To request a copy of this photo for your own personal use, please contact our state coordinator. If you are not a family member or the original photographer — please refrain from copying or distributing this photo to other websites.
Thank you for visiting the Arkansas Gravestone Photo Project. On this site you can upload gravestone photos, locate ancestors and perform genealogy research. If you have a relative buried in Arkansas, we encourage you to upload a digital image using our Submit a Photo page. Contributing to this genealogy archive helps family historians and genealogy researchers locate their relatives and complete their family tree.
Submitted: 11/18/17 • Approved: 11/18/17 • Last Updated: 11/21/17 • R1202679-G1202679-S3
Cora Mae
1877 - 1968
Robert Lydge
1875 - 1935
This writer knew Cora Hartley personally, and she was a remarkable lady and very well educated. After her husband's death in 1935, Cora retained his ownership interests in Moro Supply Company and Farmers' Gin and Seed Company, both of which he had co-founded. She continued to work at the store until it closed its doors in 1961, and she also continued to run the Hartley farm just outside of Moro.
Cora was a tiny woman and never had children of her own, but she loved young people. Her home was a short walk from one of the few high schools in that area, so she often invited promising girls from outlying farms to live with her to attend school. It was said that she accepted little or no money for room and board, but she had an ulterior motive, because many of the girls were tall and played basketball, a game that a small woman like Cora could only dream of playing. Thus, in spite of her short stature, she helped to make it possible for the Moro girls' basketball teams to be of state championship quality during those years.
Cora liked other sports as well. In the early 1950s, she never missed the Friday Night Fights on black-and-white television. As a boy, this writer often was invited to watch with her, and she was as entertaining as the fighters, lounging on her chaise and throwing punches in the air, yelling for a knockout.
She also loved cars and would drive only the largest, most powerful Buick available. She purchased a new one almost every year, insisting that it be black in color, saying with a dry wit that she had to have a car that would look nice in her funeral procession. This writer was gone from Moro by the time of her death at age 90, but I'll bet that a shiny black Buick led the way to the cemetery.
Lydge Hartley went by his middle name, pronounced with the "g" silent, "Lyde" (as in Clyde). He was the son of John T. Hartley and wife Nancy Ann Keath, both originally from Tennessee. Lydge married Cora May Keath, possibly his distant cousin, in 1902 in Woodruff County. They probably lived in the town of Cotton Plant for a while, but by 1910 they had moved to Marion Township in Phillips County. That same year in neighboring Lee County, the second town to be named Moro was under construction at a new site lying along the newly-extended Missouri & North Arkansas Railroad (the first town some distance away had been destroyed in 1900 by a tornado). In 1911, Lydge Hartley and Cora's brother-in-law Sam Andrews, also from Cotton Plant, co-founded Moro Supply Company and Farmers Gin & Seed Company at Moro. Lydge purchased a farm at the edge of Moro and built a home there, and he and Cora lived on that place the rest of their lives. They never had any children.
Photo courtesy of sandycurry10@gmail.com
Contributed on 11/18/17 by hawkinsdonna48
Email This Contributor
Suggest a Correction
Record #: 1202679