Clan William: Mary Ann Munson and William Custer Smith, Part 2

See Part 1 here.

William and Mary Ann Munson Smith set up house in Fennimore, Grant County, Wisconsin. The couple farmed during their time in Wisconsin. On 19 Sep 1854, they had their first child, Walter Clarence Smith. The next surviving child was Mary Madora "Dora" Smith, born in Hazel Green, Grant County on 23 Jul 1850. The third, was Harland Smith, born 02 Nov 1861 in Grant County. Finally, the fourth Wisconsin baby, Eva Elvira Smith was born on 05 Apr 1864 in Fennimore.

Butler County, Iowa Fremont Township Plat Map, 1895

In 1866, the Smith family packed up and moved to Fremont Township, Butler County, Iowa. On 16 Sep 1866, their fifth child, Ella Mae Smith was born in Fremont Township. The Smith's then purchased a farm one mile west of the town of Plainfield, in Butler County, from the widow of former Horton postmaster Amos Head. Head had cleared the land and made it livable. The Smith's purchased 140 acres of prime farm land for $800.00 on 01 Nov 1866. The farm was right on the county line between Butler and Bremer county. The couple worked together to build their house and barn. They had a large family to house and more were on the way.

In addition to the children, the couple also housed William's mother "Cathy"  and his mentally disabled brother, Isaac, and spinster sister, Sara. Along came sons Edwin (06 Jun 1869), Parker (01 Sep 1872), Mirt (09 Sep 1875), and baby John, born 09 Jun 1879 and died 28 Sep 1881. This would complete their family.

The house is the one William & Mary Ann Munson Smith
built. The people are the next family who lived there.

The couple completed their house and barn and as the older ones grew, they married off.  

The original farm and farm today. The house is long gone. The Dieke family have owned
the property for over 100 years and the farm is recognized as a Centennial Farm.

By 1880, William's mentally disabled brother, Isaac, was living in Wisconsin again, with another Smith brother, John. Mother Cathy is believed to have died in Fremont Township before 1880 and was probably the reason Isaac was sent to the oldest brother. Sister Sarah Jane was finally married off to a widower with a disastrous marriage record and history of alcohol abuse and violence, Francis "Frank" Doole, on 27 May 1887 in Floyd County. She did not get a happy ending.

Oldest son Walter had married Isabell Monteith in 1876 in Plainfield. Isabell was one of three Monteith sisters who married into the greater Smith family. The Monteith's hailed from Scotland and settled in Wisconsin.

Daughter Dora married a young businessman originally from Somerset, Pennsylvania, but had moved to Waterloo, Iowa on 21 Jun 1878 in Janesville, Iowa. His family made an indelible impression on the City of Waterloo through the next several decades. The couple would reside in Waterloo and husband Claude Lichty would build a manufacturing company which ran successfully during his lifetime.

Son Harland and Fannie had been married in a double ceremony with Harland's next younger sister, Eva Elvira on 21 Aug 1881. Son Harland and William loved to race horses and built a horse racing track on the property at it's southern side. They traveled the state racing horses and held races on their property. Harlan and his wife Fannie Magoon lived on the farm with the Smith's after their marriage in 1881. Fannie fed the chickens and worked the farm. She did the laundry in a vat on the lawn. Harland, reportedly, was far from industrious and just wanted to race his horses.  

Eva Elvira, who married farm laborer Arthur Marion Bryce on 21 Aug 1881 in a double ceremony with her brother Harland and his wife Fannie. The Bryce's moved on to Fort Dodge and then returned to Plainfield, where Arthur died young in 1886 and Eva did not remarry.

Daughter Ella Mae married farmhand and later railroad man Howard Cunningham on 30 Aug 1885 in Bremer County. They moved to Moberly, Missouri, one of the hubs of the Wabash Railroad.

Plainfield, Bremer County, IA sometime between 1874-1880

William and Mary Ann seemed to have a lot of friends in both Nashua and Plainfield, though Plainfield was where they went most often. Their mail was delivered to the Plainfield post office and that's also where they saw the doctor and did their shopping. Plainfield and Nashua were both thriving farm towns, with just about everything a family could need in those days in the 1880s.  

In 1888, Mary Ann took sick. She was expected to recover and though she was sick, no one expected her to die. She died on 24 Sep 1888. She was 51 and her youngest child, Mirt, was 13 years old. 

Life would change for the Smith family after Mary Ann's death. Family lore would prove false after a long research road.

Part 3 - After Mary Ann Munson Smith

Click these links for more stories about William and Mary's families.

A. Dorsey Bouque Moves to Indiana

A. Dorsey Bouque

JACOB SMITH > WILLIAM CUSTER SMITH > ELLA MAE SMITH CUNNINGHAM > EFFIE
CUNNINGHAM BOUQUE  m Lester Irwin Bouque > A DORSEY BOUQUE

My 2nd greatgrandfather, William Custer Smith and his wife Mary Ann Munson's daughter Ella Mae Smith moved to Moberly, Missouri after her 1885 marriage to Howard Cunningham sometime after 1893. Howard worked on the Wabash railroad, as many men who lived in Moberly did. Their daughter Effie Mae married Lester Irwin (L. I.) Bouque, son of  Charles Bouque and Alice Smith (no relation). L. I. Bouque also worked for the Wabash railroad. Ella's daughter, Effie and L. I. had seven children. They had a set of twins Harry (1907-1908) and Harold (1907-1924). Lester, A. Dorsey, Carl, and Francis "Frank" survived childhood, along with sister Gertrude. A. Dorsey, whose name was Arthur Dorsey Bouque, was born 03 Jan 1909 in Moberly, Randolph County, Missouri.

Though Howard and Ella Mae created a life in Moberly, none of their children would stay there. Lester would spend most of his adult life living in Europe and would die in Kansas City, Frank and Dorsey moved to Indiana, Carl to Kansas City, and Getrude to NYC and then to New Jersey.

Dorsey's childhood seemed to be filled with all the things kids love including being a member of Troop 12 of the Boy Scouts in Moberly. He graduated from Moberly High School in 1927 and was able to return to his 20th reunion in 1947. Like many young men, he worked for the railroad, but briefly, serving as a ditcher's helper. Sometime prior to 1930, he moved on from Moberly and went to Gary, Indiana to find work. He married Mary Frances Hord on 03 Nov 1930 in Indiana, and had a son Charles on 04 Feb 1934 in Gary.

The couple divorced  Frances worked as a clerk for Kresge after her divorce and died in a hospital after residing in a nursing home in Valparaiso, IN on 15 Mar 1986. Cause of death was a sepsis due to a bowel perforation and a broken  hip.

Dorsey married Donelda Ferne Bowron on 21 Apr 1946.She hailed from Canada and her family had emigrated to the US prior to 1930.

D. Ferne and A. Dorsey had four more children that I could locate. Dorsey worked as a laborer in manufacturing  and later in building construction during his time in Gary. They lived 536 Monroe St in Gary and later at 401 Tyler St. Word was received by L. I. Bouque that his son had died of pneumonia related to Fridelander's bacillus (now called  Klebsiella pneumoniae) in Gary's Methodist Hospital after a five-day illness on 06 May 1959.

Sadly, just two months later, A. Dorsey's son, Harold Wayne, born 09 Aug 1948 in Gary, would die on 03 Jul 1959 at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago a week before his 11th birthday, and would also died of pneumonia.

Wife, D. Ferne died 26 Jul 1979 in Crown Point in Lake County.

A Sad Turn in the Tale of the Cunningham Family

Jacob Smith > William Custer Smith & Mary Ann Munson > Ella Mae Smith Cunningham

I've spent considerable time researching the middle child of William Custer Smith and Mary Ann Munson but finally this past weekend visited Moberly, Randolph County, Missouri to start putting all the pieces together of the records and stories I've compiled over the months.

624 W Rollins St

Ella Mae and Howard's basic story was told here. Their lives in Missouri were like the lives of many average families. The father went to work each day, the mother kept house. In 26 Mar 1918 Howard died of "mitral regurgitation," basically, a leaky heart valve. He'd had heart trouble for some years, but not so bad he needed to stop working as a conductor on the Wabash Railroad. They had moved "uptown" to this house after years of hard work. After Howard's death, Ella moved in with her daughter, Effie Mae and her husband, L. I. Bouque at 514 Taylor St.

514 Taylor St

In reading the paper over the years, I'd discovered that Ella Mae had fainting spells and hospitalizations for unknown causes made me think there may have been some mental health issues - especially after her stay in the Baptist Sanitarium many years before.

Mrs HS Cunningham of West Coates St, who is in St Louis taking treatment at the Baptist Sanitarium, is much improved. Her many friends hope for an early and permanent recovery.

Moberly Democrat March 19, 1899, pg 5

I have to say when I finally found the death certificate, I was still shocked and saddened. Ella Mae ended her life with a pistol shot to the head on 21 Jun 1924 at the age of 57 in her daughter's home. No obituary was published. She was buried in Oakland Cemetery in Moberly, next to her husband, Howard. What caused her despair we will never know.

Trailblazing Women - Gertrude Bouque Nichols

Jacob Smith > William Custer Smith > Ella Mae Smith Cunningham > Effie Cunningham Bouque > Gertrude Bouque Nichols

My great great grandfather, William Custer Smith was born in Ohio in 1831 and moved to Grant County, Wisconsin, when 15 years of age and resided there till 1865 when he moved with his family onto the farm one mile west of Plainfield, where he resided at the time of his death in 1895. His first wife, and mother of his eight children, was Mary Ann Munson. She was born in about 1837 and died in 1888 in Iowa.

Their fifth child, Ella Mae, was born in 1866, married Howard Cunningham in 1885. They relocated to Moberly, Randolph County, Missouri after their marriage. Howard was a conductor on the Wabash Railroad. The Wabash Railroad was a Class I railroad that operated in the mid-central US. It served a large area with trackage in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and Missouri, and into the Province of Ontario. It had connections to most of the major cities in the central US from NYC to Kansas City.  Many of the male descendants of Howard worked for the railroad.

They had four children, including Effie Mae, the eldest, born in 1885, who married Lester Irwin Bouque. L.I. and Effie were well-known in town and very active in civic activities.

L.I. and Effie had six sons and finally, a daughter, Gertrude, who was born in 1919. At least two of the kids went to college, including Gertrude, who received her journalism degree from the prestigious School of Journalism at the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1940.

Her first newspaper job was in Caruthersville, Missouri for several months before returning to Moberly to work on the Moberly Monitor Index for a year before moving to Shrevesport, Louisiana to take a job at the Shreveport Times, where she quickly rose from reporter to assistant city editor and features writer as well as associate editor for two Shrevesport magazines. Her full-page story on the munitions plant in Minden, Louisiana was the first story she had picked up by the Associated Press newswire.

Close to war's end, she moved to New York City where she was hired as assistant press officer for the United Nations Press Office in Rockefeller Center. She reportedly also worked for the AP as reporter and sportswriter covering the Brooklyn Dodgers. Here is one of the stories she wrote that was picked up nationally on the same day the second Atomic bomb was dropped in Nagasaki, Japan. The bombing assuring the rapid end at last to the era of devastation which conversely had also allowed women to rise to unprecedented heights in careers previously restricted primarily to men.

Between 1946 and 1956, Gertrude worked in New York for Fairchild Publishing, a company which dates back to the 19th century, renowned for fashion industry related publishing. In 1956, she moved to Westfield, New Jersey and marrried Clement H. Nichols, a chemical engineer who was recently widowed with three children. Gertrude also had three children with Clement.  Gertrude was very active in her community, serving on the school district board, participating for years with the local theatre group, and was involved with the International Gourmet Food Club and the College Women's Club in Westfield. Clement died in 1988 and Gertrude, who left behind her life as a working woman for motherhood, died in 2007 in New Jersey.