FHB Irene Frances Watson

From Family History Book

Family History Book: Irene Frances Watson (1871-1954)

Irene was born in Gadsden, Alabama on 16 January 1871, the oldest child of Charles M Watson and Mattie Smith. She married Edmond Leon Buah on 12 September 1893 in Birmingham, Alabama. Their son was Harry Watson Bush (1892-1938). Leon died sometime before 1900, when Irene appears in the US Census as a widow living with her widowed mother, brother Charles, sister Bertha May and son Harry in Dallas.
In 1908, she married a second time to Thomas Franklin Marshall (1862-1913), a widower with two young children at home in 1910, and four older children who had apparently moved out by then. She and Mr. Marshall had another child, Pauline Thelma Marshall (1911-2001).
By 1920, widowed a second time when Mr. Marshall died in 1913, she was living with her sister, Carrie, and Carrie's husband, Clarence Cusack, in Tucumcari, New Mexico, along with Irene's 8-year-old daughter and Carrie's four teenaged sons. (Pauline's youngest two half-siblings, Jessie W Marshall, born in 1898, and Hugh Marshall, born in about 1901, were not living with them at this time, and I have not been able to find any records of what happened to them.) Irene's son, Harry W Bush, had moved to California and established his own household by this time. He married Mary Lorena Feeley between 1917 and 1920, probably in California, although I have not found a marriage record for them yet.
In 1930, Irene and the Cusack family had moved to Alamagordo, New Mexico. By then all the children had left home and only Irene, Carrie and Clarence were in the household. Pauline had married Robert Maurice Combs and was living in Colorado in 1930, while Harry and his wife and two young children were in California. Harry predeceased his mother, in 1938 in California. By 1940, Irene was living with Pauline and Maurice Combs and their son, Charles, in El Paso, Texas. She had lived long enough to see her grandson, Charles Maurice Combs (1930-2010), graduate from Texas Western College in El Paso, and marry Carolyn Baird in 1952. He went on to get a Masters degree and worked at Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, and then as a pharmaceutical scientist in Evansville, Indiana, where he and Pauline both died. I do not know of any children from his marriage. Her other two grandchildren, Harry Wayne Bush (1925-1994) and Mary Lorraine Bush (1924-1989) were born in California. Wayne was an Air Force Master Sergeant and apparently never married. Lorraine married Weston Newton Heal (1922-1975) and had at least one daughter (living) who married Denis Toshio Kamita (1944-2010), and has a living son, whose DNA matches mine with 24 cMs over 2 segments.

Irene's descendants are:

  • Harry Watson Bush, married Mary Lorena Feeley
    • Harry Wayne Bush
    • Mary Lorraine Bush, married Weston Newton Heal
      • (great-granddaughter, living), married Denis Toshito Kamita
        • (great-great grandson, living)
  • Pauline C Marshall, married first to Robert Maurice Combs (1904-1952), married 2nd to a Mr. Coughran.
    • Charles Maurice Combs, married Carolyn Baird


Irene died in El Paso, Texas on 14 January 1954 of a stroke, and is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in El Paso.

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