The story of the Drews begins in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, England. For the moment our earliest patriarch is John Drew, who on the first of January in 1806 married Catherine Smith at St. Mary's Church in Flaxley, Gloucestershire. One story says John Drew was a yeoman farmer. Another descendent records him having a pottery business. Of Catherine, we know quite a bit more — she was the daughter of John Smith, a papermaker, and Margaret Price. Margaret reputedly was a widow who had eight children prior to marrying Smith but who bore him two daughters — Catherine and a sister, Sarah.

John Smith had apprenticed with Joseph Lloyd to learn the papermaking trade and worked for the Lloyd family for some 60 years. He fell ill when Catherine was twelve and she left school to care for him. At thirteen she went to work for a local farmer and by nineteen she was also working for the Lloyd family. Sadly, her sister Sarah took ill at this time and died nine days later. During her childhood and continuing after she was married, Catherine wrote a great deal of poetry and in 1841 published a small tome entitled "A Collection of Poems on the Forest of Dean and Its Neighborhood." John and Catherine Drew had eight children, six who survived to maturity — three sons, James, John and Absalom; and three daughters, Catherine, Frances and Sarah. The family lived for years in Cinderford, with John Drew dying in 1855 and Catherine in 1867 at the age of 82. Local residents held a memorial service for Catherine in 1967 marking the centennial of her death.

Our Drew line continues with Absalom, who was born in 1820 in East Dean and married Elizabeth Morgan of Coleford on the 16th of September 1844. The couple had ten children with seven surviving to maturity, although Elizabeth herself died in 1867 when her youngest child was only two. Absalom worked a variety of jobs — his occupation on various census records and business directories included iron miner, grocer and butcher. At some point prior to 1870 Absalom remarried, taking as his new wife Mary Ann Ryder of neighboring Lydbrook. Mary was a widow herself running a beer house in Cinderford. In 1868, Absalom's eldest daughter, Sarah, married William Henry Hodges, a fellow miner from neighboring Littledean. The following year, Sarah's sister, Jane, married William's brother Henry Jabez Hodges. According to family history, that year, Absalom, his new wife, and the five remaining children (Absalom William, David, Lucy, Eliza and Mary Ann) all left Gloucestershire and emigrated to the Westfield/Springfield area of Massachusetts. Upon reaching America, Absalom and his two sons established a grist mill near Little River in Westfield. Census documents and ship records, however, seem to indicate that the sons came over first around 1869 and the remainder of the family followed a few years later. Absalom died in 1879, although Mary Ryder lived until 1906 when she expired at age 88.

As related in the Hodges family history, Sarah grew ill in 1881 and died the following year at 34. Her husband William died three years later leaving five children behind, the eldest only seventeen. Unable to take care of her nephews and nieces, Jane contacted her family in Massachusetts and in 1886 the children — Lillian, Violette, Harley, Vernon and Lota — arrived by themselves aboard the tramp steamer the S.S. Warwick. I think the children were split up — some, including Violette, went to live with Eliza Drew, now married to Charles Bill. Eliza is referred to by the Hodges children as Auntie B. Mary Ann Drew, married to Eben Pardee, also figures in the journals of Vernon and Violette. The youngest of the Drew siblings, she was only four years older than her oldest Hodges niece, Lillian. The children referred to her as Aunt Mame. Strangely, Absalom's son, Absalom Williams Drew, isn't mentioned in my great-grandfather Vernon's journals although there must have been contact with the family since there was a strong friendship between Vernon and Absalom Williams' daughter, Alice Drew Lockwood.

Back in England, Jane Drew Hodges lived until the age of 84, dying in 1930. Two of her three sons — Howard Percy Cameron Hodges and William Bruce Mortimer Hodges, died about the same time without issue, never having married. The last surviving son, Herbert Murray Hodges (known as Bert Hodges to the family) worked for a U.S. chemical company in the Far East and married Jessie M. Burt (the daughter of a British army officer stationed abroad) in Singapore. The couple were frequent visitors to the American cousins but Burt and Jessie also never had children.

David Drew married Elizabeth Powell in 1873 in Westfield, MA and had one child who died in infancy. David died in a drowning accident at age 27, and shares a headstone with his son, his father and stepmother in the Owens Cemetery in Westfield (see this website's graveyard section). As mentioned above, Eliza Drew married Charles Bill and had two sons who grew, married and had one child apiece. Mary Ann Drew Pardee had three children. Lucy Drew married John Williams and had five children. Absalom William Drew married Rosanna (Mary) Mercy Cable and the couple had six children including the aforementioned Alice Jane Drew Lockwood who is the only Drew relative I had contact with growing up. She was a tremendous lady who cared deeply about her friends and family.

This history is drawn heavily from Alice Lockwood's genealogy work as well as the website of Marie Sims (see Links) who is a distant cousin from another branch of the John and Catherine Drew family. I'm also indebted to Betty Budil, a cousin I met online who is part of the American Drew family — John to Absalom to Lucy to Eliza Williams Beador to Robert Luther Beador to Elizabeth (Betty) Ann Beador Budil.