120th birthday
For members of the McMahan family
Idella May Hartzell was born on February 25, 1904. Today is her 120th birthday.
She was Gary’s great-grandmother, his mother’s mother’s mother.
Idella May Hartzell was born in Ohio to Isaac and Martha Jane Hartzell. She was the couple’s 4th and final child and only daughter; her mother died just a few months after she was born.
Idella spent most of her childhood in Fairmount Children’s Home, an orphanage in Alliance, Ohio. However, her two older surviving brothers stayed with their father, who eventually remarried.
Idella had her first child, Betty Louise Patterson, when she was just 19 years old in 1923. It is unclear whether she was married to her eldest daughter’s father, Ralph Patterson. Regardless, she was a single mother by the time she married the father of the rest of her children.
Charles Ira McMahan and Idella May Hartzell were married on November 28, 1927 in Canton, Ohio. The couple would have nine children together, though her second and third died as babies. Her husband worked as a coal wagon driver, then later as a railroad watchman, to support the family; Idella kept house while their children were young, then worked as a nurse’s aide at a geriatric care home.
Idella died at the age of 73 on October 14, 1977 in a hospital in Alliance, Ohio; at the time of her death, she was survived by 33 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren.
This ancestor overcame a difficult childhood and a reportedly challenging marriage to become a devoted mother and active presence in her grandchildren’s lives. Happy 120th, Idella.
Thank you, that was fun to read.