Mae A. Cable — Forgotten Faces Project

Status: looking for family

By now, I certainly hope you've read about Mary Humphries Hewitt and her son, George Hewitt, who married the granddaughter of Catherine Dolbow. Because today on the blog, we're getting one generation closer to finding living descendants of all these long-gone individuals by bringing you the story of George's daughter, Mae.

You may remember that in the 1880 Federal Census, George (while still living with Maria before they mysteriously split...) had two daughters: Lizzie, born 1871, and Mary, born 1877. It was actually in tracking Maria down that I made the wonderful discovery linking daughter Mary to the above photo: Mary is the witness on Maria's death certificate. And her full, married name listed is Mary Cable.

I thought to myself, "this is too much of a coincidence not to be the Mae Cable I have a photo of." It had to be the same woman.

The earliest record we find of Mary, or Mae as she apparently went by, is in 1900 on the birth record of her first son, George W Cable, born in March 1900 to Mae and her husband, Harry J Cable. We then find Harry, Mae, and George in the 1900 census taken three months later in June. They are living on Poplar Street, in Wilmington, DE.

By the time the next federal census is taken, Mae and Harry have two more children: Astor Gordon born 1903 and Grace B, born 1905. In the 1910 census, Mae and her three children are living with Harry's parents in Penns Grove, NJ, but Harry is not listed.

I find this particularly strange, considering it didn't appear Harry had a job that would require him to live elsewhere. Ten years prior, he was a printer, and later, by the 1920 census, he was working at the dye plant. Why would he not have been living in the same house as his wife and children? We can assume that he indeed was not living there (as opposed to it being a mistake by the census enumerator) because in every other census, Harry and Mae live on their own, but in 1910 Mae and the children live with Harry's parents; i.e., perhaps she and the children had to move in with them while Harry was away.

But where would he have gone? The U.S. was not in any major war in 1910, apart from the Mexican Border War, but by the very early stages of the war in 1910 the U.S. Army only had deployed nearby towns - not troops all the way from New Jersey. If you have any thoughts, leave a comment below.

Anyway, we then find the family in the 1920 census in Upper Penns Neck, NJ. This time, Harry is back living with Mae and the children and working at the dye plant - most likely Dupont Dye Works in Carney's Point, NJ.

It's at this point that I am certain the Mae Cable in our photo is the same Mary Hewitt, because this photo was found in the same haul as all the previous photos, and all the individuals in those photos had lived in Penns Neck.

In the 1930 census, the family lives at 56 The Strand in New Castle, DE. Having such a peculiar name, I looked up the address, and to my surprise, a charming 19th century brick row house still stands there.

It appears Mae remained unemployed - a housewife - for her entire life. By the 1940 census, her husband had died, and Mae resides with her two children George and Grace, 40 and 35 respectively, who have no families of their own. They live only two blocks away from where Mae lived in the prior census, at 25 East Fourth Street.

According to FindAGrave, Mae died in 1960. She is buried in the same cemetery as her husband Harry, alongside their 7 month old granddaughter, the daughter of Astor Gordon.

Knowing that George and Grace never had children makes me wonder what sort of family Astor Gordon (or A. Gordon as he appears on all records) left behind. We'll look into any descendants in our next post, a continuation of this massive family tree, because we also have a photo of Mae's husband: Harry J. Cable.