Occasionally my mother would talk about family members, like Uncle Jack Burger, someone she liked very much and was the brother of my great grandmother. She knew more about the Burgers than the McConniels, I thought she may have visited as a child, and that seemed strange one and not the other since they lived in the same small town a few blocks apart. When I asked her about her aunts and uncles on that side all she knew was Mellie the oldest daughter married a very rich man, E.L.Bush, had no children and traveled the world with him. Needless to say when I got going on genealogy Mellie was one of my first people to study.
Melvina Violet “Mellie” McConniel Bush was born in 1864 in the coal country of Pittsburg, Kentucky. Her mother Martha Jane Lester grew up in Claiborne County Tennessee, the place Jane as she was known would settle when she married my 2X great grandfather John Thomas McConniel. With one from Georgia and the other Tennessee and the Civil War, I am not sure how they got together, still unraveling their story,
When Melvina V "Mellie" McConniel was born on January 7, 1864, in Pittsburg, Kentucky, her father, John, was 20, and her mother, Martha, was 20. She married Elisha M "Lish" Bush on September 26, 1881, in Claiborne, Tennessee. They had 13 children in 24 years (11 surviving into adulthood). She died on November 27, 1963, in Anderson, Indiana, at the age of 99, and was buried in Clinton, Illinois.
Aside from living to be almost 100 years old, it looks like a relatively mundane life. She didn’t travel the world, in fact, I doubt she traveled more than 300 miles from where she was born, but she had a life! Small town newspapers were the chroniclers of daily life and the comings and going of just about everyone, they served that purpose, in addition to dispensing news well into the ‘70s, and thanks to those small-town papers I have much of her life available to me.
“Lish” was born in Lee County Virginia, Melvina’s maternal grandparents were originally from Lee County. When you visit Cumberland Gap you have the opportunity to straddle three states, KY, TN, and VA. Lee County is the “gap” county, Winchester, KY where they settled is straight North of Cumberland Gap and Lee County VA. It was about 130 miles, and railroads crisscrossed the area.
Lish was a cobbler, as was his brother James, they both settled in Winchester. It was 2200 people in 1881 when they got there and more than 7500 in 1910 when Lish and Mellie moved to Clinton IL. Winchester proved to be a great place to start a business, the shoe repair became a nice shoe store and the Bushes were middle-class comfortable.
They had 13 children, two died in infancy before 1900, Margaret and Rosa both passed away while very young, nine children reached adulthood.
Between 1881 when the newlyweds arrived in Winchester until the spring of 1909 they stayed out of the paper. Their son Claude Tipton Bush, then 20, broke into the grocery store of B.T. Burch, stole $6 and some cigars. He was held for $300 bond which was not an insignificant amount of money in 1909, more than $8,000 in 2019 money, and failing to make bond he remained in the county jail.
Claude Bush Says He Broke into Grocery of Burch and Casky i iL Officers Jno Ballard and Azbili Tuesday night arrested Claude Bush 20 years of age for breaking into the grocery store of Burch and Cas ky Monday night and taking between five and six dollars in money and several boxes of cigars Bush confessed to Ballard and Jailer Hart Wednesday morning saying that lIe did the act because he had to have the money He had given the money and cigars to a colored woman in Bucktown and they were found Wednesday morning His examining trial will be held in Police Court at 7 30 Wednesday night.
I wasn’t able to find out what happened at his trial, but in the census of 1910, he was with the family. It is possible he was able to pay restitution and got probation, he had not been in trouble before and his family was well regarded in Winchester.
Not to be outdone Claude’s younger brother Grover got into trouble and spent 1910 in the reform school at Fayetteville, KY. No idea what he did, they both went on to serve in WWI and then Grover came back to start getting in trouble again.
In 1910 Lish sold his newly remodeled shoe shop to his brother James and moved the family to Clinton, Illinois. Between 1900 and 1910 Mellie’s mother and younger brothers had left Lee County Virginia and moved to Clinton, Illinois. Clinton was only about 5000 people but Dewitt County had nearly 4 times that many people and Clinton drew all of them.
Clinton was also in the center of Illinois with good transportation in and out. Lish opened his new shoe repair shoe store, they were living in the house on Clay, just a few blocks from the rest of the family.
WWI brought changes even to the wild boys Claude and Grover. Herbert was the first to enlist in 1916, he was 20.
Hubert/Herbert did well in the Army he got out in June of 1920 as a Master Sargent, he enlisted again during WWII and served in the Army Air Corp 1943-1944.
He was living in Syracuse, NY at the outbreak of WWII and on October 18, 1942, 104 18 and 19-year-old boys shipped out for basic training amid much fanfare, a parade, a proclamation from the Mayor. Among those boys was 46 year old Hubert Bush.
Hubert was stationed in Syracuse before he shipped out to France and that was where he met his future wife. In April of 1918 he married Mary Davis in Rochester NY, after WWI they settled in Clinton for the first 5 years of their marriage, moving to Syracuse in 1925. They raised five children who grew up and married, his son Hubert Jr also served in the Korean War.
Hubert was a sheet metal worker his whole life. Then in 1956, Hubert did something very uncharacteristic of him, he committed suicide. I don’t have a copy of his death certificate so I don’t know if they found an underlying cause for his depression.
1917 saw Lish and Claude getting in some trouble too, for bootlegging. Although Kentucky wasn’t dry until 1918, bootlegging was the local past time. The number of bootlegging cases was a little shocking. Claude wasn’t named until later as being part of this bootlegging.
Bush Acquitted. E. L. Bush, charged with' selline in toxicating liquor in anti-saloon territory, was found, not guilty in the county court Saturday, when the jury returned the verdict after having deliberated 14 hours'; Of the three bootlegging cases in the county court this term there were two convictions and one acquittal. Bush was represented by Atty. Kayburn Wilson, and Atty. G. C. Hoff i represented the state.
Claude enlisted in May of 1918 and served until the following April 1919. He went to France aboard the SS Leviathan, he was gassed in France and suffered much of his life with lung issues, working variously for WPA during the Depression and relying on public assistance in the 40s. He married Goldie Pearl Little September 1921 in Carroll TN, they raised three children.
The Bush girls did their part too, three becoming nurses in the Reserve Nursing Corp. More about the daughters next time along with Grover’s life story that was a wild ride fit for a movie, or a soap opera at the very least.
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