A Letter (1) from George Kelker Marshall (2)

To his son Howard Orton Marshall (3)

With Annotations by Kelly Marshall

October 2005

WEBSITE: http://www.genealogy.com/users/m/a/r/Kelly-Marshall/

Grove city Penna Nov 14 1935

Dear Son and all just few

Lines in answer to your letter

Received to day i thought you

had forgotten your old dad (4)

We Was (5) Married (6) 61 years on

the 4 of Nov and you Was

Born one year and six days

after We Was Married that make

you 60 years on the 10t glad you

are all Well My health is

Not very good just abel

to get around the house

And I put in Some lonsome

days I here nothing from Enid (7)

and Violet (8) uncle dave aunt

Kate (9) was down to see Me Sue Betty (10)

is a big Baby hope howard (11) get

along in school thank you for

the one dollar (12) aunt Maggie (13)

Is in a Methist home near

Pittsburg

(page two)

I Will 80 years old on Feb 10 (14)

There Some here 91 90 and

Some are blind We Wont Starve

this Winter Plenty of Saurcrout

And Pork (15) I will give you

Heffner address

203 adams ave

Ridgeway Penn

My Best Regards to all

George K. Marshall

END NOTES

1) A copy of this letter is in the possession of Vicki Marshall Dunn, great-granddaughter of George Kelker Marshall. It came to her from the papers of her grandfather, Howard Orton Marshall, through her father, Dr. Howard J. H. Marshall. Vicki, my third cousin, shared this letter with me during a visit to her home in Lakeland, Florida, in September 2005.

2) George Kelker Marshall (1856-1941) was the first child of William Kelker Marshall (1829-1911) and Anna Mary Rumbarger (1838-1924). He was born in Butler, Butler County, Pennsylvania, and moved as a boy with his parents to the deep, virgin woods of Jefferson County where his father and Grandfather John Rumbarger (1810-1889) worked as lumbermen. He spent all his life in Jefferson County, until in his old age he lived in Grove City, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, at the Odd Fellow’s Home for the elderly. He died there in 1941—nearly six years after this letter was penned. His Marshall grandparents were John Marshall (1803-1889), son of the emigrant Irish ancestor John Marshall (about 1761-1806) and his wife Catharina Truby Rohrer Marshall (about 1764-1806); and Charlotte Kelker Marshall (1800-1854), daughter of Jacob Kelker and Rebecca Thome. George K. Marshall’s unusual middle name “Kelker” is the surname of his great-grandfather, Jacob Kelker--given first to his father, William Kelker Marshall.

The Independent Order of Odd Fellows is one of the largest and oldest fraternal orders in the United States, and it was popular among the Marshall men. G. K. Marshall’s great-uncle, Col. Frederick Augustus Rohrer of Greensburg, at the time of his death in 1882 was recognized as the first Odd Fellow initiated in Westmoreland County. The Odd Fellow Valediction is “I am an Odd Fellow: I believe in the Fatherhood of God, and the Brotherhood of man. I believe in Friendship, Love and Truth as basic guides to the ultimate destiny of all mankind. I believe my home, my church or temple, my lodge, and my community deserve my best work, my modest pride, my earnest faith, and my deepest loyalty, as I perform my duty ‘to visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead and educate the orphan’ and as I work with others to build a better world, because, in spirit and in truth, I am and must always be, grateful to my Creator, faithful to my country and fraternal to my fellow-man; I am an Odd Fellow!” See the website http://www.ioof.org/odd_fellows.htm.

3) Howard Orton Marshall (1876-1948), was born in Rathmel, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, the first child of George K. Marshall and his wife Susan “Susie” Stewart (1855-1917). Her parents were William F. and Sarah Stewart. Howard O. Marshall was married first to Cora Womeldorf on 25 July 1898; and a daughter, Enid Marshall, was born to this union on 10 October 1899. He served in the U. S. Army in Cuba and the Philippines, and then settled in Denver, Colorado. He married Elizabeth Agnes Hally (1883-1950) there on 01 June 1906. She was the daughter of Dr. James Hally (1843-1920) and his wife Susan (Suzanna) Elizabeth Cumings (1847-1916), both of whom were born in Scotland. The Marshalls made their home for a time in Seattle, Washington (1910 Census). Their son Howard James Hally Marshall was born in Denver on 22 December 1914, and shortly thereafter the family moved to El Paso, Texas, where the Marshalls lived until their deaths. By occupation, Howard O. Marshall was a glass beveller.

4) Two observations: Marshall was lonely in this place far from his own, familiar Jefferson County and from his only living son, who was in El Paso, Texas. And don’t parents have a universal ability to dispense, at no charge, guilt feelings for their children not being in touch?

5) Jessica Hally Dunn, George K. Marshall’s twelve year-old, great-great-granddaughter, asked about the old gentleman’s poor grammar, as I sat in her kitchen reading the letter aloud. A reminder to us all that, with the exception of family members who received the unusual gift of an education in standard-English grammar, our ancestors in Appalachia spoke a dialect in which the past-tense verb always used with the pronoun “you” was “was”. This was the dialect spoken and at times written (as in this letter) in rural western Pennsylvania. It still is spoken today by many in Appalachia—in rural, small town, suburban and urban areas. Marshall was speaking what he heard his parents and grandparents speak—and I’ll bet some of his descendants and the cousins of those descendants echo today the ancestral speech patterns.

6) The couple was married on 04 November, 1875, by the Methodist Episcopal pastor of the Emerickville Charge. I was delighted and moved when I found this marriage record, bold as you please, looking at me from the old record book of the Emerickville United Methodist Church, when I served as its pastor from 1975-1979. The records were placed at that time with the Brookville Public Library and, I believe, are still accessible to researchers there. Emerickville is located about six miles west of Reynoldsville on Route 322. Susan Stewart Marshall was a member of the Reynoldsville Methodist Episcopal Church. Membership records (page 188) of that church state that she was married and she lived in Rathmel; and that she became a Probationary Member of the congregation on 01 February 1884 and a Full Member on 10 August 1884. There is no membership record there for her husband. His niece, Laura Heffner Wilson, told me that the Marshall men all had joined the Baptist Church—to the chagrin of their Methodist mother--receiving adult baptism at the time of their conversion to that tradition. Checking the records of the Baptist Church in Reynoldsville may be productive.

7) Enid Marshall (1899-1980) was the daughter of Howard Orton Marshall by his first wife Cora Womeldorf. Cora’s parents were Daniel and Letitia Womeldorf. She later married John Pickering, a native of Virginia. In both the 1910 and the 1920 Census records, Enid is living with them in Columbus, Franklin County, Ohio. The 1910 record shows Carl Womeldorf—perhaps a brother--and his family living two doors away from them. The 1920 and 1930 records tell that John Pickering was a polisher in a lamp factory—note the similarity to Howard O. Marshall’s trade. Cora is named “Dolly” in the 1930 Census, and Enid is not living with them in 1930. In time, Enid married James Riley, and they were living in Bradenton, Florida, at the time of her death. Vicki Marshall Dunn and Jimmy Marshall, children of Enid’s half-brother Howard J. H. Marshall, met her during her lifetime. Vicki Dunn has a photo of Enid as a child, addressed on the back “To Papa from Enid.”

8) Violet may be Violet Kathleen Heffner Elliott (1891-1980), Howard O. Marshall’s full cousin and daughter of the Heffners, whom George K. Marshall mentions next.

9) Uncle Dave and Aunt Kate are David (1868-1939) and Kate Marshall Heffner (1873-1950), brother-in-law and sister of George K. Marshall. The Heffners stayed in touch with their Marshall kin in Texas. Laura Heffner Wilson (1900-1990) told me in the late 1970s that she had a cousin in El Paso who was a medical doctor (Howard J. H. Marshall), and that he was the son of her cousin Howard O. Marshall. She even had his mailing address, but a letter from me to him at that time didn’t elicit a response. Laura told me that this branch of her mother’s family had moved to Texas long ago, and that “we had lost touch with them.” When Vicki Marshall Dunn and I connected via the internet in 2001, she told me that she knew of her Pennsylvania roots, but that her family “had lost touch” with the Pennsylvania branch of the family. With the passing of one more generation, that memory on each side would have been gone!

10) Sue Betty Marshall, born in El Paso on 14 August 1917, is the daughter of Howard O. Marshall and Elizabeth Hally. She apparently was named for her grandmothers—Susan “Susie” Marshall, who died four months before her birth, and Susan (Suzanna) Elizabeth Hally, who had died in 1916. At this writing, she still makes her home in El Paso at age 88.

11) Howard is George K. Marshall’s grandson, Dr. Howard James Hally Marshall (1914-1991) of El Paso, Texas. At the time of this letter, his Grandfather Marshall knew that he was in college at the Texas College of Mines (now the University of Texas at El Paso), where he graduated with his bachelor’s degree in 1938. He attended the University of Texas School of Medicine at Galveston, graduating in 1942. Marshall served with the U. S. Army Medical Corps from 1943-1946, after which he set up his medical practice in El Paso. He was married twice, first to Doris Linahan (1921-1999) and then to Mary Ann Blaskiewicz (born 1936), who survives him. Children were born to both marriages—great-grandchildren of George K. Marshall.

12) Dollar equivalency: In 2003, $1.00 from 1935 was worth $13.42, according to the Consumer Price Index, or $149.85 using the relative share of the GDP as a calculator; see http://eh.net/hmit/compare/.

13) What a fabulous clue this is to more information about a sister of George K. Marshall! I’m guessing that “Aunt Maggie” is Sarah Margaret Marshall, born February 1870 in Washington Township, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania—before the family moved to Reynoldsville and while her father still apparently was earning his living as a lumberman. She was married three times and, according to her niece Laura Heffner Wilson, outlived all three husbands. Her first husband was August Andrew Kleinhans (1857-1897). A son, Arthur Marshall Kleinhans, was born to this union in 1888, but he did not survive childhood. She then married a Mr. Rhodes (spelled Rhoades in a second obituary for William K. Marshall), about whom I know nothing except that they were living in Pittsburgh in 1911 when her father died. She is identified in those obituaries as “Margaret.” When her mother died in 1924, she is “Mary Hildebrand” of Pittsburgh. In 1941, she is named “Mrs. Mary Hildebrand” in George K. Marshall’s obituary; but she is not named as a surviving sibling when her brother Will Marshall died in April 1945. Laura Wilson recalled that she was buried in Pittsburgh, but I’ve not yet found her date of death or identified this cemetery. Laura’s niece, Anne Elliott Stempel of Athens, Ohio, in the early 1990s gave me a lovely antique chair which Laura and her husband Merrideth had kept in their home, from the home of her “Aunt Maggie”—Sarah Margaret Kleinhans Rhodes Hildebrand.

14) Marshall states here that he was born on 10 February 1856. The record I previously had for his birth was 10 April 1856—a record, I believe, which came from his niece Laura Heffner Wilson. He was the first of twelve children born to his parents; there were six sons and six daughters. Anna Mary Rumbarger Marshall (1838-1924) was 18 years old when her first child George was born and 46 when Guy, the last child, was born. George Marshall was 28 years old when his youngest brother Guy Marshall was born; his son Howard O. Marshall was an older contemporary of his two youngest uncles, Earl J. Marshall (my great grandfather) and Guy R. Marshall.

15) Perhaps the most endearing piece of his letter, this reference to “sauerkraut and pork” is a vivid reminder of Marshall’s Pennsylvania Dutch (German) mother, Anna Mary Rumbarger, and of the Pennsylvania German heritage of his paternal Grandmother Marshall, Charlotte Kelker, and of his maternal Grandmother Rumbarger, Elizabeth Leathers. During my sojourn as a young pastor in Emerickville, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, I had the good fortune of enjoying sauerkraut in this same Pennsylvania German tradition. It was made annually by the Vasbinders, a very old couple in the congregation. After the cabbage harvest each year, the sauerkraut wintered in huge stoneware crocks stored in their basement. Whatever the secret was, I’m hoping that it didn’t die with them. The sauerkraut was not at all biting or strong, but had an almost sweet flavor which surprised me every time I tasted it.

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The above Endnotes are under copyright by Gordon Kelly Marshall. Researchers, family members, libraries, or genealogical and/or historical societies are invited to use the information freely, for non-commercial purposes only, with proper credit to me and to this site. You may not use the information at all for commercial purposes. Please email me at marshallfamily@zoominternet.net.

Contact Information

Kelly Marshall

788 Wildwood Drive

Boardman OH 44512-3241

marshallfamily@zoominternet.net

October 2005