Emma Scheibel Steele, 1894-1952

March is Women’s History Month, and it’s a good reminder for us to tell the stories of the females in our family tree. Today I’d like to tell you about my great-grandmother, Emma Scheibel, who married Homer B. Steele.

Emma Scheibel Steele and Homer Steele, with daughter Wilma, 1919

Emma is an important branch on my family tree because she’s my mother’s mother’s mother. In DNA terms, that means she’s my direct mitochondrial line ancestor. From her, and her mother before her, and her mother and so forth through umpteen generations, I’ve inherited my mitochondrial DNA type. It’s a genetic pathway to the past that I don’t have for any other ancestral line.

Emma Laura Scheibel was born on 6 March 1894 in Columbus, Ohio. Her parents were Ludwig Scheibel and Pauline Treebte or Treebto (which I’ve learned is actually spelled “Treptow”). On the birth register, her name was recorded as Pauline.[1] I don’t know whether that was an error on the clerk’s part, or whether her parents later changed their minds about her name, but she appears as Emma in every other record created about her.

Emma’s father, Ludwig Scheibel, was born on 29 September 1839 in Germany, possibly Württemberg.[2] He sometimes went by the American name Louis. Her mother, Pauline Treptow, was born in Blumenfelde, Kr. Konitz, West Prussia, on 25 February 1855.[3] They married in Columbus on 13 April 1880. It was Ludwig’s second marriage.[4] A widow, he already had a son, Peter Scheibel, from his first marriage.

According to my grandmother, Wilma (Steele) Herrel, Ludwig and Pauline retained a lot of their native customs and spoke German at home. In public, they spoke English with a heavy German accent. Knowing this, I imagine Emma grew up speaking both English and German.

When the census was taken in June 1900, Emma was six years old and not yet attending school. Ludwig Scheibel, age 63, was a harness maker, and owned the family’s home at 428 E. Fulton St. He had immigrated to the U.S. in 1852 and was a naturalized citizen. Pauline, age 45, had immigrated in 1875. She had given birth to nine children, but only five were living. They were Louisa Scheibel, age 15; Willie Scheibel, 13; Augusta Scheibel, 9; Emma; and Albert Scheibel, 4.[5]

On 11 April 1907, when Emma was 13 years old, her mother Pauline Scheibel died of tuberculosis.[6] Those had to be difficult years for the family, as her brother Willy died as well. By summer 1910, Emma’s school days were behind her. She was 16 years old and working as a nurse in a hospital.[7]

But there was another blow yet to come. On Christmas day 1910, Ludwig Scheibel died of apoplexy (stroke).[8] Emma and her siblings were orphans.

I’m not sure how Emma met Homer Burdell Steele, a native of Cheshire, Gallia County, Ohio. Homer worked as a shipping clerk for the Federal Glass Company in Columbus, and lived in the same part of town. Perhaps their paths crossed at church. Rev. Hines married Emma and Homer on 20 May 1915, when she was 21 years old.[9] Their first child, Wilma (my grandmother), was born 23 September 1917.[10]

Emma and Homer’s second daughter, Rosemary Steele, was born 28 November 1919.[11] After Rosemary, they had four boys in succession: Kenneth Steele, born 1 March 1925[12]; Homer G. “Junior” Steele, born 26 November 1929[13]; William “Billy” Steele, born 2 February 1931[14]; and Ronald Steele, born in 1932.

In addition to her children, Emma also cared for her invalid father-in-law. Wilma explained, “My grandmother Minnie King Steele lived with us many years as Grandfather George Steele had a stroke & could not work. Grandmother worked at Federal Glass Co. (now out of business) with my father. My mother took care of Rosemary, me & Grandfather.”[15]

Wilma identified the picture below as the last one she knew of that shows the entire family. It was probably taken in the summer of 1939. In the back row, from left to right, are Wilma, Emma, Rosemary, Kenny, and Homer Steele. In the front, from left to right, are Billy, Junior, and Ronald.

Tragedy struck on 14 November 1939 when Billy, playing in the basement with a friend, accidentally started a fire. “The buckle on his shoe caught on a wire on baled wax paper & he lit a match to see what he could do,” Wilma recalled.[16] The waxed paper ignited and Billy, unable to free himself, perished in the fire. He was eight years old.

I imagine that was something that haunted Emma the rest of her life.

Time went on, although it seems Emma was not well as she reached middle age. “My father always took care of my mother as she had a heart condition,” Wilma noted.

Sadly, Emma lost another son to another accident. Junior had enlisted in the Navy after high school, and, at 20 years old, was posted in the Panama Canal Zone. He was off duty but helping a friend do some repairs on radar equipment when he touched a live wire. He was electrocuted instantly and died on 18 May 1950.[17]

Emma succumbed to congestive heart failure two years later, on 23 November 1952. She was 58 years old. She was buried in Sunset Cemetery in Columbus, along with her sons Billy and Homer Junior.[18]

My grandmother remembered Emma as a good mother and home maker. While she had few outside interests, she strongly believed in God, home, and family, and wanted her daughter to be happy and prosperous.[19]

My mother remembers Emma, too, particularly the way she made homemade German noodles. She would roll the noodle dough out and cut it into long strips, then slice it into noodles. Those raw noodles looked really good to a little girl! But Grandmother Steele wouldn’t permit anyone to taste before cooking. Now that I think about it, maybe that was a result of the challenges of feeding a big family through the Great Depression.

There’s something that struck me as I wrote this. You see, I’ve had this information about Emma for quite a while; it’s not new research. But it wasn’t until I sat down and wrote this profile that I actually began to see her life. I think there’s a big difference between bits of information in a database and a story that pulls them together into a cohesive narrative, even a short one like this. The process of writing it out as a narrative somehow creates something bigger and more engrossing than you think when you’re only looking at the pieces individually.

It also makes me realize I have more research to do on Emma’s family. Writing does that—it stimulates you to fill in the gaps and reach further into the records. Yes, it takes time, but it’s time well spent in the end.

Is there a woman in your family tree that you’d like to understand better? If so, you might try writing a little profile or vignette for her. Lisa Alzo offers a month’s worth of “Fearless Females” writing prompts to help you (see her March 2016 blog archive). Gena Philibert-Ortega shares some of her favorite tips and resources for researching females in her Women's History Month 2016 series. I hope you enjoy finding and telling the stories of the women in your family history, too.

--Shelley

---

[1] Franklin County, Ohio, Probate Court, birth records, vol. 6, p. 30 (1894), Pauline Scheibel; Ohio History Center (OHC) microfilm #BV10,944.

[2] “Ohio Deaths, 1908-1953,” digital image, FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org: accessed 3 Nov 2013), death certificate #66095 (1910), Ludwig Scheibel; citing original records, Ohio Dept. of Health, Ohio History Center, Columbus; Family History Library (FHL) microfilm #1,952,768.

[3] Evangelische Kirche Grunau (Kr. Flatow), “Taufen, Heiraten, Tote 1850-1859,” p. 107-108, entry 17, Auguste Pauline Treptow (baptized 11 March 1855); FHL microfilm #1,496,973, item 2.

[4] “Ohio County Marriages, 1789-1994,” digital image, FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org: accessed 3 Nov 2013), Ludwig Sheibel and Paulina Trabtan (1880); citing Franklin County, Ohio, marriages, vol. 15, p. 285, Probate Court, Columbus; FHL microfilm #285,148.

[5] 1900 U.S. census, population schedule, Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio, Ward 4, E.D. 55, p. 6A, dwelling 123, household 141, Ludwig Scheibel; digital image, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: accessed 3 Nov 2013), citing NARA microfilm publication T623, roll 1267.

[6] Columbus, Ohio, Board of Health, death certificates, 1907 vol. 2 (1 March – 30 April), no. 351, Paulina Scheibel; Ohio History Center, Columbus, OHC microfilm #GR9874.

[7] 1910 U.S. census, population schedule, Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio, Ward 2, E.D. 43, p. 1, dwelling 13, household 14, Lewis Scheibel; digital image, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: accessed 4 Nov 2013), citing NARA microfilm publication T624, roll 1180.

[8] “Ohio Deaths, 1908-1953,” FamilySearch, death certificate #66095 (1910), Ludwig Scheibel.

[9] Franklin County, Ohio, Probate Court, marriage records, vol. 60, p. 315, Homer Steele and Emma Scheibel marriage (1915), Columbus.

[10] Ohio Department of Health, birth certificate #77908 (1916), Wilma Lucille Steele; Office of Vital Statistics, Columbus.

[11] “U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007,” database, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: accessed 21 Mar 2016), Rosemary Naomi Steele Rhoten.

[12] “U.S. Social Security Death Index,” database, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: accessed 6 July 2014), Kenneth N. Steele (1925-2013).

[13] Ohio Department of Health, birth certificate #98192 (1929), Homer George Steele; Office of Vital Statistics, Columbus.

[14] Ohio Department of Health, birth certificate 11272 (1931), William Steele; Office of Vital Statistics, Columbus.

[15] Wilma Steele Herrel, Grandmother’s Book, scrapbook, 1989; privately held by Shelley Bishop. This 9” x 11” book contains notes, descriptions, photographs and memorabilia ca. 1917-1989; the author (now deceased) gave it to Bishop in 1989.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid. Also, Homer G. Steele obituary, The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio), 20 May 1950, p. 2A.

[18] “Ohio Deaths, 1908-1953,” digital image, FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org: accessed 21 Mar 2012), death certificate #70642 (1952), Emma L. Steele; citing original records, Ohio Dept. of Health, Ohio History Center, Columbus; FHL microfilm #2,246,396.

[19] Wilma Steele Herrel, Grandmother’s Book.

The One Where I Feel Incredibly Honored

Last week I received some exciting news from the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE). ISFHWE encourages “excellence in writing and editorial standards in genealogical publishing,” and to promote that goal they host an annual Excellence-in-Writing Competition. I submitted entries in the “Columns” and “Published Articles” categories for this year’s contest. After I sent them in, I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind for awhile. That is, until this message from Tina Sansone, the competition coordinator, showed up in my inbox:

Dear Shelley,

Congratulations! You have won the following in the ISFHWE “Excellence in Writing” competition:

1st Place Columns: Shelley K. Bishop, “The Legacy of Mary Comfort Eberhard”

2nd Place Articles: Shelley K. Bishop, “Turning Forests into Farms: The George Clark Family of Licking and Delaware Counties, Ohio”

Woohoo! I’m thrilled, to say the least, and so honored to have won awards in two categories. A hearty congratulations to all the other award winners. As I look over the names on the ISFHWE announcement, I’m humbled to be in such great company.

Like many genealogists, I write primarily to share and preserve what I’ve learned from researching my ancestors. At the same time, I try to find universal themes within my family’s story that might strike a chord with a wider audience. But it’s hard to know if I’ve succeeded in doing that or not until something like this happens. When it does, it’s oh-so-rewarding.

"The Legacy of Mary Comfort Eberhard” first appeared here, as a post on A Sense of Family, on February 6, 2013. It grew out of my desire to share some of my grandmother’s stories about her mother, coupled with fascinating information I found in an old dairy company newsletter. Telling the stories of our female ancestors, who generally show up in fewer official records than men, can present special challenges. Digging into home sources such as letters, baby books, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, and keepsakes—some of which may be held by other relatives—can lead to neat discoveries about their lives.

“Turning Forests into Farms: The George Clark Family of Licking and Delaware Counties, Ohio” was originally published in the Winter 2013 issue of the Ohio Genealogical Society Quarterly (Vol. 53, No. 4). It traces one branch of my family tree through four generations, beginning with their 1811 arrival in the Ohio frontier. Weaving information from early land office registers, deeds, vital records, agricultural censuses, newspapers, cemeteries, and other records together with social history sources like county histories, published memoirs, and maps, I show how the family’s growth echoed—and was tragically affected by—the times they lived in.

ISFHWE will be publishing all the articles they awarded prizes to in future issues of Columns, their quarterly newsletter. You can become a member and read them all for just $20. I know I’m looking forward to some excellent reading in the coming months.

Thank you to ISFHWE and its judges for this recognition. Thanks also to the Ohio Genealogical Society for publishing my work, and to all my blog readers. It’s a pleasure to be writing for you. Now, what story should I work on next?...

--Shelley

Related Posts:

Five Lessons Learned While Writing

The Legacy of Mary Comfort Eberhard

George Clark, Ohio Pioneer: 52 Ancestors

The Two Most Important Things Genealogists Can Do Now

Over the weekend I attended an excellent seminar by Dr. Thomas W. Jones, who among his many credits is author of Mastering Genealogical Proof and co-editor of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. The seminar was sponsored by and held at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio.

Tom gave four presentations packed with strategies and guidance for effective genealogical research, analysis, and correlation. I came away with valuable insights to apply to my most challenging cases, including those where sources disagree or evidence is lacking. But the point I want to share with you today is one Tom made at the very end of the day, in response to an audience question. I think it resonates with genealogists and family historians everywhere, regardless of location, skill level, technological comfort, or other factors.

His point? Preserve today what could be lost for future generations.

Think about that. What memories or unique knowledge of the past do you have? What research have you done that could be lost or thrown out by heirs with less interest or space? What family surnames are in danger of dying or “daughtering” out? What irreplaceable records do you hold that could disappear in a fire, flood, tornado, or other disaster? What relatives have you been meaning to interview or ask for a DNA test? What stories or conclusions have you intended to write about?

The top two priorities for today’s genealogists, according to Tom Jones, are:

• Collect all the family lore, then share or publish it so it is not lost
• Collect as much DNA information as you can

So simple. And yet, such a challenge. As we struggle to solve the puzzles of our ancestry and make the right connections to our past, we often become mired in that past. It’s easy to push on researching, and harder to step back and pull things together for a book, article, or even a source-cited blog post. I’m as guilty as anyone. With so much competing for my time, writing my own family history stories typically falls to the bottom of my to-do list.

What can you do now to make sure your family history doesn’t get lost?

Here’s a few ideas:

• Become a collector of family lore. Talk to your parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings to get their stories, scan their photographs, and learn about their heirlooms.

• While you’re at it, ask your relatives if they’d be willing to take DNA tests for genealogy. Genetic genealogy is still developing, but holds great promise for solving family mysteries when used in conjunction with traditional research.

• Sort and store your most precious family treasures—original documents, photos, and mementoes—in archival boxes, separate from your everyday research binders or files. Label and identify everything you put in. Let your family know that these items, above all else, should be saved. (For more information, I recommend How to Archive Family Keepsakes by Denise Levenick.)

• If you have an irreplaceable, one-of-kind record, such as a family Bible record, scan or photograph it, then give a copy to a genealogical society. See if they’d be interested in publishing it in their newsletter or journal, preferably with a word-for-word transcription.

• Pick an ancestor or family that you’ve compiled records for, organize the material in chronological order, and write a summary. Cite all your sources and tell what conclusions you’ve reached. For added interest, pull in pertinent historical detail and craft it as a story. Share it by giving copies to relatives, submitting it to a local or state society publication, and/or posting it on a blog or website. The blog series 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, coordinated by Amy Johnson Crow, is designed to help you share short individual stories.

• If you don’t have a family history blog, consider starting one. It’s an easy way to share documents, photos, and pieces of your family history, and can lead to connections with distant cousins who might hold additional pieces of the family puzzle.

• A multi-generation family history chart or book can become a treasured keepsake. Don’t let the size of the project discourage you—just get started. I made a chart for my husband’s parents with the help of Family Chartmasters, and found it very rewarding. Because facts on the chart aren’t cited, I printed out family group sheets identifying the sources of my information and attached them to the back of the frame.

• If research shows you’re eligible for a local, state, or national lineage society, start preparing your application. Lineage societies require proof of information and relationships, and they keep their members’ application materials. This means the records you submit for your family will be saved and made available to future researchers. 

The key to success? There’s just one. Don’t wait until it’s too late. I plan to heed Tom Jones' advice and make preserving my family history one of my top priorities. What ways have you found to preserve yours?

--Shelley

© Shelley Ballenger Bishop 2014

Related posts:

Buckingham Palace, Leonardo Da Vinci, and a Lesson for Us All

Five Lessons Learned While Writing

A Sense of Family's Top 5 Posts of 2013

How in the world did 2013 manage to go by so fast? Life seems to be running at warp speed lately. It’s been a year full of learning and discoveries, including some breakthroughs in my personal and professional research. I haven’t been blogging quite as much in recent months, due to an increased workload, but please know that I continue to treasure each one of my readers. Thank you for viewing, commenting on, and sharing my posts throughout the year.

Today, it gives me great pleasure to share the top five posts on A Sense of Family for 2013:

Finding Daughters by Searching on Father’s Name  (12 March 2013)

OGS 2013 Conference: Day One  (28 April 2013)

The Legacy of Mary Comfort Eberhard  (6 February 2013)

Visiting the American Cemetery at Normandy  (26 May 2013)

Five Lessons Learned While Writing (3 March 2013)

If you missed any of these the first time around, I hope you can find time to enjoy them now. I look forward to bringing you more family history research tips, tools, reviews, and stories in 2014. Best wishes for a happy new year!

--Shelley

You might also like:

A Sense of Family's Top 10 Posts of 2012

Five Lessons Learned While Writing

Thinking about writing a family history story? I took the plunge, and am here to tell you the water’s fine.

In February, encouraged by Harold Henderson's article, "Why We Don't Write, and How We Can" and Lynn Palermo's Family History Writing Challenge, I wrote two blog posts and one full-length article about my ancestors. All told, that came to about 4600 words, plus at least half that much again in endnotes. Yes, it took a lot of time, but I’m glad I did it. The act of writing the article, especially, drove home a few points that I thought I’d share with you.

Five thoughts on the value and process of writing family history:

1. Getting started is (almost) half the battle

Although I knew I wanted to write an article in February, I hadn’t settled on what it was going to be about. It took me several days to determine a subject, narrow the focus and scope, develop an approach, and write the introduction. I tossed out two outlines, tried mind-mapping, and cut the beginnings of several drafts in the process. Finally I came up with a rough framework—just a list of subheadings and points, really—that worked. The lesson, for me at least, is not to get discouraged early. It takes a certain amount of perseverance just to get through the starting gate.

2. Writing exposes any holes in your research

Even when you’ve already done the research, analyzed and correlated it, and formed your conclusions, chances are you’re going to find some gaps when you sit down to write it up in narrative form. Writing forces you to see those holes and find ways to fill them. In this case, I realized I hadn’t fully explored all the siblings of my ancestors (one guy alone had ten of them). And there was one instance where I felt I needed additional proof of the relationship between generations. There’s nothing like the thought that your work might be put into print to make you double-check your findings for flaws. In the end, I visited a courthouse, three libraries in different counties, a cemetery, and the state archives after I started writing the article. Just to fill those gaps and make sure I had it right. The lesson? Be prepared to do more research while you’re writing, to strengthen and solidify your work.

3. Creating broader appeal means thinking about your reader

Why should total strangers want to read about your family history? I can think of two main reasons: (1) they’re interested in the methods and resources you used to solve your genealogical questions, and (2) they’re absorbed by the way you tell your story. Ideally, you want to satisfy readers on both these accounts. Since I wanted to write an article that appealed to a wide audience, I tried to incorporate bits of history, geography, and social history into my account. And I tried to illustrate how I pulled information from multiple sources together to frame my ancestors’ lives. I took care with the endnotes, to help people who might be interested in using the same or similar sources. Of course, I’m not sure how well I accomplished those goals, since the article hasn’t yet been accepted for publication. Still, I think the take-away is a valid one: give your reader a reason to keep reading.

4. Editing is just as important as writing

Well, this point probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone. A lot of my paragraphs—including the first one—looked very different in the end than they did at the beginning. Some writers save all the editing and rewriting until last, and that’s fine. But I did part of it as I went along, spending some time each day cleaning up what I had previously written, followed by more extensive revisions after it was mostly finished. Before I sent in my final draft, I printed it out and read it out loud, slowly, to myself. Believe me, you can catch a lot of errors that way, and you can also see where things sound awkward or unclear. The unavoidable bottom line is that editing takes time and thought.

5. Focusing on the goal will see you through

Writing, for me, demands total focus. Some people might be able to multi-task while writing, but I’m not one of them. While I was working on the article, I fell asleep thinking about the family. When I woke up, they were in my head again within moments. That kind of intensity means that not a whole lot else gets done, to be honest. But it feels good to have created something that hopefully will be published, preserving the work that I’ve done on the family. And that, above all, was my goal: to move the research out of my files and synthesize it into a format that could be accessed, used, and hopefully enjoyed by others. There’s a feeling of satisfaction from knowing it will be preserved, come what may. The end result is worth the time it takes.

If you’ve considered writing a family history article or submitting a story for publication, I’d love to know if you found these thoughts helpful. I’d also welcome any other tips or insights you might have. What inspires you to write, and what are the take-away lessons of writing for you?

--Shelley

The Legacy of Mary Comfort Eberhard

Some people leave great legacies in business, politics, or education. Others are recognized for their military service, philanthropy, or contributions to science. Mary Comfort Eberhard left a different kind of legacy—humbler, perhaps, but impressive nonetheless. She raised sixteen children to adulthood in the farmlands of Pennsylvania and Ohio at the turn of the 20^th century.

One of her daughters, Nora Eberhard Ballenger, would later recall that Mary used to bake 12 to 14 loaves of bread, including her favorite pan rolls, twice a week. “My mother never baked under 16 to 20 pies and two large cakes on weekends. We always had a great crowd,” she remembered. “We grew almost everything we ate—vegetables, meats, eggs. She made her own dumplings and even churned her own butter.”

A beautifully illustrated fraktur, written in German, shows that Mary Madina Comfort was born 28 May 1875 in Whitehall Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. Her parents were Lewis Comfort and Polly Scheirer Comfort.¹ On Christmas Eve, 1891, when Mary was 16 years old, she married John Llewellyn Eberhard in Allentown.² No doubt their Christmas that year was a merry one—and it would be the only one they celebrated without a child in the house for more than 40 years.

Mary and Llewellyn made a home for themselves in Salisbury Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a milk dealer. Their first baby was born in August 1892. Others followed, more or less every other year. By January 1902, there were six little Eberhards: Eva, Roy, Harold, Helen, Mabel, and Irma.³

In 1903, they decided to move west to the area around Bellefontaine, Ohio, where Llewellyn’s brother William Eberhard and his wife lived. They rented a farm, and Llewellyn resumed his dairy work. Mary resumed cooking, cleaning, and caring for her large brood. By 1910 she had given birth to seven more children: Emma, Enoch, Bert, Clarence, Carrie, Anna, and Nora.⁴

Bert and Clarence were twins, born prematurely. Mary would later tell Nora that she did her best to keep the tiny babies alive, nestling them in boxes laid in front of the open woodstove oven door. But despite her efforts, both boys died within a few days.

In 1913 the family moved again, this time to farmland between Galena and Johnstown, Ohio. There they put down roots in the community, and Mary started doing “custom hatchings”—incubating certain varieties of chicken eggs, to order, for customers. She used her egg money to supplement the income from Llewellyn’s dairy work. Meanwhile, she had five more children: Bertha, Robert, Georgia, Blanche, and, lastly, Mildred, in 1920.⁵

An article in the June 1929 edition of The Milky Way, published by the Moores & Ross dairy company, featured Llewellyn Eberhard and his family. “Mrs. Eberhard uses one room of the house as an incubator room, and does custom hatchings at 3½ cents an egg,” it reported. “She has been doing this for 15 years. The incubator has a capacity of 3000 eggs. Mrs. Eberhard is also quite a baker. She bakes 14 loaves of bread at one time, twice a week. It is nothing for her to bake 22 pies, four cakes, 200 doughnuts and 200 cookies at one baking.”⁶

Of course, Mary didn’t do everything alone. The children all had chores, either in the house, barn, or garden, depending on the season and day of the week. Nora preferred the house chores, because she didn’t like the smell of the cows. On washing day, Mary would organize several of them into a makeshift assembly line to get the clothes and sheets through the hand-cranked washer and wringer and out onto the clothesline. Nora sometimes helped her mother on baking days, and other times it was her job to tend to the younger children and keep them out from underfoot.⁷

Eventually, as the children grew up and moved out of the house, Mary’s baking, laundry, and egg-hatching responsibilities eased. She and Llewellyn celebrated their golden wedding anniversary with their family on December 21, 1941. He had retired three years previously, and the hard work of Mary’s earlier years was behind her as well.

On April 15, 1958, Mary Madina Comfort Eberhard passed away in Sunbury, Ohio, at the age of 82. Her obituary named her 15 surviving children (Helen predeceased her), and noted that she left 39 grandchildren, 44 great-grandchildren, and 1 great-great-grandchild. She was buried in Otterbein Cemetery in Westerville.⁸

Today, Mary’s legacy lives on in her many descendents, which now include an untold number of great-, great-great-, and great-great-great-grandchildren. She wasn’t rich by any monetary standard, and her days were filled with the hard, plain work of raising a family and keeping house. But somehow, I don’t think she would have changed a thing. My only regret is that I wasn’t born in time to sample her baking.

--Shelley

© Shelley Bishop 2013.

Sources:

1.     Mary Madina Comfort (Kumfert) fraktur, birth and baptism, 1875 (Whitehall Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania); privately held.

2.     Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, marriage certificate no. 3753 (1891), Llewellyn John Eberhard and Mary M. Comfort; Court of Common Pleas, Orphan’s Court Division, Allentown.

3.     1900 U.S. Census, Salisbury Twp., Lehigh Co., Pennsylvania, population schedule, E.D. 49, p. 5B, dwelling 95, family 97, Lwellyn J. Eberhard; digital images, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: accessed 14 Oct 2008); citing NARA microfilm publication T623, roll 1429.

4.     1910 U.S. Census, Rushcreek Twp., Logan County, Ohio, population schedule, E.D. 144, p. 9B, dwelling 216, family 222, Llewellin Eberhard; digital image, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: accessed 13 Aug 2008); citing NARA microfilm publication T624, roll 1205.

5.     1920 U.S. Census, Harlem Twp., Delaware Co., Ohio, population schedule, E.D. 72, p. , dwelling 99, family 99, Llewellyn Eberhard; digital image, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com: accessed 13 Aug 2008); citing NARA microfilm publication T625, roll 1377.

6.     Moores & Ross, Inc., “The Milky Way”, vol. 5 no. 6, June 1929; photograph and article on the L. J. Eberhard family (cover and p.7); privately held.

7.     Personal recollections by Nora Eberhard Ballenger, collected over a period of years by Shelley Ballenger Bishop and Edward Ballenger II.

8.     Mary M. Eberhard obituary, Columbus Evening Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio), 16 April 1958, p. 7A.