Deborah Young McClure 1834 - 1875

The only picture I have of Grandma Debbie is a xerox of a photo in a locket.  I don't know who wore that locket or where it is, but the photo was taken when she was a young woman.  Debbie died of childbirth when she was 41.

The family story is that Debbie overdosed herself during childbirth.  Her husband, Dr. Dexter McClure, was away on a call.  Family stories aren't very reliable (I grew up thinking I was a descendant of Thomas Lynch, Jr. who signed the Declaration of Independence) but Debbie and the baby, William did die in Austin, Indiana in l875 not far from where her parents and many brothers and sisters lived.

Debby was only 19 when she married Dexter McClure who was 34.  He had grown up in New York and moved to Southern Indiana as a young man out of medical school.  Debbie was born near Cincinnati and her family moved to northeastern Scott County about l839.  By the time they married, Debbie would have known about the other Dexter McClure in Scott County, and I wonder how she felt about it.

In census records in the VanBuskirk family is a Dexter McClure born about l848 or l849.  Sometimes he is called Dexter McClure and sometimes Dexter McClure VanBuskirk.  None of the young women in the household, and there were several, were named McClure.  So this Dexter could have been named after Dr. McClure who delivered him, or Dr. McClure could have been married to a VanBuskirk (no record found in Scott County marriages) who died in childbirth and the child was raised by the VanBuskirks, or this may have been an out-of-wedlock son and Dexter didn't marry the mother, perhaps never acknowledging a son.  In any event, Dexter McClure VanBuskirk grew up and died in Scott County, and there is no hint in our family records of a relationship.

The diary of Debbie's sister, Sarah Young Bovard, tells about the family during the Civil War.  Sarah called Debbie and another sister "southern sympathisers."  One sister's husband was killed during the war.  Sarah also wrote about her boys eating wild mushrooms and finally getting a doctor to come.  She wrote that Dr. McClure was "summoned, but he did not come."

Two of Debbie's sisters had tragic deaths.  Margy was hit on the head with a rock and died (perhaps hit by her mother-in-law who was listed in the census as insane), and Aunt Ethe took carbolic acid.  Debbie's husband died about 4 years after she did.

Two of her daughters married Milhouse brothers who were cousins of President Nixon.  Two of her sons married Amanda Wiles, first one who later died, and then the other.  Her daughter, Lemira, also married a medical doctor and became the mother of another medical doctor.

Sue<Hilda Casey<Ulric Casey<Lemira Casey<Deborah Young