Dad called her “Aunt Addie Lee” but if he ever met her, he was butt-high to a duck. We’d pass through Cedar Grove enroute from Meadow Bridge to Bancroft and he’d point to the brick two-story house in the distance opposite Virginia’s Chapel and say, “Now Aunt Addie Lee lived there.” Then he’d launch into how Addie’s husband, Henry, the son of Rachel Grant Tompkins, was a cousin to former President Ulysses S. Grant. Dad quoted Addie Lee often and usually before spankings commenced: “Hard heads that don’t listen have to feel.” During his sermons at church, he’d say “Let me tell you something” and launch into profound point that he was attempting to emphasize.
She was born Addie Lee Elswick on 4 Feb 1863 to Reece A. Elswick and Nancy Peters. Where precisely is unknown to me but I suspect at Blue Creek in Kanawha County, WV because that’s where her parents were residing according to the 1860 Census. I am descended from Addie Lee’s older sister Rachel Ellen Elswick, wife of Nathan J. Martin. According to Dad, my grandmother Violet and her sister Kathryn Martin would spend an afternoon, perhaps a night at Addie Lee’s house. It was something of a treat for the young girls.
Addie Lee was first married to a fellow named Christopher Morgan Morris with whom she had two daughters: Minnie (1880) and Bertha (1885). The marriage didn’t last long. Its my understanding that Addie Lee “set her cap” for Henry Preston Tompkins – and snared him – with a son born September 1888, if the 1900 Census is to be believed. However, Henry Sr and Addie Lee were not officially married until 19 May 1892 at Charleston. I was also told that Henry’s mother, perhaps both his parents, were against the marriage. Daughter Rachel Addie Tompkins was born 9 months later on 10 Feb 1893. In 1912, Miss Rachel Tompkins married Joseph E. Settle and had two children: Joseph Jr and Mary Lee. Mary Lee was born 29 July, 1918 at Charleston, Kanawha Co, WV, according to her birth record at WVCulture. Sometime before the 1920 Census the Settle family had moved to Pineville, KY, homeplace for father Joseph Settle, then on to Florida, then back to Cedar Grove where author, Mary Lee Settle, begins her recollections of Addie Lee in 1927.
Mary Lee Settle’s book, “Addie: A Memoir,” came to me from distant cousin Tom Hammonds. Its a worthy read because many of Mary Lee’s recollections matched the stories that my father Jack had handed down to him from his mother Violet: the same person who had regaled him with stories of family members, especially those that included Daniel Boone.
Let me tell you something, people: If you tell the same stories over and over and over to your children, they will stick in your child’s memory. Be it a curse or a blessing, I wish to goodness I could remember every story my dad ever told.