; the Wikipedia entry about it states that for a brief time in the middle of the 1800s it was called Evansville.

SAD NEWS.
                    
Mrs. H. M. Haynie Is Dead -- The Funeral Services This Morning.

Thursday night Mrs. H.M. Haynie died at the residence of her son-in-law, Dr. Luckett, in Bastrop.  The remains were brought to this city yesterday and the funeral services will be conducted from St. David's church this morning at 10 o'clock.  Mrs. Haynie is well known among the older residents of this city, among whom she had lived so long and enjoyed such a wide circle of friends.  She was born in Evansville, N. Y., in 1817, and moved to this state in 1843, locating in Washington county, but in 1850 she came to Austin when her husband moved here.  She had two brothers who were closely connected with the early history of Texas, one dying on the battlefield with Fannin and the other going down in the defeat of the Alamo.  Her maiden name was Evans.  Four children survive her, viz:  Mrs. Orlando Caldwell, Mrs. Carpenter, Mrs. Dr. Luckett and another daughter residing in New York.  There are also two sons, Mr. Tom Haynie of Lampasas and Mr. Charles Haynie of Bastrop.

The news of Mrs. Haynie's death, while not unexpected to her many Austin friends, will be received with deep regret, and the sympathy of all is tendered the sorrowing relatives.


St. David's is the Episcopal Church in downtown Austin.  I visited the church recently and have since learned from their archivist that this ancestor of ours was one of the four original members, in the 1840s.

I imagine that her casket was brought from Bastrop to Austin by train, presumably accompanied by family members.  Perhaps our grandfather, age seven, was in attendance at the funeral of his grandmother.



3 comments:

  1. A couple of the years cited in the obituary look wrong. Samuel Haynie went to Texas in 1837 and to Austin in 1839. He married Hannah Maria Evans in 1841. They may have moved back & forth between Washington County and Travis County in the early years of their marriage.

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  2. Hannah M. Evans arrived in Texas in 1834, not 1843. She was about 17 yrs. old and came from Tecumseh, Michigan, with her father & brothers, where they were among the founding settlers of Lenawee County in 1824.

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  3. One more editorial comment on the obituary: It describes one of her brothers as "dying on the battlefield with Fannin" - a reference to the Goliad Massacre occurring a few weeks after the Alamo tragedy. As far as I'm able to determine, this is not true. Her brother Vincent seems to have been murdered (perhaps as part of a robbery) on a cattle trail or elsewhere "out west" in the early 1840s:

    http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=132970858

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