MARTHA ELLEN (MATTIE) STARNES

Daughter of John Starnes and Martha Ellen Piercey

The following information was provided by Sandy McCraw Battin, great granddaughter of Martha Ellen Starnes and John Marcum

Martha Ellen (Mattie) Starnes, dob 16 Mar 1892, Clinton Co, Albany, Kentucky, dod about 1964, Las Vegas, NM. She married John Marcum, dob and dod unknown at this time.

John and Martha had four daughters. Gladys, Mildred, Ruth and one other (name unknown at this time. My grandmother talked about being alone in the house and hearing the alligators moving around outside! My gr-grandfather, John Marcum, was a locomotive engineer and, by the time he got home, they were pretty scared.
Mildred Francis Marcum, dob 16 Dec 1910, TN, dod—unknown at this time. Mildred married Bernie Marvin McCraw about 1939 or 1940. They had one son, Bernie Marvin McCraw Jr. dob 15 Oct 1930, dod Oct 1973. He went by name of Jack. Mildred married a second time to---unknown and then a third time to Alvin Leighton Benjamin. Bernie Marvin McCraw Jr married Lillian Jane Sellers (dob 21 Sep 1930) on 18 Sep 1950. Bernie and Lillian had two children. 1. Sandra Lee McCraw, dob 27 Jun 1951 who married Brinton Warner Battin (dob 15 Nov 1941) on 14 Feb 1976. They had no children. 2. Gary Marvin McCraw, dob 31 Dec 1954, Belen, NM. He married Christina Gorman on 25 Jul 1984 at Belen, NM. They have two children, William Leighton McCraw, born Dec. 21, 1984, and Rebecca Ann McCraw, born Sept. 20, 1987.

2. Ruth Marcum: My aunt, Ruth Marcum, I don’t really have a lot of information on. She was younger than my grandmother but I don’t know her birthday. She was quite beautiful, with long almost-black hair which grew past her waist and that she braided into a crown around her head. She married Dr. Gragg Pope, a dentist who worked at the Tennessee State Hospital in Boliver, Tenn.

They had two children, Martha Sue Pope, who was born in the 1940s, I think. She was also quite beautiful and was, I think, in the Miss Tennessee pageant and was a majorette in high school and, I believe, in college. She was quite a talented musician who wrote hymns and other songs. She married Larry Alexander and they had two daughters. One of them was named Sharon, I believe, and perhaps the other was Karen, but I’m not sure.

The Popes’ son, Gragg Pope Jr., was a few years younger than Martha Sue. He had just been married and was attending law school at Vanderbilt University when he died of, I believe, complications of appendicitis.

After Uncle Gragg died and my grandmother died, we lost touch with that side of the family. I’ve tried really hard to find Martha Sue, who I always looked up to and admired, but have not had any luck so far.

 

Additional comments provided by Sandy McCraw Battin

I was about 14 years old when Martha Starnes Marcum – we called her Nanny in the family – died. I spent a lot of time with her; she and I had a very special relationship. We canned things together, we sewed together, we cooked together. She told me about her life as a young girl, how she and her brothers picked tobacco and how they had moved to Tennessee from Kentucky on a raft. She told me about how she lived in a haunted house in Memphis with Mildred and my dad after she and John Marcum divorced. She could lay her hand on your head if you had a headache and it would go away. Once, I had a wart on my knee and she put one finger on it and it seemed to me to turn kind of cold and then burst, bled and went away. She was rather tall and very stately looking, always beautifully dressed, even at home, although she could put on blue jeans and go into the desert for a picnic or other outing. She came to like New Mexico, but missed all the green of Tennessee. She was a love and I think life battered her around a little bit. But, in all her life, she never said one angry word to me nor ever made me feel other than absolutely, full-heartedly loved.