Laura Terrissa Rogers - 2g aunt

This week I'm focused on the Rogers family tree. 

resposted from 2014

Laura Terrissa Rogers would have been my great great aunt.

 Here's the Historic Marker for Laura Terrissa Rogers, a music teacher in Mexia, Texas from 1880-1920.

"Miss Rogers Music Room, Built opposite public school, for Laura T. Rogers, who (1880-1920) taught piano and choral music from 7 am to 7pm 6 days a week, 8 months in year. Had 4 pianos used all day, 8 pupils often played in unison. Auditorium with overflow seating in the yard, staged recitals and dramas. A church organist/choir director 35 years Miss Rogers kindled cultural interests in pupils of two generations. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1965.

She lived with her sister, Alice Luella Rogers Ross, and remained single all her life. But she was a very active woman...and much admired by her relatives and pupils.

Great Great Aunts Laura and Luella's brother was my direct ancestor, my father's grandfather, William Sandford Rogers. 

Aunt Laura would have been living with her sister's family when my grandfather and his little sister Annie were under the guardianship of the Ross family following their father's death. Their mother must not have been able to care for them, nor could anyone in her family, because the Ross family were made their guardians, with my grandfather just two years old, and his sister Annie just one. I didn't realize their mother had continued living in another city until I read a census in Galveston which included her and her 2 children, later in their childhoods.

John Ross was the manager of the water works of Mexia, Texas as of the 1900 census. And his sister-in-law, Laura, had been listed as blind in the prior census, so in 1900 at age 20 she is listed as unable to read, but can write.

GG Aunt Laura had been the second oldest child born to George and Lucinda Rogers of Huntsville TX, but she and her one-year younger sister (Alice) Luella were both born in Mount Lebanon, Bienville Parish, LA...where I think their mother's family lived. My great great grandfather William Samuel Rogers had been the oldest child, born in Huntsville TX. 

They had one younger brother who lived to adulthood, and two who died within their first year of life...all born in Mount Lebanon. But her sister Luella married John Ross when she was 22, and moved to Mexia TX, where he first he worked as a store clerk, and Laura apparently lived with them early on. She is on the census with the Ross family continually until her death in 1922. (Note, the historic marker gives the wrong year for her death of 1920.)