- Biographical Information
-
Wife of Gen. Emory Upton, sister of noted writer Edward S. Martin.
The daughter of a prominent New York family, 23-year-old Mrs. Upton, nee Emily Norwood Martin, was the sixth of eleven children born to E. T. Throop Martin, a successful attorney and journalist, and the former Cornelia Williams, a mercantile heiress from Utica. A deeply religious young woman, delicate in appearance and in health, Emily had been raised in the stimulating atmosphere of "Willowbrook", the Throop-Martin estate on Auburn's Lake Owasco, where her parents and grand-uncle, former New York Governor Enos Thompson Throop, regularly hosted distinguished visitors. During the 1860's, Union Civil War hero Emory Upton (1839-1881) was among them, and a mutual attraction developed between Emily and the brilliant young general. Following a courtship which had at one point been broken off, possibly because Upton did not entirely share Emily's religious fervor, the couple resolved their differences, and in February 1868 were married at Sand Beach Church near the lake. Their union was a happy one, but tragically cut short by the bride's tuberculosis. Accompanied by her steadfast older sister, Nellie Martin, Emily journeyed to the Bahamas in the hope that the climate would improve her health, but her condition rapidly deteriorated. She died in Nassau on March 29, 1870, her spouse's military duties in the US having prevented him from being at her side. Originally buried on the Willowbrook estate, her remains were transferred to Fort Hill Cemetery to join those of her husband after his shocking suicide eleven years later. Gen. Upton, then 42, had never remarried, and at the time of his death was suffering from excruciatingly painful headaches, possibly caused by brain cancer. In addition to the physical pain which may have prompted him to take his life, historians cite his enduring grief for Emily as a contributing factor in his death. The bas relief portraits on the Uptons' side-by-side gravestones were created by Auburn sculptor Walter G. Robinson, well-known for his portrait statue and bust of Secretary of State William Seward. A verse from the hymn "Still, Still with Thee When Purple Morning Breaketh", lyrics by Harriet Beecher Stowe, is inscribed on the back of Emily's stone.
