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.

Middle Age Miasma or Murder Most Foul?

Jacob Smith > William Custer Smith > Mirt Smith married Emma Schafstall

Gerhard Heinrich Schafstall had a pile of kids in Prussia. Evidence suggests he emigrated as a widower in 1864, leaving from Bremen on the Norma and arriving in Baltimore in September 1864 at the age of 58, bringing his children with him.

Frank, Emma, and Anna Schafstall
Bradford, Chickasaw County, Iowa

The Schafstalls farmed in the Waymansville, Bartholomew County, Indiana area.  One of the children, Franz, married Anna Kruse in 1879. They had only one child, Emma Haehlen Schafstall, born in 1880 in Jackson County, Indiana.  Between 1880 and 1898, the Schafstalls had moved on from Indiana, arriving in the Bradford, Chickasaw County, Iowa area to farm. They lived near Walter Smith, whose brother Mirt married Emma in 1898. Emma married into our direct Smith line. By all acounts, this son of Heinrich lived an average life in an average community. His younger brother William's story turned out far differently.

Waymansville, Indiana

William was born in about 1856 in Prussia. William married Johanna Caroline "Carrie" Bode in 1880 in Indiana. They had one child, a son, Christian H "August" Schafstall, in 1883. Schafstall was a long-time farmer in the area but one day, he just disappeared off the face of the earth.

“Mr Schafstall disappeared July 14, 1897 (also his wife’s 38th birthday). He had been assisting the farmers in his neighborhood with their thrashing and on the morning of July 14th, drove to the farm of John Moorman. When he arrived there he was told that the thrashers working at Robert Elkins’ farm were in need of assistance and started to that farm. He drove a mule hitched to a single buggy. 

The mule was found hitched to a fence near the Moorman farm but no one was ever able to say in what direction Mr Schafstall went when he started into a neighboring cornfield. There is a lake in the vicinity of the Moorman home and for a time it was supposed that he might have fallen into the water and was drowned. It is said that Mr Schafstall was heavily in debt at the time of his disappearance.

According to one story current at the time of his disappearance, Mr Schafstall had considerable money with him as he had been to Seymour on July 13 and had sold a wagon load of wheat. It is said that he sold some wheat for a neighbor on the same day and left the wagon and the money at a farm house near Borcher’s church, where the owner obtained them the following day. He was fifty-four years old when he disappeared.” [Ed note: Records indicate he was 41]

 Seymour Daily Republican, Seymour, Indiana, Wednesday, December 31, 1913

In 1913, a woman on her deathbed had another story to tell:

No evidence was found whether the digging ever commenced, but one would assume that the discovery of remains would have made the news.  But, to twist the plot even further, his sister Julia, refuted the murder story, saying she'd heard last from her brother in a visit to her home 17 years previously in Cincinnati (about five years after his disappearance).

His wife Carrie, who died shortly before the death bed confession story came out, believed he had met with foul play, but his son August always believed his father had just picked up and left with cash in pocket. Was this a case of middle-age miasma or murder most-foul?  We'll never know. In 1913, he was finally declared dead and a stone marker was placed with the date of his disappearance as the date of his death.

Unbearable Loss - Sisters To The End

Oscar W Lindsey > Frank Simeon Lindsey > Fay Evern Lindsey married Marian Lane > Mildred Marie Lindsey and Lillian Lindsey Berry

Fay Lindsey met and married Marian Lane in 1929 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  To their union was born five girls and three boys. They resided in the Benton/Linn County area of Iowa.

All the girls married except for Mildred Marie.  She went by "Marie" for the most part. One day, she, her mother Marian and nephew Larry Berry and sister Lillian Berry were driving near Urbana when a car driven by James Scott crossed the center line and struck Marie's car nearly-head on.

The driver of the car that struck them died. Marie and Lillian also both died in the accident.  Sisters to the end.  No one was wearing seat belts.

After burying her two daughters, Marian recovered from her physical injuries and lived another four years, dying at age 83.

Next up:  A Tale of Murder

Unbearable Loss - A Fishing Trip With Pa

NATHAN FARR > WILLIAM FARR > WILLIS CORNELIUS FARR > ELNA ANN FARR

DR CHRISTOPHER RIBBLE > SUSANNAH RIBBLE m JOHANNES C KEGLEY > MICHAEL CAGLEY > JOHN L CAGLEY > MARY CAGLEY m Henry Noble > MONTFORD CAGLEY NOBLE

Montford Cagley Noble, 23, married a cousin, Elna Ann Farr, in Plainfield, Iowa in early July of 1919. She went with her husband, also of Plainfield, to their new home in Grand Island, Nebraska to start their married life. Not a month had passed when word came to her of the death of her father, a well-respected Methodist man and farmer, W.C. Farr, who was a mere 64 years of age. She returned for his funeral and then went back to Nebraska.  Less than a year later, she was dead from peritonitis following abdominal surgery at a Lincoln, Nebraska hospital.

Montford, or "Mont" as he was called by those who knew him, found a new bride in about 1921 in Nebraska.  Jeanette "Nettie" Forke was part of a large Elk, Nebraska farming family.  Her paternal grandfather had come from Germany and settled in Illinois.  Her father relocated from Illinois to give the wide open spaces of Nebraska a try.

Soon after their marriage, Nettie gave birth to their first child, Robert, on 14 Jun 1922.  They later had two more boys, Glen and Richard. The Noble's spent much of the next few years in Nebraska, but spent a few years in the Springfield, IL area.  Mont was a civil engineer.  In 1930 he was working for a steel mill in that capacity.


In August of 1939, Mont and his son Robert, now nearly 17,  took a fishing trip to Lac La Croix in the Province of Ontario, Canada. Lac La Croix is a border lake surrounded by what is now Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area to the South, and to the North lies Ontario's Quetico Park. The area is a protected canoe area with no public road access and some of the finest fishing in the world.

According to reports, the two had hired a guide to take them and a friend, David Simmons, into the deep pine forest and to the fishing areas. What started out a routine fishing expedition on August 10, 1939, ended with the deaths of both Mont and his son Robert, who were drowned after capsizing their canoe over a set of rapids.

The Forestry Branch at Fort Francis and Minnesota Game and Fisheries  were called in to do search and recovery and eventually, the provincial police arrived.  The bodies were located on August 14th.

In 1940, Nettie was living with her two sons and a boarder in Lincoln, Nebraska.  She lived on, never remarrying, until 11 Feb 1983 where she died in Los Angeles County, California at the age of 84.

Unbearable Loss - Drunk Driving

As I've traversed the family records, both far and near, in my quest to learn our family story, I've run across tragedy after tragedy.  Children by the score, lost before adulthood (what life was like before clean, treated water and vaccinations).  Sometimes half a mother's children would not reach maturity. It's heartbreaking.

But, perhaps none so much as when tragedy strikes twice in the same moment. I've run across three cases of double-loss so far in my journey.

Wilma and Berdine

The first was the case of sisters Wilma and Berdine. Wilma was 16 and had gone to a dance with her younger sister, age 15, and two boys.  On the way home, they apparently stopped for beer at a local tavern.  Reports stated that about a case had been purchased. In a later interview, Rutter observed during the trip that the 1939 model car Cadam was driving had reached 85 mph and had remarked upon it to the driver. At some point, the car they were riding in plunged through a bridge rail and soared 18 feet into the icy water below. Rutter was thrown clear of the car and was able to break free of the ice above him with his hand, sustaining only a cut hand in the accident.  The remaining three drowned.

Rutter had been the one who purchased the beer. In early 1952, the State grand jury declined to bring an indictment against the owner of the Horton tavern, John Karasch, for selling beer to minors. By mid-1952, Rutter was in the military and by 1953, he was back home, having been arrested for a break-in with Melvin Cadam, presumably related to the Cadam killed in the accident. From that point, he seems to have gone on and lived the life his friends did not get to live.

As a brief aside, the parents of Wilma and Berdine had lost two other sons in infancy.  Two of the remaining children did not live to 60 years old.  Of seven children, only one survives.

Jacob Smith Tree

WWII Brought Home: Harry F. Bradshaw, USN

Photo by C Voukon

I went to hang out with my uncle last week and he had a small treasure trove of old family photos. He also had some idea of who most of them were. Kindly, he let me borrow them and I've scanned as many as I could.

I ran across the photo of a young woman and, my curiosity piqued, I had to do a little research. I discovered the story of Seaman 1st Class Harry Frederick Bradshaw, one of scores of thousands of young Americans who lost their life in WWII.

Harry was raised in Nashua and Belle Plaine, IA, graduating from Belle Plaine High School in 1939 and joined the Navy soon thereafter. While on leave on May 4, 1941, he married my grandmother's sister's oldest (twin) daughter, Jeanette Janis Scoles. According to researcher Evelyn Park Blalock, they were childhood sweethearts. They were married by a local Presbyterian minister. Jeanette went to live with his parents, Mr. & Mrs. Ray Bradshaw in Belle Plaine and also spent time in Nashua, while Harry served.


He was stationed on the USS Arizona until October 1941. He served briefly on the USS Wharton to get stateside to San Francisco. He headed to a training in Virginia from there.  His final leave was in November of 1941 and he returned home to his wife and parent. He returned to Hawaii via the USS Neosha, leaving port in San Francisco on 30 Nov 1941. The USS Neosha arrived in Pearl Harbor on December, 6, 1941.  He was supposed to return to the Arizona on the 6th, but because of the emergency, he did not reboard the Arizona, saving his life.. Having survived the attack, his emergency orders had him transferred permanently to the Neosha on the 7th.

Harry is honored on the list of survivors inscribed at the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Honolulu, Hawaii, and on the Tablets of the Missing in Manila, the Philippines. The U.S. Navy also placed a cenotaph memorializing Harry in Oak Hill Cemetery, Belle Plaine, Benton County, Iowa.

She was laid down under Maritime Commission contract by Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, Kearny, New Jersey, 22 June 1938; launched on 29 April 1939; sponsored by Mrs. Emory S. Land, wife of Rear Admiral Emory S. Land (Ret.), Chairman of the Maritime Commission; and commissioned on 7 August 1939, with Commander AV. E. A. Mullan in command.

Conversion at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard was completed on 7 July 1941, Neosho immediately began the vital task of ferrying aviation fuel from west coast ports to Pearl Harbor. On such a mission she arrived in Pearl Harbor on 6 December, discharged a full cargo to Naval Air Station Ford Island, and prepared for the return passage.

Next morning, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor found Neosho alert to danger; her captain-Commander John S. Phillips-got her underway and maneuvered safely through the Japanese fire, concentrated on the battleships moored at Ford Island, to a safer area of the harbor. Her guns fired throughout the attack, splashing one enemy plane and driving off others. Three of her men were wounded by a strafing attacker.

For the next five months, Neosho sailed with the aircraft carriers or independently, since escort ships-now few and far between-could not always be spared to guard even so precious a ship and cargo. Late in April, as the Japanese threatened a southward move against Australia and New Zealand by attempting to advance their bases in the Southwest Pacific, Neosho joined Task Force 17 (TF 17). At all costs, the sealanes to the dominions had to be kept open, and they had to be protected against attack and possible invasion.

As the American and Japanese fleets sought each other out in the opening maneuvers of the climactic Battle of the Coral Sea on 6 May 1942, Neosho refueled the carrier Yorktown and heavy cruiser Astoria, then retired from the carrier force with a lone escort, the destroyer Sims.

Neosho burning, 7 May 1942.

Next day at 10:00, Japanese aircraft spotted the two ships, and believing them to be a carrier and her escort, launched the first of two attacks which sank Sims and left Neosho-victim of seven direct hits and a suicide dive by one of the bombers-ablaze aft and in danger of breaking in two. She had shot down at least three of the attackers. One of her crewmen, Oscar V. Peterson, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his efforts to save the ship in spite of his severe injuries suffered in the attack.

Superb seamanship and skilled damage control work kept Neosho afloat for the next four days. The sorely stricken ship was first located by a RAAF aircraft, then an American PBY Catalina flying boat. At 13:00 on 11 May, the destroyer Henley arrived, rescued the 123 survivors and sunk by gunfire the ship they had so valiantly kept afloat against impossible odds. With Henley came word that the American fleet had succeeded in turning the Japanese back, marking the end of their southward expansion in World War II.

Harry was declared missing on May 8, 1942.  He was declared Killed in Action May 8, 1943 and awarded the Purple Heart.

Harry Bradshaw is Declared Officially Dead by Navy Dept 

Word Received here by his widow Monday brings sympathy from Sec Knox

Mrs Harry Bradshaw received word Monday from the Navy Department that on May 8, 1943, he was officially declared to be dead.  He had been reported missing since May 8, 1942 when the tanker, Neosha, was sunk in the Coral Sea.  Harry was in Charge of laundry on the Neosha.  With the official declaration of his death, was a message of sympathy from Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, which read as follows:  "I extend to you my sincere sympathy in your great loss and hope you may find comfort in the knowledge that your husband gave his life for his couuntry, upholding the highest tradition of the Navy.  The Navy shares in your sense of loss of his service.  

Mrs Bradshaw is the former Jeanette Scoles.

Nashua Reporter, 16 Jun 1943, pg 1

My heart felt heavy for Jeanette who really never got a chance to start her life with Harry. I thought of the power of young love and how all of her hopes and dreams were dashed as it would for too many other young wives  She'd remember Harry, though, through the eyes of their child, Dennis, who was born nine months after that leave. Jeanette remarried many years later and died in 2004 in New Hampton, IA.