Dorothy E. Doty Ordway

Have you ever looked at a photo of an ancestor and seen yourself?  In my grandmother's photo on the right, especially the top picture, I very much see my mother and myself.  It's time to take a little walk back in the Doty family history, beginning with my grandmother whom I never knew. 

Dorothy Elizabeth Doty was born in Monroe, Michigan at the Doty homestead - the home of her parents, George Washington Doty and Alice Newcomer Doty.  The place was really outside of Monroe and was known as Raisinville. Dorothy was the last of six chldren, three boys and three girls.  She saw the world turn into the 20th century when she was but four months old.  By the accounts of both my mother and her cousin, it was implied that Dorothy was a pampered, youngest daughter.  Her father was 51 when she was born and her mother 42. 

Dorothy is in the back, on the right.  The young man with her is not my grandfather, so this photo was taken before 1922.

My mother's cousin stated that the family was most disappointed in her choice of husbands...my grandfather.  Maybe they thought she married beneath herself, as after all, he was just a silo man from Ohio when they met.  I've written about my grandfather, Fritz Ordway and their wedding here. Then he whisked her away from her family and friends to live in Malinta, Ohio, just down the street from his parents.  They married when she was 21 and a few years later, she had her one and only child, my mother.  She chose to go home to her own mother to wait for the baby's birth, so my mother was born in the Doty home in Michigan.

Note the fancy fox fur!

My mother was only 20 years old when her mother died.  Dorothy did live long enough to see her only daughter married in 1944, but she did not see any grandchildren.  She died at the age of 46 in Malinta, Ohio, but she is buried in Monroe, Michigan with the rest of her family.

Monroe Evening News - May 4, 1946

"MRS. FRED ORDWAY

Mrs. Fred Ordway, the former Dorothy Doty, died suddenly yesterday in her home in Malinta, Ohio, of a heart attack.  The daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. George W. Doty, and the last of a family of six children, she was born August 23, 1899, in the Doty home on North Custer road.  Her marriage to Fred Ordway, who survives, was June 10, 1922, and they went immediately to Malinta to make their home.

Surviving besides her husband is a daughter, Mrs. Donna Elling of Toledo.  Services will be Monday at 1 p.m. in Malinta and burial will be in Woodland Cemetery, Monroe, Monday at 4 p.m."