Recently, NVGS member Connie Donovan chose to honor two women ancestors with a generous donation to our 50th Anniversary Gifting Tree. Connie also wrote an article (below) which describes these women's lives and explains her reasons for honoring them.
Thank you, Connie, for sharing your family stories and supporting our Society!
by Connie Donovan, NVGS Member
Honoring an ancestor with a leaf on the tree at the library is a fun and meaningful way to donate to the cause. I chose two of my female ancestors. So often they tend to be left in the background, since there are few records about them.
The first ancestor I chose for a leaf was a great-grandmother, Ottilie. She was born and raised in Berlin. The family story was that she fell in love with Otto, a student. Ottilie’s family felt that he was beneath her and forbade her to see him, so he came to America to earn money to send for her. As nearly as I can tell, she traveled alone, and I assume without her family’s blessings. She would have then had to make her way from Baltimore to Wisconsin. Did she speak any English? Otto and Ottilie married shortly after her arrival. They would have five children, one of whom would die of scarlet fever as a small child. Ottilie herself died of tuberculosis when she was in her mid-thirties and her youngest child was barely a year old. Her grave marker was washed away by a flood and there is no cemetery record for her. It’s like she was wiped away with little trace.
I also chose a great-great-grandmother, Mariah. She married former neighbor and Civil War veteran, Francis, in Missouri when she was 17. Fourteen years and five children later, they set out on a 700-mile journey by covered wagon to homestead on the Dakota prairie. Her kids were aged 4-12 at that time. In Dakota, according to her daughter, Mariah was the only woman in about a 10-mile radius. In addition to all of her own work, she took in washing, ironing and mending for the area bachelors, and she baked bread for them. She had three more children while living there. After 22 years of unending and unheralded work – all while wearing a long skirt – the couple retired due to Francis’s lingering war disabilities. Life would eventually take them to Pomona, CA where Mariah would ultimately succumb to injuries suffered when she was hit by a car in front of her house. How ironic that seems to me, after all she had been through.
These women, like so many others, bore and cared for children, managed their households and supported their husbands’ endeavors, all with great strength and a quiet dignity that I believe should be honored.
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