Azro Jackson Cory was born in Mason Township, Ohio, on April 5, 1846, and died August 30, 1936, in Takoma Park, Maryland. He was the third child born after his two older sisters, Mary Annice and Lytta Ann, and was followed by Alice, James, E., Susannah “Sarah” Ball, Emma Warfield, and Elvina Warfield. He is buried in the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.
Lying about his age at 15, he joined the Union Army in answer to an ad for "squirrel hunters," and was the youngest drummer boy in Sherman's army when he marched across the South. He with a number of other soldiers was captured and put in Andersonville prison. I, John Raborg Cory, still have his letters home during the War.
While being transferred to Libby Prison he escaped. He returned to action, and eventually was promoted to Lt. in Company B, 1st Heavy Artillery Regiment, Ohio, by 10 Feb 1864. . Promoted to 1st Lieutenant on 25 Apr 1865 and mustered out of Company F, 198th Infantry Regiment, Ohio, on 8 May 1865 at Camp Bradford on North Chalres Street in Baltimore, Maryland. After the war he claimed and received his $25 bounty offered "squirrel hunters" who joined up. He was assigned to the White House staff and later served as acting “Brevet” captain in charge of President Lincoln's burial detail, while he lay in state. Azro was the last mortal to see Lincoln's face, as the casket was closed.
January 3, 1882, in Olean, Erie County, New York, Azro married Marie Chase Matheson (born May5, 1853, Shanghai, China, died October 6, 1941, Takoma Park, Maryland) from Tuxedo Park, New York, daughter of Colin S. Matheson of Berbice, British Guiana, and his Chinese wife or consort (name unknown) from Shanghai, China, where Colin was associated with the Jardine Matheson Company of Hong Cong and Shanghai. Both their sons were educated with funds from a Jardine Matheson trust account set up by Colin for his daughter. There is no record of how Azro met Marie, but his sons, Robert and Ernest, were born in Alden, New York, so he must have lived in New York for some time before moving to Washington, DC. Azro was six feet four inches and was known as "Big Dad" to all the grandchildren.
In the 1896, after the death of his mother in Sanford, Florida, which followed a disastrous orange freeze on their homestead near Orlando, Azro and his father returned to Ohio sharing a mule for transport. It is not clear just how long Azro had been in Florida with his parents, but there is no record of the rest of his small family in Florida. Therefore, he may have travelled to Florida to help his father wind down his affairs and return to Ohio. At that time, Azro painted a water color of his mother’s grave site, which is in the possession of my sister, Elizabeth English Cory of Shadyside, Maryland.
Azro became a graduate of Howard University Law School and a lawyer in the U.S. Patent Office. Howard was just "down the road" from Azro’s home in Takoma Park near the trolley line into DC. He was a watercolorist and a theosopher. He painted many woodland scenes of what is now Takoma Park, including 16th Street when it was a mere track in the forest. Both Mahatma Gandhi and Samuel Clemmons were his theosophy cohorts. Azro befriended a fellow theosopher, Adelaide Johnson, the sculptress of suffragists, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott, displayed in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, and she sculpted an heroic bust of his son, Ernest, as a child of eight. I (John Raborg Cory) made a lost wax bronze casting (Paragon Foundry, Oregon, Illinois, 1979) of the original plaster and gave it to my father, whereupon he gave the original plaster to my godfather, his brother, Willam Robert "Bill" Cory, who now has it in his house at 6 Woodhill Road in Louisville, KY.
My father, Ernest Neal Cory, Jr. inherited Captain Benjamin Cory's artillery officer's saber, which Azro carried on Lincoln’s burial detail, and Azro's Colt .44 Civil War combat pistol. Dad sold the pistol when he was a small child of about six for some ridiculous reason and price. I played with the saber often as a child. I still have the saber and leather scabbard, which I have passed on to son, John, to pass eventually to Grandson Benjamin.