Single Black female, born about 1879 in Alabama. She died 20 December 1898 at the age of 19 in Pensacola, FL, of acute, diffuse nephritis. Her parents were both born in Alabama, and at the time of her death, she had been in the state for one year. Her physician was H.G. Williams. There was no occupation listed on her death record, nor any record of an undertaker. She was buried in the Escambia County Poor Farm cemetery.
I have located one family of color named Bruce which had a daughter named Martha of the right age, in Conecuh County, Alabama. As immigration from Conecuch County into Pensacola was quite common at this time, it is likely to be the correct family. If it is, Martha’s father was Stephen Bruce, born about 1837 in Alabama; and her mother Eliza Riley, born about 1835 in Alabama. Martha had numerous siblings, though she appears to have been the youngest. One of those siblings was a brother named Edmund (closest to her in age), who appeared in the 1898 Pensacola City Directory as a laborer living on Tarragona Street. Martha herself does not appear in that directory, and there are no other members of the Bruce family listed.
FAMILY:
Father: Stephen Bruce
Mother: Eliza Riley Bruce
Siblings: John, Mary, Handy R., Charlie Stokes, James, Willie, Ella, Laura, Alonzo, and Edmund Bruce
SOURCES:
Pensacola births and deaths, 1891-1910, Escambia County (Florida) Health Department. Salt Lake City, Utah : Filmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah, 1973.
“Vital Statistics,” The Daily News (Pensacola, FL). 24 DEC 1898, p. 5.
Year: 1880; Census Place: Gravilla, Conecuh, Alabama; Roll: 9; Page: 27C; Enumeration District: 047. 1880 United States Federal Census. Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2010. Lehi, UT, USA
Ancestry.com. U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.