Alfred Henry Drew -- Merchant of Waukomis

Alfred Henry Drew was the younger son and second child of Tom Drew and Margaret Walch. He was born in New York in 1876 and moved to Kansas with his family when he was about three years old. He grew up in Caldwell and, like his brother Stephen, he moved to Oklahoma as a young man, where he operated a general store in partnership with his father. Alfred's general store was located in Waukomis which is located 9 miles south of Enid and 21 miles north of Dover, where his brother also operated a general store.

In 1898 at 20 years of age, Alfred married Cora Bell Riley, 18, in Enid, Oklahoma. They were living in Waukomis in 1900 with their one-year-old daughter Gladys. At that time, Alfred declared that he owned the general store free and clear of mortgage. Their second daughter and last child, Audine H. Drew, was born in 1906 in Waukomis. The census record shows the family was still living on Main Street in Waukomis in 1910.

Alfred died at the early age of 42, six days before Christmas in 1918. At the time Cora was 40 years old; Gladys, 18; and Audine 11. Cora died in 1965 and was buried with Alfred in the Waukomis Cemetery.

Gladys Drew married Richard Wayne Allen of Enid in about 1920. By 1930 they were living in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Gladys and Richard had at least one son: Richard Drew Allen. Richard eventually moved to San Diego, California, where he worked as an aerospace engineer. Little else is known about Gladys's life except that she was buried alongside her parents in the Waukomis Cemetery in 1951.

Alfred’s youngest daughter, Audine Hildred Drew, married Hosea Balleau Prewitt in Flint, Michigan, in 1921. They were still living in Flint in 1930, where H.B Prewitt worked as a wholesale heating salesman and engineer. They eventually moved east where their three children settled, in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Audine died in 2005 at age 98 in Chesterfield, Virginia, where her son Robert Drew Prewitt lives.

The above photograph is thought to be Alfred standing next to his father Thomas Drew.