Person:Mary Yocum (23)

1880 census says she is 61, b. KY; father b. VA and mother b. MD. A niece, Mary Hart, age 28 is living with them; also a nephew and niece with the last name Mitchell.

According to the birth dates I have, Mary Jane was 13 yrs. older than Joshua. Also see notes for them re the 1850 census in notes for Joshua.

Per Cumberland County, IL Obituaries from Illinois trails History & Genealogy. This was from the Charleston (Coles Co.) Courier. 1894 Greenup Press, Greenup, IL.

Akers, Mary - Aunt Mary Akers is dead. She left friends and home last Monday for the next world. She was 75 years old. Her oldest brother was Ambrose Yocum, the first sheriff of Coles County, who died from exposure in the line of his duty by riding through the bleak prairies of thie - Coles County - for this county (Cumberland) was then a part of Coles. Her mother, Mary Eve Yocum, died at the age of 84 and her remains rest in the Dry Grove Cemetery. Her only other brother, Thornton Yocum who died in Coles County, all except Aunt Elizabeth Coleman who, though feeble, still survives.

Her sisters married as follows: Catharine married Rev. Miles H. Hart and lived and died on the old homestead, four miles south of Mattoon; Fanny married Nathan Ellington, for long years clerk of the circuit court of Coles County, and part of the time county clerk as well. Ellington was killed without any fault of his. The other member of the family was Elizabeth C. Cunningham, mother of the editor of this paper. Her remains lie in the old Dry Grove graveyard.

When Aunt Mary was a beautiful sprightly girl living with uncle Nathan Ellington in Charleston, she married Philip O'Dell, of that place, and the result of the union was one son, Clarence, who now lives in the west. When she married last it was to Joshua Akers who is left to mourn his loneliness.

Joshua and Aunt Mary started in life to make money and succeeded. They never had but one child, thornton, who lives in Dry Brove and is one of the prosperous farmers of the county.