Martha Chrisman Lowder was born on June 24, 1864. Today is her 160th birthday.
She was my great-great-grandmother, an ancestor of my paternal grandfather, Richard Mitchell.
Martha — affectionately called “Mattie” — was born in Illinois, where her family had moved after the start of the Civil War; her parents, William and Hannah Lowder, had previously lived in Missouri and Texas. She was the youngest of four sisters. Unfortunately, Mattie’s father died eight months before her birth.
Mattie’s widowed mother moved her family back to Texas after the end of the Civil War in 1866. Her own brothers still lived there, as well as several other members of her husband’s family. They raised cattle on several thousand acres of land in Erath County, Texas throughout the 1870’s.
By 1880, Mattie and her mother had moved in with her eldest sister’s family; that’s where she met a new neighbor and her husband-to-be, Elisha Calloway Mitchell. They were married on June 6, 1880. E.C. was 21; Mattie was not quite 16.
The couple would have 12 children together, 11 of whom survived to adulthood. Their eldest, Mellie May, was born when Mattie was 18. Their youngest, Ray, was born when Mattie was 39. The couple and their kids moved all around Texas and Oklahoma during their marriage, until finally going to live near one of their children in Arizona. By that time they had moved about 18 times to 13–14 unique locations.
Mattie died of kidney failure at the age of 67 on July 18, 1931. She passed away in Slaton, Lubbock Co., Texas at the home of another one of her children, and was buried there at Englewood Cemetery.
Image: E.C. and Mattie Mitchell, n.d. and s.l. but probably circa 1880 in Texas; possibly a wedding portrait.
Martha Chrisman Lowder Mitchell was by all accounts well-loved by her many children and grandchildren and had a positive impact on the many communities she was part of throughout her life.
According to her obituary,
By her lovable disposition and her happy optimistical outlook on life she drew friends to her wherever she went.
Happy 160th, Mattie.