Audrey Ellenor (Pierce) Hume was born in Rhyolite, Nye County, Nevada, on May 27, 1909. She was the daughter of Stella (Hensley) and Charles Walter Pierce.  In 1911, the Pierce family moved to Kirkland, Yavapai County, Arizona Territory, where they farmed and ranched.

Audrey rode five miles on horseback to the Walnut Grove School (1917-1926), accompanied by the teacher, who boarded with her family. Audrey attended Sacred Heart Academy in Prescott, St. Joseph’s Academy, and graduated from Tempe Normal School, now Arizona State University.  She started her thirty-one-year teaching as an elementary school teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Skull Valley, Yavapai County, Arizona. She also taught at Lincoln and Washington Schools in Prescott, Yavapai County, Arizona, and at the Miller Valley School in Miller Valley, Arizona. When the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona, she continued her teaching career at Sunnyslope School. She also taught at Kachina Elementary School in Scottsdale, Arizona, retiring in 1974.

Audrey married John “Jack” L. Hume (b. 1911- d. 1995) on June 4, 1938, in Flagstaff, Coconino County, Arizona. The couple had two children, Richard Laurence, born November 9, 1939, and Sharon “Shari” (Hume) Elmer, born June 21, 1946.  Jack’s father, Richard L. Hume, originally opened Hume’s Home bakery in 1914 at 119 South Cortez Street in Prescott.  However, when Richard decided to retire, Jack inherited and managed the Bakery with Audrey’s assistance.

Audrey’s ever pleasant and caring ways and her loyalty to her family and friends were remembered in her obituary. Her son, Richard, says he never heard his mother or father speak harshly to one another.  Despite a caring marriage, problems arose, and the couple divorced twice. Audrey and Jack married in 1938, and then again on July 5, 1945, in Flagstaff, but they later divorced. Later on, Audrey married William James Cline Jr. on December 31, 1957 in Clark County, Nevada. However, in 1974 she married Jack again for the third time.

Audrey belonged to the Mothers' Club of Prescott and the Smoki People, Inc. organizations.  In her nomination for the Territorial Women’s Rose Garden, the Mothers’ Club stated, “Audrey has left us a memory of exceptional merit because of her quiet, useful life and caring ways to her family and friends.”  Audrey died on August 31, 1981, at the Yavapai Community Hospital in Prescott and is buried in Arizona Pioneers' Home Cemetery between her parents.

Donor: The Mothers' Club, 1989
Photo Located: RGC MS-39, Box H, Folder-Hume, Audrey (Pierce)
Updated:  10/14/2021, Gretchen Hough Eastman & Shari Elmer