From East to Midwest: A Family Story

by Madelon Proctor

Martha Esther Mason Locke lived a life of indefatigable faith and dedication. Born to Dallas King Polk Mason and Helen May Kimball Mason on July 30, 1883, she raised her children without a husband through World War I, Prohibition, The Great Depression, and World War II – some of the most tumultuous years in the history of the United States. Generations look back on the contributions of their ancestors to reflect on their place in the world. Although often overlooked, the stories of women and the legacies they leave contribute to the histories of nations. Martha passed on values of hard work and perseverance to her children who, in turn, passed these values down as well. The adversities she experienced in life shaped her story, and her devotion to God and family are a legacy for the ages.

When her daughter Ida was about seven years old and little Lillian was still an infant, Martha’s husband, Jonathan Merrill Locke, abandoned them. It was around the year 1912, and although a family member or perhaps a friend kept up with his whereabouts, his wife and daughters would never see him again.¹ After John left, the three moved in with Martha’s widowed mother, Helen, to her home in the town of Ellsworth, Wisconsin. A local store owned by one of their close neighbors hired Martha, and she was able to support her family working and maintaining a life of thrift and ingenuity. While in that profession, Martha discovered that she was a whiz at math: she could add “four-digit numbers, a whole column as long as your arm, in just a few seconds.”² It was not the life she imagined for them, but, like many women of her time, she would prove her strength through hardship. Perhaps just as she was getting her bearings, with a nine-year-old and another not quite two, fighting in a “Great War” began in July 1914.

Even before the United States declared war on the German Empire in 1917, there was a concerted effort to support the allied forces from afar. The Wisconsin Historical Society, located in the state capital of Madison, began collecting war propaganda from almost the first shots.³ The society’s Assistant Superintendent Annie Nunns, in 1920, stated that “if the war had not stopped, we should have been obligated to move into the street and let the posters have the building!”⁴ Citizens were encouraged to purchase bonds and do anything they could to conserve and contribute to the conflict. Even children could do their part by forgoing wheat and clearing their plates at table! Wheat was once one of Wisconsin’s most lucrative cash crops, but corn and oats had replaced it in the 1870s, making the gist of this advertisement an easy one for Wisconsinites to swallow.⁵ Both men and women did their utmost for their boys abroad, but the women’s suffrage movement was known as a particularly strong influence for that effort; women’s committees led the country to save food and prevent hunger.⁶

Martha was a member of the national temperance movement; the fight for abstinence from — or at least moderation for — alcohol was one of the things that Wisconsin’s big breweries used as a roadblock to suffrage for its female citizens. “Between 1899 and 1915 there were no fewer than 21 attempts in the Wisconsin state Senate and Assembly to enfranchise women in various ways, but each attempt failed.”⁷ By 1916, suffrage was on an upward swing and President Woodrow Wilson began its public endorsement, on a federal level with his speech to Congress in 1918.

The Great War ended on November 11, 1918, and the following year Wilson called a special session of Congress for the issue of the vote, stating that “the amendment must pass.”⁸ On June 10, 1919, after the nineteenth amendment passed through both houses of Congress, Wisconsin became the first state to ratify it. Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox, both hailing from the state of Ohio, contested the presidential seat in November 1920. Harding took Wisconsin, and subsequently the nation, buoyed along with votes from conservative women looking toward a federal prohibition of alcohol. Martha Locke would have happily placed her vote alongside many others in Pierce County, almost eighty-three percent of whom voted for a “Return to Normalcy” after the first World War.⁹

Life did gain a certain normalcy for the Locke girls: Martha attended Ladies Temperance meetings while the girls probably attended school at the Freier School in Ellsworth. Built in 1885, classes at Freier “were held for six months each winter and two months each summer until 1907, when the winter term was lengthened to eight months.”¹⁰ Martha and the girls, along with Martha’s mother Helen, worshipped at the Methodist Episcopal Church. Martha made sure they were in attendance every week at the building located at 154 S. Plum Street in Ellsworth.¹¹ The church was dedicated in 1874, it was where she and John were married, and she appreciated the love and community her church family had for them in his absence.

The encouragement and assistance of church and family touched the lives of the little family. Although their household was relatively small, the extended members living in and around Ellsworth were numerous. They were loving and supportive, always finding time to get together for a visit. Cousin William Mason and his wife Myrtle lived in Trimbelle; they had a daughter, Inez, who was right between Martha’s girls in age. William’s sisters Maud and Minnie, too, lived nearby with their families, and they had several children to play with Ida and Lorraine. Then, of course, there were her brother Forrest’s girls, Rochelle and Lillian; their family lived right down the street and the kids were always together!¹²

The girls grew up, as children often do. Ida graduated around 1923 and married Kenneth Carter Close in 1925. He worked in the printing profession, and they lived with his father, Rueben, at his house on Terrace Avenue in East Ellsworth for a while before moving to the Close family farm in nearby Beldenville.¹³ Kenneth was born to Reuben William Close and Harriet R. Carter Close on July 25, 1904, at their home in Ellsworth, Wisconsin. They had a daughter they christened Helen, named for Harriet’s oldest sister, but she died at only two days old in January 1902, and Ken grew up as an only child.

Rueben worked in carpentry, in the lumber yards, and as a farmer over the years, while they supplemented their income by taking in boarders. Rueben’s father was one of the original pioneers to Pierce County and filed a homestead claim for the land the Closes owned– that farm in Beldenville.¹⁴

Kenneth’s mother Harriet was the youngest child of Harvey Carter and his second wife Margaret Mullen Carter. Also one of the first pioneers from the eastern states, Harvey was living in South Dakota when he was widowed. Margaret arrived on a ship from Ireland in September 1850, and the couple married on September 15, 1851, only one year later.¹⁵ It is believed that Margaret was a mail-order-bride, and she was probably leaving Ireland because of widespread famine during that time.¹⁶ A devout member of the Catholic church, Margaret raised their children in that denomination. When Harriet married into the Close family, she, too, reared her children in the Catholic faith. Although Ida grew up Protestant, Kenneth was strict about their family’s attendance at Mass every Sunday.¹⁷

The young Close family welcomed Kenneth George “Ken” in July 1927, followed by Michael Joseph “Mike” in December 1929, and James Rueben “Jim” in September 1931. Finally, they welcomed their only daughter Mary Helen in May 1935. Two more sons, John Thomas and baby Joseph, were born still in 1938 and 1940, but they were never forgotten. Mary Helen helped name her youngest brother and said that Nana Helen would hold the little ones in Heaven. Ida’s grandmother, Helen, who took the little family in when John disappeared, had died in August 1929. Ida and her grandmother were close; she missed her dearly and named her daughter after her.

Times were hard for the Closes. They started their family right at the onset of the greatest economic disaster the country has ever known: The Great Depression. Many historians attribute the stock market crash over three “Black” days in October 1929 as the beginning of the Great Depression.¹⁸ The super-inflated status of the market burst, and many saw their life savings lost overnight. Another contributor to the devastation was the “Dust Bowl” where the country’s most prominent farmlands had been.¹⁹ Kenneth continued working as a printer, but the family also grew a lot of their own vegetables on the farm. They would pop popcorn to give away to neighbors for a snack and a treat; it brought some smiles in those bleak times.

The Close family grew just like their crops, though it seemed like businesses were faltering all around them. In 1933, Wisconsin dairy farmers were bringing in less than half of what they had in 1930 and took up pickets and stopped trucks and trains. They poured out gallon upon gallon of the milk headed to processing plants. They vandalized cheese factories, even using kerosene or dynamite to make their case known. Slowly, prices rose again, but Wisconsin farmers lost an estimated $10 million during that trying time.²⁰ Kenneth’s father Rueben had some cows, but his was not so much of a working farm anymore. Kenneth ran his printing business while the farm chores fell to the boys. Rueben’s favorite grandson was Ken, and he confided some very important things to that young man – things he would not tell his son.

One hot Monday afternoon in August 1939, Rueben’s horse kicked him, and he staggered into the house and sat in his chair. Ida and Kenneth found him there, but it was too late. They went to the bank and cleared out the money, then announced to the family that Rueben had died. Kenneth took over his father’s properties and decided to sell the old house in East Ellsworth. After the sale was complete, Ken asked what happened to the gold there? No one knew what he was talking about, so he told them that his grandfather had hidden gold pieces in the flower boxes on the windows. He built false bottoms into the boxes and stashed the gold inside. Kenneth was able to retrieve the gold, and it helped the family make it through the rest of the depression.²¹

Martha’s job at the store ended during the depression that historians would call “Great.” She began working there when she was a young woman as the sole support for her girls, and that work kept them until those girls became young women themselves. With the beginning of a new decade, Martha moved in with her dear friend Lizzie Kurschinsky. The 1930s were filled with changes: Martha’s mother died in 1929, Lizzie’s husband passed away in 1937, Ida’s daughter Lorraine moved to the city, Ida and Kenneth moved to nearby Beldenville, and news arrived concerning Martha’s estranged husband, John. At fifty-seven, she could look back and see mistakes, but also she could also see the Lord’s hand through every trial. When Martha’s mother Helen moved from Vermont to Minnesota as one of the first pioneers, she too persevered.

Helen Kimball was born to Oscar Kimball and Esther Stowe Kimball sometime early in the year 1850, and her little sister Flora was born around 1853.²² The young couple married on February 5, 1849 and they lived in Readsboro, Vermont. West Readsboro formally adopted the name of Hartwellville in January of 1850, and the new township appointed Oscar as its postmaster. His main profession, however, was carpentry.

In the 1850 census, Esther’s siblings and their widowed mother are listed at the bottom of the same page with the Kimball family: Elizabeth Crosier Stowe is 61, David Bradley has just turned 25, Lewis and his wife Hannah are 22 and 21, and Sarah Maria is 20.²³ In April of 1851 Helen’s cousin Andrew, the first of Lewis and Hannah Stowe’s children, is born in Leyden, Massachusetts. By 1855, much of the family relocated to Leyden; only David remained in Readsboro by 1860.²⁴ Aunt Sarah married Hannah’s brother, Charles Rollins Babcock, and the young Stowe and Babcock families began to grow. Early in the month of February 1857, however, another change is apparent with the birth and untimely death of baby Adeline Babcock in the new territory of Minnesota. In September of that year, both the Lewis Stowe family and the Charles Babcock family are enumerated in the census that was taken to qualify the territory as a state.²⁵ By 1860, Elizabeth Stowe had also made her home in Minnesota, and lived with her son’s family.²⁶

During the middle of the nineteenth century, Wisconsin and Minnesota were touted as lands filled with opportunity for those seeking more profitable occupations than the east coast would allow them. By 1857, rail lines had just begun coming to that part of the country. Settlers could ride the train to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and then travel by wagon until they arrived at the Mississippi River. Once they reached that great divider of the continent, Helen’s family would take a steamboat across to Winona, Minnesota, and make their way in a wagon to their land claim.²⁷ The land was fertile, perfect for farming wheat and other major cash crops of that time; it was also breathtakingly beautiful. The native people called it “Mni Sota Makoce,” which means “land where the waters reflect the clouds.”²⁸ There were trees everywhere, and lakes of the deepest blue seemed like glass in their untouched purity. This land was in the ancestral grounds of the Dakota tribes.²⁹ The papers, however, declared it uninhabited and open for settlement to those who would cultivate it.

Through a series of treaties, the various bands of the Dakota were removed from their homes to a reservation too small to fit them. In 1851, it encompassed ten miles on either side of the Minnesota River and ran one hundred forty miles long; this was meant to sustain over six thousand Dakota. Less than a decade later, due to the further encroachment of white settlers in the area, the northern bank of that territory was taken back by the United States government. Rather than hunt, as their ancestors had done, the Indians were encouraged to learn farming practices to become self-sustaining.³⁰ Their crops failed in their first years on the reservation, however, and as more settlers arrived, wild game became harder to find. As white families came, they took possession of cabins belonging to the Dakota and planted their already cleared fields, further exacerbating the devastation. The Dakota were starving.³¹

Written into the terms of the treaties they signed, the United States government was supposed to give them annuity payments for their lands. Scheduled to arrive early in July 1862, by mid-August it had still not come. Indigenous families expected the quick turnaround they had experienced in prior years, and so had brought along only minimal provisions. As tensions rose, shop owners and local tradesmen refused to extend credit to the Indians. Some merchants feared the annuity payments would never arrive at all because of the Civil War in the south. On August 17, 1862, some young men stole food and killed a farmer and his family, setting off what the white populace would term a massacre throughout the whole of southwestern Minnesota. Thousands of settlers evacuated from New Ulm, one of the cities hardest hit by the violence, and headed east into Wisconsin. Thousands of Indians, even many who had not participated in the attacks, were rounded up and contained in a concentration camp at nearby Fort Snelling. Helen’s family lived near where these events took place and experienced the terror that came with them.³²

Listed immediately below Charles and Sarah Babcock in the 1860 Census for Waterville, the page after Uncle Lewis and Aunt Hannah, is an entry for an Oscar and Hester Kimball, along with a seven-year-old girl called Margaret and a two-year-old boy, David.³³ Flora’s middle name was Margaret, and it is possible the girls had a little brother who did not reach adulthood. Because the census is notorious for similar errors, it could be assumed that the “Hester” listed was really Helen’s mother, Esther. Helen might have remained in Vermont to attend school at the time; there are a few Helen Kimballs around her age mentioned in census records in that state.

The specific documentation for Helen’s little family is in shadow during these years, but records from the time are sporadic at best.³⁴ The definitive location of Esther and Oscar remains elusive, but an Oscar H Kimball comes up in the draft records for Hastings, Minnesota in July of 1863.³⁵ Additionally, the Pierce County Historical Society has information stating that Helen came through Hastings, Faribault, Waterville, and New Ulm, Minnesota as a child, and also says that she was present in New Ulm during the Dakota War of 1862.³⁶

Minnesota was still a frontier, and disease and hardship were common. When Aunt Sarah died in June of 1862, Uncle Lewis donated land for a cemetery for the residents of Waterville, Minnesota. Sarah Babcock was the first person interred at the Sakatah Cemetery.³⁷ Less than two years later, on February 26, 1864, her husband Charles suffered a tragic accident, and their children were orphaned.³⁸ Charles had remarried the previous October, and he and his new wife Marsha were expecting their first child that summer. Marsha Emeline Babcock and her unborn son, Charles James, moved to St Paul, while Charles Sr.’s three daughters by Aunt Sarah – Sarah Elizabeth, Ella Maria, and Mary Etta – moved in with Uncle Lewis’s family. Helen Kimball had married Dallas Mason and was living in the state of Wisconsin by the time the 1870 census is taken. Flora, however, was working as a schoolteacher in Minnesota that year, living with her Stowe and Babcock cousins.³⁹

Dallas was the fifth child and third son of Stephen D. Mason and his first wife Rebecca Dillingham. He was born on December 4, 1844, in Kane County, Illinois, just west of Chicago. Born a month after James Knox Polk and George Mifflin Dallas were elected as the eleventh president and his running mate, Stephen and Rebecca named their son after them: Dallas King Polk Mason. After his mother died from consumption in 1851, the family moved to Ellington, in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, where his father was appointed as the postmaster in 1852.⁴⁰ Stephen Mason was a farmer and, like the Kimballs, Stowes, and Babcocks, probably moved to Wisconsin in response to the prospect of high-quality farmland at an unprecedented price.

Stephen D. Mason was born in Malone, in Franklin County, New York, in August of 1816. That year was known as “the year without a summer,” “the poverty year,” and “eighteen hundred and froze-to-death,” because of global devastation and crop failures due to harsh winter temperatures even at the height of summer.⁴¹ “Hundreds of thousands died from the combined effects of typhus, exposure, and starvation. Food prices increased dramatically by 1817,” and the New York economy was on shaky ground.⁴² The Mason family was not new to hardship and fighting, however. Sampson Mason was on the side of the Parliamentarians during the Bolton Massacre, part of the English Civil War in 1644, before emigrating to the Massachusetts Bay Colony where he worked as a shoemaker. His second great-grandson, James, fought in the American Revolution, and James’s son, William fought in the War of 1812. William was Stephen’s father, and he is listed as a gilder in New York in the 1819 tax records for that state.⁴³

Stephen inherited a love of adventure from his forefathers and was one of the original settlers in Porter County, Indiana, arriving around the time it was established in 1836. He married Rebecca Dillingham, the second daughter of Henry Dillingham and Amanda Page, on April 6, 1838, in the same county. Rebecca’s father had also fought in the War of 1812, but he was located on the borders between Canada and Ohio. Having moved to Ohio and settled near Bloomingville, he worked as an “express rider” and a farmer.⁴⁴ Rebecca’s mother’s family had also arrived in the Ohio valley as some of the first settlers from the east and experienced firsthand a notorious “massacre” by some local Indians.

Hannah Page, the younger sister of Rebecca Dillingham’s mother Amanda Page, who was then just a girl between the ages of ten and fourteen, travelled to the area around Cold Creek, called Castalia. Her father’s friend, a Mr. Butler, had asked to have her come to help his wife with housework and the care of their children while he and some other men worked in the corn fields. It was the spring of 1813, and the war was still being waged against the British and their Indian allies, but the planting could not wait for peace because their families still needed to eat. While Mrs. Butler was at her weaving, her neighbor Mrs. Putnam was rocking her baby and another neighbor Mrs. Snow was ill in bed. The younger children from the three families played on the floor with Hannah.

“Suddenly above the clatter of the loom and the chatter of the children Mrs. Butler became conscious of a pounding noise. She thought Mrs. Snow wanted something and was taking this way to call them, so she told Hannah to go and wait on her. As Hannah reached the door, an Indian grabbed her by the hair and yanked her into the yard. Here she saw the Indians carrying furniture from the Snow cabin, and Mrs. Snow in her nightclothes, her teeth chattering clutching a blanket about her shoulders. Hannah ran to her and they clung together as the Indians emptied feathers from the beds and used the ticks to pack what they wanted to carry away. A few moments later the Indians brought Mrs. Putnam and Mrs. Butler out of the weaving room. Mrs. Putnam said the first she knew the room was full of Indians, one of whom grasped her by the hair and hustled her into the yard. Said Mrs. Putnam, ‘He asked me if I would go, and I said yes.’”⁴⁵

Mrs. Snow, the baby, and several of the younger children were killed, while Hannah and the rest were forced to march to Malden, Canada with their captors. The survivors “were released or purchased by whites a few months after.”⁴⁶

These experiences doubtless shaped the worldview of Dallas’ grandmother, Amanda; she was two years older than her sister Hannah, and they were very close. Life on the frontier held many obstacles for settlers, but the call of “free land” rang from the lips of politicians in the decade leading up to the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln campaigned on that promise, and many people took him up on it.⁴⁷ In October 1854, Stephen D Mason paid cash for forty acres of land to the Menasha land office near Green Bay.⁴⁸ After Rebecca’s death, Dallas’ father Stephen married Clarissa Greeley, but she died around 1857 – around the time the family moved to Friendship, Wisconsin.

Lincoln’s campaigning served him well in the Midwest; he claimed almost sixty percent of Wisconsin’s votes toward his bid for the presidency of the United States in the election of 1860. “Many Wisconsin state banks were heavily invested in Southern bonds,” and when secessions rocked the South “thirty-eight of the banks failed…Crop prices fell to ruinous lows, while the freight rates charged to ship crops to market rose sharply.”⁴⁹ Stephen married again, to a woman named Susanna Orrilla Hamilton, and she helped raise the children throughout a move west to Pierce County. The move could have been to recoup losses or maybe, like many other men in that state, to shield his family from the war tearing the country apart. “Wisconsin was embroiled in a deeply controversial drive to draft men into service in the Civil War,” and the population in the western counties grew around that time. “One of only two western states to” institute a draft, “every Wisconsin county was required to meet a quota” for enlistments or impressments.⁵⁰

Whether Stephen was in support of the war or not is not clear; however, in September of 1861 James F. Mason enlisted in the 11 Wisconsin Infantry, and on January 20, 1862, a month after his seventeenth birthday, Dallas also joined up. James was sent to Arkansas and then Louisiana before being wounded during the siege of Vicksburg in May of 1863. Dallas served with Wisconsin’s 19 Infantry in Company D, and he promoted to the rank of a corporal by the time he mustered out in April 1865.⁵¹ His regiment was stationed primarily around Virginia and Washington D.C. and served to occupy Richmond directly before Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army at Appomattox. James mustered out that September after a time serving in the occupation of Mobile, Alabama.⁵² After the war, they came home to another new stepmother – their father married Susanna’s older sister Leticia after the former died in 1865. Stephen Mason was made a sheriff’s deputy in the town of Ellsworth, and it was to the little township of Ellsworth that Dallas brought his bride, Helen May Kimball, in November 1869.

Helen and Dallas were married on November 18, 1869, in River Falls, Wisconsin. Forrest Lee joined the family in August 1870, just about a month after the census taker had come through! The summers were very dry in 1870 and 1871, and farmers’ crops were failing. Dallas moved the family from Hammond to Ellsworth and invested in a stage to supplement their income. He began running a dray business and bought a postal route, too. The Panic of 1873 and the Long Depression forced people to find other ways to make a living. With more mouths to feed, having added Della May in October 1872 and Ida Belle in August 1875, the family needed to be thrifty and creative. By the time that depression ended around 1879, another was just around the corner, beginning in 1882 with more price reductions. Because the family was in town now and not dependent on the volatile income of farming, they felt more secure to add another baby: Martha Esther Mason was born in Ellsworth on July 30, 1883.

Growing up in town meant Martha attended the local school. The state of Wisconsin passed legislation in the latter part of the 1880s requiring citizens to “commit tax dollars to support libraries in their schools.”⁵³ Publicly funded education was seen as a priority to raise literacy rates among its more rural population, and ensuring adequate reading material was available to those developing minds was important. Memorization skills and studies of English, mathematics, history, and the natural world would have filled Martha’s school days. The one-room schoolhouse hosted all grades, each in its own row with a separation of the girls from the boys. A stove heated the building in the winter, while open windows provided a cooling breeze in the warmer months. School days in the 1890s began around eight o’clock in the morning and would have ended by three or four in the afternoon with an hour’s break for lunch. Whereas children from local farms might have had to walk several miles in all sorts of weather to receive an education, it was quite a bit easier for townsfolk like Martha, her cousins, and her sister.

At the close of the school day Martha and her cousins were out the door, and they ran down Main Street toward home. The chores must be done, verses read, and dinner prepared before Pa got home from work. On Saturdays they could pick black berries on Grandpa’s farm or try to help catch chickens to be culled. It was fun to chase them around the yard, but not so much fun to pluck them once they had been killed. The children gathered feathers to stuff pillows and mattresses, and that was always a rather messy job.

As Martha grew older, she would complete three years of high school before ceasing her education.⁵⁴ She met a young man by the name of Jonathan Merrill Locke, and they wed on August 19, 1903 in the Methodist Episcopal Church on Plum Street. It was a beautiful ceremony performed by Reverend Joseph Eugene Cook. His family, like John’s, was from Pennsylvania, and they moved to Wisconsin after some Catholic children threw stones at them when walking to and from school.⁵⁵ His wife Gertrude was just about Martha’s age, and they grew quite close while the Reverend served their congregation.

John grew up in nearby Trimbelle and his family owned a lovely farm just outside of town. His brother Harry ran the farm with his father, while his mother did work in the local women’s league. John worked for the railroad as a telegrapher, and his prospects looked good for becoming a station agent in Beldenville. Martha loved him and admired his dedication to his family and their future together. His parents, Jonathan Moore Locke and Ellen Almira Foster Locke, made the journey westward in the 1880s. His family expected great things from him. He came from a long line of hard-working men and had so many dreams to pursue!

Jonathan’s father, Johnathan Moore Locke, was born on the 15 of February 1844 in Lyman, New Hampshire. His own parents, Jonathan Harrison Locke and Sarah Cook, were married on February 23, 1837, at the Congregational Church in Deerfield, New Hampshire. They welcomed their first child, a little girl they named Florinda, exactly one week before their first anniversary. His siblings Sarah, Henry Harrison, and Martha followed her, arriving every year or two to fill up the young couple’s hearts and home.

Sometime after his brother Steven Farnsworth was born in 1846, but before the birth of his sister Mary Keziah in 1848, the family relocated to Venango County, Pennsylvania. Perhaps because of the cholera epidemics raging through the country around the time, Little Mary died at just two years old on November 1, 1850, and another sister, born December 5 of that year, was given her name in remembrance. Tragedy struck the Lockes again when Jonathan’s oldest sister died at the age of sixteen on December 9, 1854. Another child helped to heal that hurt when he joined the family July 2, 1856: Hannibal Orlando would be the youngest child born to the Lockes.⁵⁶

Jonathan’s father was a well-known millwright and blacksmith in the locality of Titusville, Pennsylvania. He was born in the year 1814 and the country remained relatively free of political conflict for most of his life. He might have told the children stories about his grandfather in the Revolutionary War or his father fighting in the War of 1812. Perhaps he passed down the tale of Captain Jonathan Locke, the first of his ancestors to have come to America from Scotland around 1644; Captain John was killed by an Indian while he tended his fields in Rye, New Hampshire in 1696, but he is said to have cut off his assailant’s nose!⁵⁷

By the time the newest namesake of that ancestral figure was nearing the end of his childhood, tensions were heating up between the North and South, and the young man must have been fired up by all the talk. After the election of Abraham Lincoln in November, South Carolina adopted an Ordinance of Secession on December 20, 1860, leading to more secessions and the formation of the Confederate States of America. It was the beginning of the Civil War. On February 17, 1862, just two days after his eighteenth birthday, Jonathan enrolled in the service in his hometown of Titusville. March 25, under the authority of Captain Richard Dodge, he was mustered in for a term of three years to the 57 Pennsylvania, Company K (he was later transferred to Company E).⁵⁸

He served with the 57 in locations from Virginia to his own home state of Pennsylvania. Notable battles include the Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and, of course, Gettysburg. After a discouraging first day of fighting for the Union the day before, the morning of July 2 opened with Federal troops along Cemetery Ridge, and Seminary Ridge was lined with Confederate soldiers. After General Robert E. Lee ordered a flank attack on both sides of the line, the second day also ended bleakly for the North. The 57 had 205 men under the command of Colonel Peter Sides, but he was wounded in the fighting on the second. Captain Alanson H. Nelson took command, and by the close of the Fourth of July: 11 were dead, 46 wounded, and 59 missing from his regiment. Jonathan Locke was one of that last grouping of men – he was missing from his unit and had been captured by the enemy. He was on his way to the Confederate prison in Andersonville, Georgia.^{59 60}

Jonathan would be one of only 11 of these men to return to their regiment and finish out his term of service. He mustered out of the army in March of 1865, but his regiment went on to fight at Appomattox and join as part of one of the most decisive victories in that terrible war. The country was forever changed. His state of Pennsylvania felt changed when he arrived home from the war. Even his family unit had changed while he was away. Martha, his nearest sibling, had married and given birth to a beautiful little girl, Emma Florinda, right before Jonathan left, but her husband had moved his little family to Minnesota when the war started. Another daughter joined them there, but with her arrival came the loss of the mother. Martha Helen Carpenter, named for that unlucky parent, was born on March 21, 1863, and her mother succumbed to sickness less than a month later, on April 17. The baby came to live with her grandparents back in Pennsylvania, while her father and sister moved to Ohio where he remarried.⁶¹

It was around the time he returned from the war that Jonathan met and married Ellen Almira Foster. Born to Hiram Foster and Amy Ann Merrill on September 26, 1847, she grew up in western New York. Amy was seventeen years old when she gave birth to Ellen. Her husband, Hiram, was 24, and he always spoke of moving further west. For a young farmer and his seamstress wife, Illinois held promise and opportunity that New York did not. It took several years to save up enough money, and Hiram worked for his father-in-law. Lyman Merrill was a blacksmith by trade, but Hiram farmed his land and saved for the day he could move his little family west.

Finally, that day came. Amy was pregnant with their second child, but they travelled to northern Illinois, just south of the Wisconsin border. It was May of 1856 when their son Clarence was born, and everything seemed to be working out well for Hiram and Amy. Almost as suddenly as they had left New York, however, the records show that Amy left Illinois and returned home with her two children. She would be granted a divorce from her husband, something almost impossible to obtain in that time period unless adultery was involved.⁶²

Ellen grew up helping with the sewing, knitting with her grandmother Content Main Merrill, and learning to do all the chores expected of a young woman in the late nineteenth century. The family would have kept a garden and some smaller livestock and poultry to sustain them in this western portion of New York. Having been cleared and settled almost forty years after the American Revolution, the area was still catching up with the industry in the eastern part of the state. By the late 1870s, Jamestown was called the “Pearl City of Western New York,” as it had become a hubbub for tourism and commerce.⁶³ This little town is most likely where Ellen met the young man named Jonathan Locke. His father was a blacksmith and did work all over that part of the country, having moved from New Hampshire after he had already been established in that business. Ellen’s grandfather, with whom she, her brother, and their mother lived after they left her father, was also a prospering blacksmith. Jonathan, like his older brother Harrison, went on trips to ascertain different business prospects for his family; it seems likely he would have met Lyman Merrill and, through him, his granddaughter.

Ellen and Jonathan were married on her twentieth birthday, the 26 day of September in the year 1867, near his home in Titusville, Pennsylvania. They made their first home there near his parents, and Jonathan continued to help with the family business in machinery and oil procurement.⁶⁴ Their first son Harrison Burton – or “Harry” – arrived two weeks before their first anniversary. Named for Jonathan’s oldest brother, Harry was doted on and everyone who met him was smitten. A daughter followed in April 1871: they called her Edna and gave her the middle name of Amy for her grandmother. “Birdie” was the baby; Ellen and Jonathan named her Sarah Celeste, and she came into the family in July of 1874, just a few days past eleven years after her father’s capture. How often did he remember that time? Did the trauma of those events, especially the fact that he lived through it when so many of his comrades did not, affect his parenting?

Early in the month of July 1870, Jonathan’s father left “on a collecting tour through the Parker oil region, and remaining away a long time was advertised in the papers but was not found.”⁶⁵ In February 1872 he turned up in Green Bay, Wisconsin with $63.30 in his pocket and no recollection of how he got there. He had been receiving treatment for an “aberration of the mind,” but after coming home he never had a recurrence.⁶⁶ Ellen helped her mother-in-law, although she did have to take in boarders, while Jonathan and his brothers kept the family business going during that year and a half. Perhaps the stresses, the extra responsibilities, and all the unknowns associated with his father’s disappearance weighed heavily on Jonathan. He and Ellen moved to Wisconsin, staking a claim on two lots in Pierce County in what would become the town of River Falls. He built a home and started farming – his father-in-law, Hiram Foster, joined their household and taught Jonathan his trade.

Jonathan and Ellen’s youngest son, Jonathan Morrill Locke Jr., was born on June 1, 1882, in Wisconsin.⁶⁷ The family lived in the westernmost part of the state, right next to the Mississippi River. John and his older brother Harry worked outside on their father’s farm while the girls, Edna and Birdie, helped Ma in the garden, with the sewing and mending, with cooking, and with keeping the house clean and tidy. The children would pick wild raspberries, gather herbs, and harvest rhubarb. Birdie knew the best places and she always let John tag along with her. Ma taught the girls how to can the vegetables from the garden, make preserves with the berries, and medicines with the herbs they gathered. Rhubarb, for instance, could be used as a fever reducer or a laxative, but it also made a nice wine one might compare to a light champagne.⁶⁸

Ellen was never truly happy, as far as John knew. His father often gazed out at their fields while reliving the battles of the Civil War in his head, and his harsh punishments incited some fear in the children. But their mother’s quiet sadness did not encourage much comfort. In July 1892, when John was only ten years old, his mother drank carbolic acid while on a train bound for Hudson.⁶⁹ She meant to end her life but was hospitalized and said to have recovered. She recovered her health, but emotional wellbeing was still fleeting. Generational traumas affect children in many ways, and one can imagine how his father’s imprisonment at the notorious Andersonville and his mother’s attempted suicide might have affected the young boy.

While working for the railroad as a telegrapher, Jonathan met DeFayne Esther Lynch, also called “Dimple” by those who knew her. It was not uncommon for men to keep another family on the other end of the line, but Jonathan chose, instead, to leave. He took DeFayne along with him to Montana, Oregon, and California. Someone supporting Martha’s side of things discovered him in every town, however, so when they moved to Idaho, he changed his name to Robert William Schinzler.⁷⁰ The couple had two boys and a girl: Robert Marshall, John Donald “Jack”, and Ellen Eileen. John – well, now Robert – was on the school board and Scout Council in Donnelly Idaho; life was good and the Schinzlers visited with friends and were well-known in the community.⁷¹ When John shot himself it was a shock to everyone he knew there– perhaps not so much to his wife back in Wisconsin, though. As the Great Depression loomed on, John committed suicide on August 19, 1939. The day would have been their thirty-sixth anniversary.⁷²

Martha’s husband left and the dreams they built were shattered, but she raised their daughters to love and cherish family ties. She loved her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. When they came to visit her, she always had some sugary confection to offer them. Once when Jim asked for some of the peanut brittle on the counter and she responded that “God helps those who helps themselves, so help yourself to the peanut brittle.”⁷³ As she got older, though, she moved into a nursing home on Piety Street in Ellsworth. She suffered from a hernia and did not want to have it operated on.⁷⁴ After a time she relented, but it was too late and she passed away on June 2, 1967.

Family came from all over to celebrate her life. They chatted, some listened to the ball game on the radio, everyone ate the home-cooked goods prepared with love, and the kids ran and played. Some of the children played inside Martha’s grave before her casket was lowered into it; it was great fun to hide there and scare the others when they popped up again!⁷⁵ When her parents’ families moved from the East to the Midwest, they could never have imagined the legacy of love they would build. Martha held her family together through trying times, and even in death they gathered in love to remember her.

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1. Peter Close, interview by Madelon Proctor, Family History Interview: Peter Close In Interviewer's Possession, March 20, 2023 ↩
2. Ibid. ↩
3. Simone Munson, “Collecting for Victory: World War I Print Propaganda and the Wisconsin Historical Society.” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 102, no. 2 (2018): 18–27. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26541164. (24) ↩
4. Munson, “Collecting for Victory,” 19 ↩
5. The Wisconsin Mosaic Project, A Brief History of Economics in Wisconsin. April 17, 2000, Accessed April 9, 2023. https://dalbello.comminfo.rutgers.edu/FLVA/background/economics.html. ↩
6. Erika Janik, “Food Will Win the War: Food Conservation in World War I Wisconsin.” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 93, no. 3 (2010): 17–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20699223. ↩
7. University of Wiscsonsin, Madison, Timeline of Wisconsin Women’s Suffrage. Accessed April 9, 2023. https://www.library.wisc.edu/gwslibrarian/bibliographies/womens-suffrage-in-wisconsin-a-centennial-resource-guide/timeline/. ↩
8. Ibid. ↩
9. William Deverell, "Warren Harding Tried to Return America to ‘Normalcy’ After WWI and the 1918 Pandemic. It Failed." Smithsonian Magazine, May 19, 2020. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/warren-harding-back-to-normalcy-after-1918-pandemic-180974911/. ↩
10. Pierce County Historical Association, History Sites. Accessed April 1, 2023. https://piercecountyhistorical.org/history-sites/.​ The school did have to close its doors a couple times after 1941, temporarily, however it did not permanently shut down until 1957. ↩
11. Pierce County Historical Association, History Sites - Ellsworth (City of). Accessed April 1, 2023. https://piercecountyhistorical.org/history-sites-ellsworth-city-of/.​ The building is now owned by the local VFW chapter and has been remodeled several times over the years. - Judy Wiff, VFW Moves into Old Church. May 28, 2011. Accessed April 1, 2023. https://www.republicaneagle.com/news/vfw-moves-into-old-church/article_4866a2b0-ca7a-5a21-98a7-23c542a 0f138.html. ↩
12. 1920. "Martha Esther Mason - 1920 US Census Ellsworth, WI." United States Federal Census. Ellsworth, Pierce County, WI, January 6. Roll: T625_2009; Page: 3B; Enumeration District: 156 ↩
13. 1920. "William Henry Mason - 1920 US Census Trimbelle, WI." Trimbelle, Pierce County, WI, January 31. Roll: T625_2009; Page: 11A; Enumeration District: 172. - 1920. "Maud Belle Mason - 1920 US Census Eau Claire, WI." United States Federal Census. Eau Claire, Eau Claire County, WI, January 10. Roll: T625_1984; Page: 10A; Enumeration District: 118. - 1920. "Pearl Minnie Mason - 1920 US Census Red Wing, MN." United States Federal Census. Red WIng, Goodhue, MN, January 13. Roll: T625_831; Page: 15A; Enumeration District: 54. - 1920. "Forrest Lee Mason - 1920 US Census Ellsworth, WI." United States Federal Census. Ellsworth, Pierce County, WI, January 5. Roll: T625_2009; Page: 3A; Enumeration District: 156. 1930. "Reuben Close - 1930 US Census Ellsworth, WI." United States Federal Census. Ellsworth, Pierce County, WI, April 14. Page: 9A; Enumeration District: 0006; FHL microfilm: 2342338. ↩
14. Ancestry.com. 1857. "Solomon T. Close Land Claim." US General Land Office Records. 27 - N, Range 18 - W, Section 11, Pierce County, WI, April 1. Meridian 4th PM - 1831 MN/WI. ↩
15. 1851. "Margaret Mullen and Harvey Carter Marriage Record." Wisconsin, US Marriage Records. Eden, Eau Claire County, WI, September 15. - 1850. "Margaret Mullen Immigration." New York Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists. New York, New York, September 2. Microfilm Serial: M237, 1820-1897; Line: 3; List Number: 1010. - Proctor, Family History Interview: Peter Close ↩
16. Ibid ↩
17. William Close, interview by Madelon Proctor, Family History Interview: William Close In Interviewer's Possession, March 18, 2023. ↩
18. TheStreet Staff, What Was the Stock Market Crash of 1929? Definition, Causes & Outcomes. October 27, 2022. Accessed March 30, 2023. https://www.thestreet.com/dictionary/s/stock-market-crash-1929. ↩
19. History.com Editors, Dust Bowl. August 24, 2022. Accessed March 30, 2023. https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/dust-bowl. ↩
20. Erika Janik, Wisconsin's Milk Wars Of 1933. May 15, 2017. Accessed March 30, 2023. https://www.wpr.org/wisconsins-milk-wars-1933. ↩
21. Proctor, Family History Interview: William Close ↩
22. In some genealogies on Ancestry.com Oscar H. Kimball is said to have died in 1853, the year Flora was born, but evidence of his death is elusive. I will make a case for his continued health and subsequent move with the family to Minnesota before the Civil War. I did notice that the website automatically filled in a death date of 1853, Flora’s birth year, with her death location onto the page I have for him when I saved her death certificate to his page. It is possible others have had this same issue and simply left it. ↩
23. 1850. "Helen Kimball- 1850 US Census Readsboro, VT." United States Federal Census. Readsboro, Bennington County, VT, August 9. Record Group Number: 29; Series Number: M432; Residence Date: 1850; Home in 1850: Readsborough, Bennington, Vermont; Roll: 921; Page: 178a. ↩
24. 1855. "Lewis Stowe- 1855 MA Census Leyden, MA." Massachusettes State Census. Leyden, Franklin County, MA: New England Historic Genealogical Society, August 16. -1860. "David Stowe- 1860 US Census Readsboro, VT." United States Federal Census. Readsboro, Bennington County, VT, June 20. Record Group Number: 29; Series Number: M653; Residence Date: 1860; Home in 1860: Readsboro, Bennington, Vermont; Roll: M653_1316; Page: 930; Family History Library Film: 805316. ↩
25. 1857. "Lewis Stowe- 1857 Territorial Census Minnesota." MN Territorial Census. Township 109, Range 23, Le Sueur County, MN: Minnesota Historical Society, September 21. Reels 1-47 and 107-164. ↩
26. 1860. "Lewis Stowe- 1860 US Census Waterville, MN." United States Federal Census. Waterville, Le Sueur County, MN, July 10-11. NARA microfilm publication M653, 1,438 rolls. ↩
27. Catherine M. Sedgewick, "By Rail and River to Minnesota in 1854." Minnesota History 25 (2): 103-116. 1944 http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/25/v25i02p103-116.pdf -Wisconsin Historical Society, Railroads in Wisconsin. Accessed March 3, 2023. https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS1749.​ The Chicago to Rock Island line was completed on February 22, 1854. According to the site, no trains to Wisconsin made it past Milwaukee until 1857. After that year people could go all the way to the river at La Crosse, and ferry across. ↩
28. Caroline Fraser, Prarie Fires The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, (Henry Holt and Company, 2017) (Introduction) ↩
29. Ibid​ These tribes are made up of many different peoples and have historically been called the “Sioux” by Caucasians. However, that name was the one by which their enemies, the Ojibwe knew them and was not flattering. ↩
30. Because many members among peoples indigenous to the American continents prefer the term “Indian” or “American Indian” to that of “Native American,” I will use that in this narrative. It is also more accurate, historically, as to what tribal members would have been referred to during this time period. ↩
31. Fraser, Prarie Fires, Introduction ↩
32. Ibid ↩
33. (1860 US Census Waterville, MN 1860) ↩
34. Minnesota Historical Society, Census Records: Minnesota Territorial & State Census. September 6. Accessed March 12, 2023. https://libguides.mnhs.org/census/state.​ Minnesota’s census records were taken at irregular intervals in its early years as a territory and state. In 1849 the new territory was not yet separated into counties, by 1850 it only had a few represented in the census, 1853 records are not complete, the census from 1855 was subsequently lost, the one from 1857 was required to become a state and included false names and counties to boost population, and another census was not taken again until 1865. ↩
35. National Archives and Records Administration, "Civil War Consolidated Enrollment Lists, 1863-1865." Vol. Archive Volume Number: 3 of 4. Hastings, Minnesota, June and July, 1863. NAI: 4213514. ↩
36. Pierce County Historical Society, "Dallas Mason, Helen Kimball details." Bay City, Pierce County, WI: Ancestry.com, December 4, 2022. ↩
37. Sakatah Cemetary, Sakatah Cemetary of Waterville, MN. Accessed March 12, 2023. https://sakatahcemetery.org/about/ ↩
38. St Cloud Democrat, "Terrible and Fatal Accident." St Cloud Democrat, March 10, 1864: 2. “A FATAL accident occurred at Faribault on Tuesday last. Mr. Charles Babcock, employed in the flouring mill of Messrs. Dike & Co., was caught by his clothes on the wheels of some of the gearing in the upper story of the mill, and had his wrist literally ground to pieces, his arm above the elbow severely hurt, and a bad cut in the arm pit, while the flesh from the opposite thigh was torn from the bone, from the hip nearly to the knee, and mangled in a fearful manner. In this fearfully mutilated condition, he by some means extricated himself from his perilous position, and walked down one flight of stairs, when he fell, and got up again himself, before assistance could reach him from below. Medical assistance was at once obtained, but too late to save the injured man. He died on Saturday, leaving a wife and three children.” ↩
39. 1870. "Helen Mason- 1870 US Census Hammond, WI." United States Federal Census. Hammond, St Croix County, Wisconsin, July 12. Roll: M593_1737; Page: 35A. -1870. "Lewis Stowe- 1870 US Census Waterville, MN." United States Federal Census. Waterville, Le Sueur County, MN, July 5. Roll: T132_7; Page: 588. ↩
40. The National Archives in Washington, DC. 1832. "Stephen D. Mason Postmaster." Record of Appointment of Postmasters. Washington, DC, September 30. Record Group Number: 28; Series: M841; Roll Number: 143. ↩
41. Jaime McLeod, 1816: The Year WIthout a Summer. July 11, 2022. https://www.farmersalmanac.com/the-year-without-a-summer-10880. ↩
42. Jim Narron and Donald P Morgan, Crisis Chronicles: The Crisis of 1816, the Year without a Summer, and Sunspot Equilibria. October 3, 2014. https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/10/crisis-chronicles-the-crisis-of-1816-the-year-without-a-summer-and-sunspot-equilibria/. ↩
43. 1819. "William Mason - Gilder." US Ward Jury Census. New York, New York. http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/NYCMA~10~10. ↩
44. 1934. "A Terrible Incident with Indians." In Blockhouses and Military Posts of The Firelands, by Marjorie Loomis Cherry. WorldCat Listing: https://www.worldcat.org/title/1916260. ↩
45. Ibid ↩
46. 1910. "The Castalia Massacre." In History of the Western Reserve, Volume 1, by Harriet Taylor Upton and Harry Gardener Cutler, 392. Lewis Publishing Company. ↩
47. Fraser, Prarie Fires, Chapter 1: Maiden Rock ↩
48. Ancestry.com, "Stephen D. Mason Land Claim." Menasha County, WI, October 2, 1854. 1 SWSE 4TH PM - 1831 MINNESOTA/WISCONSIN No 22 N 16 E 2. ↩
49. Fraser, Prarie Fires, Chapter 1: Maiden Rock ↩
50. Fraser, Prarie Fires, Chapter 1: Maiden Rock ↩
51. Ancestry.com. 2023. Fold3 - Memorial Page for Dallas Mason. https://www.fold3.com/memorial/654504462/dallas-mason-civil-war-stories.... ↩
52. US National Park Service. 2023. Union Wisconsin Volunteers: 19th Regiment, Wisconsin Infantry. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UWI0019RI. - US National Park Service. 2023. Union Wisconsin Volunteers: 11th Regiment, Wisconsin Infantry. https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-battle-units-detail.htm?battleUnitCode=UWI0011RI. ↩
53. Wisconsin Historical Society. 2023. Circular relating to public school libraries of the State of Wisconsin, 1890. https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/tp/id/46024. ↩
54. 1940. "Martha Esther Mason - 1940 US Census Ellsworth, WI." United States Federal Census. Ellsworth, Pierce County, WI, April 19. Roll: m-t0627-04511; Page: 9A; Enumeration District: 47-6. ↩
55. Joseph Eugene Cooke (1871 - abt. 1932). January 20, 2014. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cooke-2330. ↩
56. Fulton. 2015. Jonathan Locke. Accessed March 3, 2023. http://www.fultonlockefamily.org/jonathan_locke.html. ↩
57. Heather Wilkinson Rojo, An Indian Without a Nose. January 20, 2010. Accessed March 3, 2023. http://www.genealogywise.com/profiles/blogs/an-indian-without-a-nose. ↩
58. Ancestry.com, Fold3. 2023. Memorial page for Jonathan M Locke. Accessed March 2, 2023. https://www.fold3.com/memorial/656960830/jonathan-m-locke-civil-war-stories... ↩
59. James M. Martin et all, 2018. History of the Fifty-Seventh Regiment, Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteer Infantry. Project Gutenburg. Internet Archive. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58315/58315-h/58315-h.htm.​ (Ch VIII) “The 57th entered the battle with 18 officers and 187 enlisted men. Our losses were 2 officers and 9 men killed, 9 officers and 37 men wounded, and 4 officers and 55 men captured, a total of 116, over half of the number carried into action. Lieutenant Henry Mitchell, of Company E, and Lieutenant John F. Cox, of Company I, were killed, and Colonel Sides was among the officers wounded. Of the 55 enlisted men captured only 11 returned to the regiment. The remaining 44 died in prison at Belle Isle, or at Andersonville. Major Neeper was captured, as were also Lieutenants Hines, Burns and Crossley.” ↩
60. US National Park Service, Gettysburg- First Day's Battlefield. September 29, 2022. Accessed March 3, 2023. https://www.nps.gov/gett/learn/historyculture/first-days-battlefield.htm. ↩
61. MH Shearer Martha Helen Locke Carpenter. August 14, 2011. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/74944664/martha-helen-carpenter. - "Martha Helen Mapes Death Certificate." Pennsylvania Death Certificate. Alum Bank, Venango County, PN, May 28, 1935. ↩
62. 1860. "Hiram Foster- 1860 US Census Belvidere, IL." United States Federal Census. Belvidere, Boone County, Illinois, July 31. Record Group Number: 29; Series Number: M653; Roll: M653_157; Page: 505. 1860. "Ellen Foster- 1860 US Census Pomfret, NY." United States Federal Census. Pomfret, Chautauqua County, New York, August 8. Record Group Number: 29; Series Number: M653; Roll: M653_731; Page: 566. Ancestry.com. "New York State Census, 1855." New York State Census. New York, June 19, 1855. 1880. "Amy Merrill- 1880 US Census Jamestown, NY." United States Federal Census. Jamestown, Chautauqua County, New York, June 11. Roll: 815; Page: 339B; Enumeration District: 055. Uncredited. "State's New Divorce Law Starts Friday." The Ithaca Journal, August 30, 1967: 24. ↩
63. City of Jamestown. The Pearl City. Accessed March 4, 2023. https://www.jamestownny.gov/community-history/the-pearl-city/. ↩
64. Titusville Herald, "Pleasantville Iron Works." July 25, 1868: 3. ↩
65. The Petroleum Center Daily Record, "Untitled." February 16, 1872: 2. ↩
66. Ibid. ↩
67. Although he later records that he was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania like the rest of his siblings, the census from 1880 and veteran’s schedules from 1885 and 1890 record the family’s residence in River Falls, Wisconsin. It is possible that Ellen traveled back to Pennsylvania to give birth, maybe preferring to be with the same doctor or midwife she used with her other three children. However, there are birth records for the other children and John’s is somehow absent, lending credibility to the assumption he may have been born in Wisconsin. ↩
68. Clifford M Foust and Dale E Marshall, "Culinary Rhubarb Production in North America: History and Recent Statistics." Horticultural Science 26 (11): 1360-1363. 1991 https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/downloadpdf/journals/hortsci/26/11/article-p1360.pdf. ↩
69. Uncredited, "Took Carbolic Acid." Pierre Weekly Free Press, July 28, 1892: 7. ↩
70. Proctor, Family History Interview: Peter Close ↩
71. The Idaho Statesman, "Donnelly Plans for Dedication." May 4, 1937. - The Idaho Statesman, "Donnelly Schools to Open Monday." September 12, 1937. - The Idaho Statesman, "Families Visit." November 25, 1935. ↩
72. "Robert Schinzler- Death Record." Idaho US Death Records. Donnelly, Valley County, ID, August 19, 1939. ↩
73. Proctor, Family History Interview: Peter Close ↩
74. Proctor, Family History Interview: William Close ↩
75. Ibid. ↩

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