Evelyn Frazier (1897-1945)

Evelyn Frazier was the fifth child of Andrew Jackson Frazier and Mary Evaline Chadwick. She is supposed to have been born in Rising Fawn, GA. Evelyn came from a broken home. Her father is supposed to have skipped out on the family and started a new family with a new wife. It is possible that he even did this to a wife and children before Evelyn's mother. It is not clear what became of her mother, but she was probably just unsable to care for five children. What family they had lived in DeKalb Co., AL, so they found their way to Ft. Payne or nearby. Orphaned and with little direction, Evelyn eventually came to be a party going girl and heavy drinker. She liked to live fast and live well and it did not hurt that she was very pretty. It is no wonder then that she was attracted to C. B. Powell, Jr., the eldest son of a prominent Birmingham lawyer. It is not too hard to see why he would be attracted to the pretty, fun girl either. On a business trip of his up in that direction in 1912, they apparently made each other's acquaintance, most likely while having a good time partying. For reasons unknown to us or probably even his parents, he quickly married her and returned to Birmingham with a bride, much to everyone's surprise. The popular memory from Frazier relatives was that "he set her up in style". Trying to make the best of the situation, Louise Powell, C. B.'s mother, attempted to culture her new daughter-in-law. It was a tough sell. She probably calmed down a bit, but it must have been quite a culture shock for the 15 year old. One thing that did calm her down, at least temporarily, was motherhood. She had my grandmother in 1913 and her younger sister in 1915. The marriage may have been showing signs of strain, though. By 1917, C. B. had enlisted in the military and was in training near Atlanta for quite a while. This prolonged absence probably tipped the scales against them and, by 1919, they divorced. She soon remarried Harry Rowland Forward, a shoe salesman from Toronto, Canada. They would have two more children: Virginia in 1922 and Edward, or "Sonny", in 1925. Harry, who was twenty years her senior, appears to have died by 1930, leaving Evelyn with the two chldren. Frazier relatives remembered her as a doting mother, but she hardly had anything to do with her two older children. It is no wonder then that my grandmother's most distinctive memory of her mother was of Evelyn driving fast cars, drinking and smoking. The drinking could have been brought on by a sense of loss, though. My grandmother also recalled that her mother had more miscarriages than she had children. That, coupled with the death of her second husband may have been a lot to deal with. At any rate, all this hard living finally caught up with Evelyn. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a disease that is still hard to detect before its advanced stages. As I am told she died in New York, I can only assume that she went there for treatment. My grandmother, in spite of lingering resentment toward her mother, traveled to New York to spend time with her during this difficult period. Evelyn also wrote letters to various family members to pass the time. However, whatever treatment she received was not enough and she died in 1945 at the young age of 48. I can remember my grandmother remarking that her mother never had gray hair. She really didn't have much of a chance to.

Children

 * colspan="5" bgcolor="#FFfce0" |Charles Bertrand Powell, Jr. and Evelyn Frazier
 * colspan="5" bgcolor="#FFfce0" |Charles Bertrand Powell, Jr. and Evelyn Frazier


 * colspan="5" bgcolor="#FFfce0" |Harry Rowland Forward and Evelyn Frazier
 * colspan="5" bgcolor="#FFfce0" |Harry Rowland Forward and Evelyn Frazier