A Mirror Image of Mother

Hannah B. McCracken was the daughter of John and Mary McCracken (or Mecracken), who farmed in Claysville, Washington County, Pennsylvania, during the early 19th Century. Named after the “Great Compromiser” U.S. Senator Henry Clay (1777-1852), the town is located on the line of the Cumberland Road which forms its Main Street. Claysville is 18 miles east of Wheeling, West Virginia, and 10 miles west of Washington, Pennsylvania. The town was laid out in 1817 and remained unincorporated until 1832.

John McCracken was born about 1795 in Pennsylvania and died 28 December, 1865, in Claysville. His wife, Mary, the daughter of Samuel Caldwell of Buffalo Township, was born in about 1797 and died 4 August, 1878. The couple married in Washington County on 30 December, 1820. They are buried together in the old Purviance Cemetery, Claysville.

Hannah was the eldest child, born in 1829. She appears on the 1850 census of Donegal Township, Washington County (about 3 miles northwest of Claysville), with her parents and siblings. The next born, in January 1830, was Samuel C. McCracken. He married Susannah R. McCay and migrated to Longton, Elk County, Kansas, where she passed away in 1900; he followed in 1912. They had three children. Youngest brother John H. McCracken was born in 1834. He had removed to Des Moines, Iowa, by 1875, when he married Emily Robinson on 10 March. On his wedding day, He listed his occupation as merchant. The youngest daughter was Mary, born in 1837.

Hannah married Dr. John W. Kelly 12 September, 1852, in Claysville at the First Presbyterian Church on Wayne Street. Kelly, born in 1823, was the son of John Kelly and his wife Mary. The union quickly resulted in the birth of two children: George Mutter, in 1854 and Clara Brownell, born 12 February, 1855. A reasonable speculation is that Hannah Kelly died, at approximately age 31, because of this second labor and delivery or of puerperal sepsis thereafter.

The daguerreotype I own was likely taken whilst Hannah was laid out in the Kelly home before burial in Purviance Cemetery. The image was prettily hand-tinted and is housed in a nearly perfect union case with domed glass over the image. Two copies were made, both of which surfaced after I purchased mine in early 2012 from a dealer in Alexandria, Virginia. The first copy was auctioned on eBay in July 2012. The second copy, located in Australia, was sold on eBay in October 2012.

Almost certainly, each of Hannah’s children was given a version of the image. The third may have belonged to Dr. Kelly. My daguerreotype is the original and the only one with identifying information included. It shows Hannah in mirror image, as all daguerreotypes do because they are viewed from the side that originally faced the camera lens. The copies were made later, in the photographer’s studio, thus returning Hannah to her actual orientation upon the bed on the day she was photographed.

Widower John Kelly, the Clayville area’s only physician, who rode out in all weather or times of day to attend his patients, was left with a toddler and a newborn infant. In short order, he wed again. The bride and step-mother was Anna Eliza Laird, born 28 December, 1837, the daughter of John Laird and Agnes Maxwell. Dr. Kelly and Anna Eliza had one child, Hannah Mary, born in 1858 and christened with the name of Kelly’s first wife.

After she died, aged 76, in August 1914, Ann Eliza’s obituary provided her background: “[Her] family were among the pioneers of this section, descending from John and Mary Snodgrass Laird, natives of Ireland, where he was born in 1758. He came to the United States in about 1792. His wife and family came about 1800. They traveled by team to Lancaster, where he had located. About the year 1801 they came to near Taylorstown, and later Mr. Laird bought a tract in Donegal township, where they made a home. There the deceased was born and reared.

“She was married to Dr. John W. Kelly, for years was a prominent physician in Washington [Pennsylvania,] who died [30 October,] 1899. One son and one daughter are bereaved—Dr. George M. Kelly, of Washington, and Clara, wife of George E. Lockhart, who resides on the Kelly farm in Buffalo township, about a mile east of Claysville.”

The obituary does not mention Anna Eliza’s own daughter, Hannah Mary, who the 1870 Census reveals lived to at least to 12 years of age. It is unclear whether she died young or married and died before her mother. What is certain is that Hannah’s children, George and Clara, saw Anna Eliza as their mother; it was she who raised them, fed them, taught them, heard their prayers, and nursed them when they were sick.

Yet Hannah McCracken’s name was not forgotten. The note with my daguerreotype was written by one of the two children, as it reads, “Our mother, taken after death.” She lived on in the name of their younger sister. And when George Kelly died of arteriosclerosis in 1927, his death certificate and obituary stated correctly that he was the son of Dr. John W. and Hannah McCracken Kelly.

“His father rode the mud roads of his day in all the surrounding country on horseback to attend the sick and afflicted. For years he was the only physician residing [in Claysville]. Dr. [George] Kelly attended the common school here and W. & J. college until completing his junior year, when he entered Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, graduating in a class of 170 in 1875. His thesis was entitled ‘Acute Pleurisy.’ He served as an intern at Mercy Hospital, Pittsburgh, then associated with his father at 39 North Main Street, Washington, continuing eight years until 1885, when he studied ophthalmia in Morefield Hospital, London; eye, ear, nose and throat diseases in Berlin and Vienna. He had an office in the Joseph Horne Building, Pittsburgh, until it was destroyed by fire, May 1, 1927.

“He resumed a partnership with his father, continuing 15 years, part of each year being spent in study in New York and Philadelphia, specializing in surgery, diseases of the stomach, and other subjects. He was a promoter of the old Washington Hospital and helped make it a reality. He served 15 years on both the surgical and medical staffs. He held similar positions with the City Hospital. Local educational and civic interests were also given of his time and mind, serving on the school board. He was a member of Trinity Episcopal Church and served as vestryman.

“He leaves his wife, Mrs. Rose LeMoyne Kelly, and one sister, Mrs. [Clara] George E. Lockhart, both of Washington.”

A year after her brother wed, on 11 February, 1903, when also in her late 40s, Hannah’s daughter Clara married 50-something George Edwin Lockhart (1848-1924) at Trinity P. E. Church in Pittsburgh.

As a teenager, Lockhard had joined the 147th Pennsylvania Volunteers, and was with General William T. Sherman at Atlanta and during the famous “March to the Sea.” Afterward, in his native Pennsylvania, he became a player in Washington County’s Republican Party, served as deputy sheriff then sheriff in the 1880s, and was chief clerk of the County Board of Commissioners from 1897 to 1906.

The childless couple owned the farm near Findley Township where the renown William Holmes McGuffey (1800-1873) was born, using it as their summer house. McGuffey was a college professor who wrote the cherished McGuffey Readers, the first elementary school textbooks used in the United States. Millions of adult Americans felt what we now call the “warm fuzzies” about these books that shaped their childhoods.

After Lockhart died of the grippe and angina, Clara was a wealthy widow. Deeply devoted to animals, before her own death from bladder cancer on 1 November, 1931, she made a Will specifying the use of $85,000 to turn her farm into a haven for friendless cats, dogs, and horses. The animal sanctuary was administered by the American Humane Society. Clara passed away with a cat named Buddy upon her deathbed.

Clara, her husband, father, and step-mother are buried in Washington Cemetery. John and Anna Eliza share an elaborate above-ground tomb. Clara and George Lockhart’s graves are either unmarked or they, too, rest in Dr. Kelly’s mausoleum. Clara’s possessions were sold or otherwise dispersed. There were no descendants to treasure them. Today, I protect what may have been her singular image of a long-lost mother.Ω