Holbrook and Smith

 Holbrook and Smith 

          I found this photo of a young girl from Fordsville that was travelling to the Philippines to get married.  I decided to see if I could find a wedding announcement or any additional information. I found an interesting but sad story.

Here is a better photo of Miss Smith from about the same time. This was from her passport.

          Mary Carroll Smith was born 1 Nov 1893 in Fordsville, the daughter of John Thomas Smith (1852-1929) and Anne Eliza Ford (1856-1953). 

          She married McHenry Holbrook in the Philippines (or maybe in Japan) in 1918 and her parents and his parents attended the wedding. Here is a photo of McHenry Holbrook from his passport.

          McHenry Holbrook was the son of Rowan Holbrook (1868-1928) and Bettie Lee Taylor (1868-1946); the family was in the banking business.  McHenry was employed by the National City Bank of New York and was first based in the Philippines and was later transferred to Japan.  The only child of McHenry and Mary, a son named John Rowan Holbrook, was born in 1919 in Japan.  

          Here's the sad part. On 1 September 1923 there was an massive earthquake in Yokohama, Japan, and the office building where McHenry worked collapsed and he was killed. 

          Following the earthquake, Mary (Smith) Holbrook returned home to Ohio County with her son and remained there until her death in 1981 at age 87.  She is buried in the Oakbrook Cemetery in Hartford. 

          The Findagrave page for McHenry Holbrook says that his ashes were buried in Negishi Foreign Cemetery in Negishi, a suburb of Yokohama, Japan.  Their son, John Rowan, who was called “Jack,” served in the Navy during WWII and died in Florida in 1986 at age 66.

          I found the following article, an interview with Mary Holbrook, in the Owensboro Messenger dated a few weeks after she returned to Fordsville.  I had a hard time copying this article and parts of the paper were missing, but I did the best I could.  If you have further interest I suggest you go to the library in Owensboro and try to get a better copy.  The date of the newspaper is October 7, 1923 and the article is in Section Two.

Report of Death of McHenry Holbrook