Part 8: The Six Young Ladies in the Middle

 

PART 8: The Six Young Ladies in the Middle

Young Adult Mennonite Group Attends Farmington Chautauqua, August 1910

By Elizabeth Hervey Osborn

Part 1 --  Part 2 -- Part 3 -- Part 4 -- Part 5 -- Part 6 -- Part 7 -- Part 8

The youngest attendees were the four close friends clustered at the center of the middle row. With two older ladies at the ends of their row, it is almost as though their older cousins were protectively surrounding them.  In this last installment, I present here a closer look at their remarkable lives.

Dora Katherine Krebill

1886-1972

(4HB, FamilySearch K4GQ-QK4. Find-a-Grave 1160127272)

Twenty-three year old Dora was Walter’s older sister, born to Joseph Krebill and Selma Magdalena Weber in 1886 near Donnellson Iowa. 

Marriage would not be in Dora's future, but family was everything to her. For decades she helped organize and gather her Krebill cousins - descendants of Jacob and Eliza  Strickland Krebill - for annual summer reunions with comfort food and joyful surroundings, attended by loved ones near and far.

Her entry in Altleiningen Krebills notes a career as a Farm Manager. She was talented at coaxing beautiful and delicious things from the soil: the 1937 county fair report announced first-place honors in Cabbage, Gooseberry Preserves, Plum Jelly, Apple Pickles, Beet Pickles, and several species of flowers both indoor and out. 

Over the years, news from Donnellson notes her continued participation in Farm Bureau and Mission Society activities, and she served many terms as the president of the “Friendship Class” of the Mennonite Sunday School.

On her passing in 1972, a fund was raised for the Cancer Society.[1]

Clara Charlotte Krehbiel

1897-1989

(4LD, FamilySearch MBK5-Y6U, Find-a-Grave 22061140)

At age 13, Clara is the youngest member of the group, attending with her older siblings Ada and Ernest.  Daughter of Jacob August and Emma Selma Krebill Krehbiel, Clara was fourth of ten children.

Clara would remain single for nearly a quarter century. She moved to the Detroit area for a time, and there met and fell in love with Joseph Gingerich, a somewhat younger gentleman whose family lived near the "thumb" of Michigan. Clara's Iowa family and friends were delighted at the match, celebrating with several pre-nuptial parties with games and prizes. Clara and Joseph were wed in her parents home near Donnellson before setting off to begin housekeeping on Joseph's farm near Au Gres, Arenac County, Michigan. Clara and Joseph's first child and only daughter, Marjorie, lived just one day; her tiny gravestone bears the image of a wee lamb. However the two fine boys they raised -- Richard and Gary -- grew up to be farmers, like their father and grandfathers before them.

Clara lived in Michigan the remainder of her life. The Donnellson newspaper mentions that she and Joseph made it back to Iowa for at least one Krebill reunion.  One of the few in this photograph not buried at Zion Mennonite, she was laid to rest at the Point Lookout Cemetery on the shore of Lake Huron, near Au Gres. 

Anna Rosina Schowalter
1895 - 1971 

(FamilySearch KZSV-Q4L, Find-a-Grave 11774293)

Anna's childhood and ancestry are like no others in this group [2].  Her Danish mother, Anna Camilla Hanson was wed to Rudolph Christian (R.C.) Schowalter -- Dan's older brother, and Abbie's uncle --by a justice of the peace in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1893. 

During the "Gay Nineties" R.C. traveled the western United States opening and operating shooting galleries in seedy inner-city red-light districts. In fall 1897 he returned to Salt Lake City after an absence of unknown duration and arranged with a neighbor child to lure Anna away from her mother's home. Lurid headlines at first decried the kidnapping, but public -- and judicial -- sentiment rapidly changed when R.C. testified he was merely rescuing his daughter from her mother's depraved lifestyle: she was living in sin with a "colored man"! Turning a deaf ear to the mother's claim that R.C. was not the child's father [3], the judge placed the flaxen-haired two-year-old in R.C.'s custody. 

R.C. had no intention of parenting the little girl, and promptly shipped her off to the care of his parents in Iowa: the Reverend Christian Schowalter and his wife Rosena.  Though R.C. reinforced the familial connection by giving an anglicized version of his mother Rosena's name for Anna's middle name, he himself rarely made it back home to visit. 

When Anna arrived at her grandparents', uncles John and Dan were still living at home; and aunts Barbara (Jacob) Schnebele and Hannah (Reuben) Neff lived nearby. Anna and Dan apparently became quite close, and for many years after her grandparents passing, including after she married Gunnar Magnus Anderson in 1921, she and Dan shared a household, at first in Donnellson and then in Des Moines. But throughout her youth she was a vital part of the young ladies' social circles, participating in Mission society and other events with her friends Clara and Hilda, who are pictured beside her that day they went to Chautauqua together.

Anna's marriage to Gunnar did not result in children, and at some point they were divorced. For many years she was employed by the Meredith Publishing Company in Des Moines, publisher of the Better Homes and Gardens magazine. A couple years after Dan passed away, she married again, this time to Roy Clifford Erickson; but that marriage, too, was short-lived. 

Now going by the name of Ann, she made a new life for herself in Ocala, Florida, where she managed a hotel and was a member of St. Matthew's Lutheran Church, the Order of the Eastern Star, Order of the Amaranth, and Order of The Daughters of the Nile. In the summer of 1971 the octogenarian traveled back to Iowa one last time, where she stayed with her cousin Agnes Schnebele Myer in Burlington. While at Agnes' home, Ann passed away unexpectedly. Her body was laid to rest at Zion Mennonite Cemetery, near many of her childhood friends. 

Hilda Emma Weber
1894 - 1984

(I4JD, FamilySearch L7J5-W8C, Find-a-Grave 90323500)

Hilda was fifteen-going-on-sixteen when the photograph was taken, but only a toddler when her widowed father left Moundridge Kansas to return to the familiar faces and rolling hills of southeast Iowa. 

Hilda and her siblings Erna and Edgar were three of the five children born to Elias P. and Charlotte Krebill Weber, but Hilda's younger brother brother Gilbert died in Kansas the day he was born -- mother Charlotte would die just two weeks later, likely of complications from Gilbert's birth. The next year, six-year-old older sister Clara would too pass away, laid to rest under a heart-shaped stone. 

Perhaps the shared early loss of a mother formed a special bond in the friendship between Hilda and Anna Schowalter; the two would remain close throughout their lives.

Seven years after the Chautauqua excursion Hilda wed Jacob Lowenberg, the young man second-from-the-left in the front row of the photograph. They were happily married for several years, and were joined by two boys Harold and Edwin, before something went terribly wrong. Jacob was placed in a "psychopathic hospital" in Davenport in the early 1920s, he was finally released from this life by pneumonia in 1927. 

After Jacob passed, Hilda raised their boys on the family farm near Donnellson, where she continued in close contact with her cousins and friends of childhood, participated in Sunday School and Mission Society activities, and took a turn or two managing the Jacob Krebill family reunions. She passed the family farm to her son Harold; but Edwin became a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Nebraska. 

With sons grown (and Harold's mother-in-law moved into the farmhouse that had been Hilda's home), Hilda embarked on adventures of her own: a ship manifest from spring 1947 shows she had traveled to Havana, Cuba. Every September, Hilda returned to Iowa for an extended vacation; sometimes her granddaughter Joyce joined her adventures.  

Around that time she settled in Florida, not far from her friend Anna Schowalter Erickson, where both found employment as head hotel housekeepers. Anna's aunt Agnes and family visited Anna and Hilda in Florida the summer of 1954. 

Hilda's workplace was the posh Barcelona, located directly on the beach. The picture of the hotel dates from 1955. During St. Patrick's day celebrations that spring Hilda suffered a broken hip and shoulder in a car-pedestrian accident, leading to an early retirement. 

Hilda returned to Donnellson for the remainder of her life. She passed away at the Donnellson Manor Care Center one day after her ninetieth birthday, and is buried in Zion Mennonite Cemetery. 

 

Edna Lillian Krebill
1896 - 1963

(4KC, FamilySearch KHW9-6R5, Find-a-Grave 30290139)

R.J.'s little sister Edna had recently turned fourteen when the opportunity to participate in the Farmington Chautauqua came up. What a magnificent bow she wears in her hair for this adventure! 

From a young age, Edna participated in Sunday School and Mission Society activities; in 1911, she is seated next to her dear friend Anna Schowalter for Mission Society photograph. Edna, Anna, and Edna's older sister Olga (writer of The Altleiningen Krebills) were often mentioned together in news tidbits in local papers: visiting together on Sunday afternoons, organizing surprise parties and service activities, and touring schools.

When Edna married, not quite four years after this photograph was taken, she kept her maiden name -- because Krebill was her husband's name, too! Harry John (H.J.) Krebill was her second cousin (his grandfather Peter Krebill was the younger brother of Jacob Krebill; their shared great-grandparents were Friedrich and Anna Risser Krebill), and they had known each other from church, school, and family activities all their lives. Edna and H.J. raised two daughters; each of their four grandchildren obtained college degrees. Grandson Denis Griffiths went on to design golf courses, including at St. Andrews in Scotland.

Edna's dedication to service continued throughout her life. In 1961 she represented two Donnellson service groups - the "Ladies in Blue" and the "Gray Ladies" -- in celebrating the retirement of the director of volunteer services at the Mental Health Institute in Mount Pleasant.

Less than two years later, Edna suddenly passed one early morning at age sixty-six. She is interred with her loved ones and closest friends in Zion Mennonite Cemetery.

Emma Rosetta Seyb
1888 - 1971

(4EF, FamilySearch KHG4-Q94, Find-a-Grave unknown, likely Kingman Kansas)

Twenty-two-year-old Emma Seyb provided the clue as to just which Farmington Chautauqua saw the gathering of the cousins for a photograph.

Emma had been born in Pretty Prairie, Kansas. When other aunts and uncles moved back to Iowa in the late 1890s, her parents George Seyb and Nancy Krebill with their eight children [4] determined to stay put.  There Emma' s older brothers found wives and engaged in public service as schoolteachers and justices of the peace; even  Emma's older sister Mary taught school several terms before marrying in 1906. But in the mid-1910s father George Seyb developed liver cancer; he passed away in 1908. Nancy relied on the help of her older children to support the younger ones still at home; but in 1910 what she needed was the closeness of her brothers, sisters, and cousins. Nancy and Emma traveled back to Iowa, arriving on August 4th. The visit refreshed Nancy's soul, while Emma took in every learning experience she could in the company of her cousins -- including the Farmington Chautauqua. 

On returning to Pretty Prairie, Emma took charge of district school #82, a one-room classroom in Albion; in 1912 she would be paid $62.50 per month for her services. She continued teaching for several years before marrying Wallace McIlrath, a graduate of Kansas State Agricultural college whose father hailed from Ireland, in 1922. Emma and Wallace together established a farm near Galesburg, Kingman County, Kansas, a handful of miles south of Pretty Prairie.

Wallace and Emma had two children; their first child, Eugene, died not long after birth in 1923. Their daughter, Mary Ellen, was born in 1925, and their love of learning transferred to yet another generation, as Mary Ellen received a degree in Education from Emporia State Teachers College and took up a a career as a Librarian; her husband Bertel Hall learned aeronautics and meteorology during his Army service before becoming a lifetime employee of the US Weather Bureau. 

Wallace passed away in 1957; some sources indicate that Emma lived to 1971, but I have not been able to identify where she is buried, though it is likely in Kingman County, Kansas. 

---

[1] As noted in the clipping, Dora and Walter’s older brother Daniel moved to Colorado, where his children were raised here in the Longmont area. I spent a lovely afternoon in 1995 with Goldie, Dora and Walter’s younger sister, when she came to town for Daniel’s son Floyd’s funeral. It truly is a small world.

[2] The life story of Anna's Danish mother Anna Camilla (Jo)Hanson Lisle Griffill Schowalter O'Brien Gross(bell) Hale Alberts, known in later life as the "Flower Woman of Salt Lake City", is the subject of an extensive research and writing project I have currently in progress touching on poverty, prejudice, crime, and justice in turn-of-the-twentieth-century urban Utah. For this reason I was beyond delighted to find teenaged Anna Rosina in this photograph, surrounded by family and friends. I recently discovered that Anna's mother Anna Camilla herself made the journey from Salt Lake to Donnellson to visit her daughter about 4 years after the Chautauqua photograph was taken.

[3] The 'presumption of paternity' principle -- a child born during a legally-recognized marriage is presumed to be the child of the husband -- likely explains why the judge did not consider Anna Camilla's claim.

[4] George and Nancy had nine children; little Lillian died in infancy in 1897, and is buried in the Lone Star Cemetery near Pretty Prairie.