Finding Ardella

I stood at the grave, 115 years separating me from her. Ada Ardella Bridges was the first wife of my 1st great-grandfather Harvey Anderson Pierce (1877-1929). She passed away in 1906 at age 32. Her infant daughter lay beside her, unnamed, who was born and died on the same day in 1905…

When initially doing genealogy back in 2014, I learned that Harvey had a wife previous to the Olive Elizabeth Runyon (from whom I descend). I was viewing the marriage book in the clerk’s office of the old courthouse on the square in Paoli, looking at the pages that pertained to Harvey and Elizabeth’s wedding. It noted that Harvey had been married before, and that the marriage had been dissolved by death in 1906. This was news to me.

The journey to find Ardella began last year. A 1st cousin of my mother’s sent her a photocopy of a Pierce Family History genealogy sheet dated Jan. 1971 by one Ralph E. Pinnick (1905-1994) whose grandmother was a Pierce, a sister to Harvey’s father. It mentioned that Harvey’s first wife was an Ada Ardella Bridges! That was news. You see, Harvey and Elizabeth named one of their daughters, my grandmother, Ada Ardella Pierce! He named a daughter of his second wife after his first wife. That is a bit unusual.

Now let’s get this straight. Ada Ardella Bridges (1874-1906) became Ada Ardella Pierce by marrying Harvey. Harvey and Elizabeth’s daughter Ada Ardella Pierce (1916-1950) was a Pierce by birth, and a Young by marriage. The first Ardella died with the Pierce surname, the second one was born with it. Tragically, both died prematurely, the first at 32 and the second at 34.

Earlier this week, after online research, I traveled to little Clark Cemetery in rural Martin County, a few miles down a narrow gravel road jutting off from the highway near Huron. It was there that I finally located the grave of Harvey’s wife Ada Ardella (Bridges) Pierce. Her stone is large and elaborate, of upright configuration, and with Christian motifs. To her left is a tiny slab marked “infant”, and to her right is the plain but newer styled stone of her mother Catherine M. Bridges (1832-1921). On the left side of Ardella’s stone it speaks of her infant daughter who was “born & died September 23, 1905”. It was a very peaceful setting, and was far more than I was expecting.

Ada Ardella Bridges was born June 4, 1874 in Martin County, and grew up in the Trinity Springs area in the eastern part of that county. Her parents were Allen D. and Catherine Bridges. Our Ada Ardella Bridges died on August 11, 1906 and was buried in Martin. The 1880 Federal Census indicated she had four older siblings, two brothers and two sisters. Her husband Harvey was raised in the western edge of Orange County, near where it and Martin meet.

She and Harvey married on September 12, 1904 according to both the aforementioned Pierce genealogy sheet and Ancestry.com, though I did not find them listed in the marriage license index when I went to the courthouse in Shoals back in April of this year. I must return and look for it one day. Miss Bridges and Harvey Pierce’s meeting, courtship, and life would have taken place in a horse drawn buggy or wagon. In 1906 her coffin was probably drawn down that narrow gravel (likely dirt back then) road to the cemetery on a horse drawn wagon. It was 115 years ago, but it was almost a different world.

I saw a death certificate for her on Ancestry.com, a form filled out in sloppy penmanship, which I shamefully neglected to download a copy of back when I had a paid subscription to the site. It looked like she died of tuberculosis, but the writing was so poor that I would need to see the actual record in the book in the Martin County health department office to be sure. Harvey apparently did not contract it.

I did find one error in Pinnick’s Pierce Family History, where he briefly stated that Ardella “died with infant at childbirth”. The side inscription on Ardella’s gravestone stated that their infant daughter was born and died on the same day in 1905. I see no evidence of a second infant or of Ardella dying in childbirth.

Ardella married in 1904, lost her only child in 1905 on the day it was born, and died in 1906. Married late, her life was evidently marred by sorrow and ill health. All that is left of her is her gravestone, a single picture, and a few century old documents. Sadly, her grave profile on Findagrave.com even gets her first name wrong, calling her Ida.

When researching Trinity Springs it all clicked together. My mother’s cousin Kenneth had sent us a copy of a slightly tattered old picture of two women in long dresses at an elaborate spring, a wall of rock behind them. The woman on the right is younger, perhaps a teen, and in a shorter (but still long) long dress. It was pasted on the back of an original picture of Harvey A. Pierce, a picture of him in his youth. Why would he have a pic of a young woman at Trinity Springs, much less glued to his own picture, unless it was of his first wife Ardella? I cannot prove it, but I see no reason to doubt that the woman on the right is Ada Ardella Bridges. The one on the left is likely one of her older sisters. I traveled to the little park at Trinity Springs and took photos there, standing at the sulphur springs where the old photo was taken perhaps 125 years ago.

I do not descend from Ada Ardella Bridges, but I feel a kinship to her. That my grandmother Ardella bore her name may be a part of that. Let us not allow her memory to fade into oblivion.