Christa Belle Martin

Christa Belle Martin, the ninth of the fourteen children of Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader, was one of the six offspring who died extremely young. She survived ten and a half months, a lifetime spent entirely in Martintown. She was born 29 September 1859 and died 15 August 1860. Her grave is in the Martin family cemetery.

Christa was known during her brief life as Christie, and given that she never reached adulthood, family members never got in the habit of addressing her formally. She was so thought-of as Christie that diminutive form was used on the headstone inscription and is the version recorded in the family Bible. Her actual name might have been lost to posterity if not for a letter her sister Julia “Juliette” Martin Savage wrote to niece Cora Belle Warner Spece in 1947 to answer various questions about family history. Juliette mentioned that Christie had been named for two good friends of the family, the “most popular girls in Winslow,” Christa Turnbull and Belle Bradford. This was in keeping with Nathaniel and Hannah’s habit of naming their babies after specific individuals. Belle’s father John Bradford had worked with Nathaniel when both were young men new to the region, and they had remained friends as well as occasional business partners. Belle herself -- whose own formal name was actually Arabella -- was a familiar figure in Martintown in the 1850s, not the least because she was the teacher at the Martin School, teaching Christie’s older siblings in the shack-size one-room schoolhouse that stood near the Martin residence. Christa Turnbull was a daughter of local cabinet maker and merchant James Turnbull, whose four-story Turnbull Building had recently become, and would continue to be for the rest of the century, the most visually-prominent of Winslow’s landmarks. At the time of Christa Belle Martin’s birth, Christa Turnbull and Arabella Bradford were viewed as the “most eligible young ladies” of the crowd the Martins hung around with. (Belle Bradford married Fred Knickerbocker in late 1859. Christa Turnbull -- also known as Christie -- married James Bradford Fuller on Valentine’s Day in 1869.) They were just as highly regarded as Juliette’s letter describes. In an era when musical performances were the highlight of the social scene and tangible evidence of the arrival of civilization to the frontier, Christa and Belle had become part of the immediate area’s first female vocal quartet. (John Bradford had been part of the first male quartet.) Giving their new daughter a combination of the young ladies’ names was a measure of how much brightness, beauty, and talent Nathaniel and Hannah wished for their new baby.

Christa happens to be the name chosen by one of Nathaniel and Hannah’s great great granddaughters for her daughter, born in 1968. Christa Belle Martin was the specific inspiration for that naming, and so in a small way, her legacy is on-going even today.

(Christie is believed to be the baby in the photograph reproduced at left. The scan was made from an original tintype plate that clearly dates from the 1860s and is unquestionably a picture of a member of the family of Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader. Unfortunately the tintype was not labelled and it is possible -- though less likely -- that it is an image of one of her sisters, Tinty and Juliette being the likeliest candidates.)

Shown is the east side of the gravemarker of Nathaniel and Hannah Martin, with a close-up of the portion that features the name and stats. Photograph taken 2 November 2005 by Dave Smeds. This marker, the largest in the Martin cemetery, was used for not only for the couple themselves but for five of their children -- all ones who died as infants or toddlers. The inscription for William is opposite that of Christa Belle, while the back commemorates three children -- Charles, James Franklin, and Hannah.

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