Cora Martin Scott

Cora Martin Scott, the daughter of John Burkhart Scott and Cora Martin Scott, was born in New York City on August 8, 1865, the third of nine children. Her eldest sister, Marion, had died in infancy, and she was to lose two brothers, John and Kenneth to diphtheria when she was thirteen. Martin and Arthur, who were closest in age to her would die in their twenties.

Cora lived in the family house at 258 West 24th Street up until the time of her marriage. The house is still standing (1987) but it has been divided up into apartments. To get away from the heat of the summer in New York, the family would move to Barrytown, on the Hudson, near the house where her mother's sisters lived. This house, known as Woodlandside, with its commanding view of the river, stayed in the Martin family until 1928.

Cora married Theodore Lewis Beck on Thursday, February 19, 1891 at the Thirty Fourth Street Reformed Church (between 8th and 9th Avenues) in New York City at four o'clock in the afternoon. The young couple made their home in the city until 1900, when they moved to Summit, New Jersey, first to live on Crescent Avenue, and then at 41 Woodland Avenue. Their four children, Alexander (1892), John Scott (1893), Margery Elizabeth (1895) and Dorothy (1897) were born in the family home on 101st Street, New York.

Cora was to suffer intermittently with tuberculosis, until her death on February 13, 1913. She spent many years as an invalid, but the obituary in the Summit Record written two days after her death, attributes her demise to bronchial pneumonia. Tuberculosis was not a disease to admit to in those days.

Cora had been active in the Women's Auxiliary of the Summit Hospital Association, the Fortnightly Club, the Fresh Air and Convalescent Home, and the Presbyterian Church. She was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where her husband, and four children and one son-in-law would join her.