Working on Martha A. McGraw Hedrick the other day, I came across two individuals living in her household in both the 1870 and 1880 Censuses in Putnam County. They are:
1870: Lucretia Smith, aged 11, and Alonzo McGrew, aged 8
1880: Lucretia Smith, aged 18, and Alonzo McGrew, aged 17, both listed as Boarders.
Now I should mention that the surname McGraw became McGrew after the Civil War in the Kanawha Valley. I suspect it is because the McGrews fought for the Union Army; many of their cousins surnamed McGraw in Fayette County fought for the Confederacy.
I don’t know for certain but I think Lucretia Smith may have been the daughter of Martha A. McGraw’s cousin, Lucretia McGraw (daughter of Martin Jr and Sarah Johnson), who married David Smith on 17 Feb 1864 in Mason County, WV. It is believed that Lucretia died about 1873. If this assumption is correct, it is possible that Lucretia gave birth to a daughter named Lucretia surnamed Smith who, after death, went to live with her cousin, Martha.
The mind boggling mystery however, is Alonzo McGrew, the only one of the two who correctly aged about 10 years from 1870 to 1880. The issue is I can’t “tie” Alonzo to any of the other McGrews in the area around Buffalo or Red House, West Virginia. True, he could belong to an unknown McGrew female but which, I have no clue.
Do you have an Alonzo McGrew in your ancestry that you cannot trace? He would have been born about 1862 or 1863 around Buffalo, Putnam County, West Virginia. I’d really like to correspond.
