Price, Nelly Peery 1868 - 1948

PRICE, PEERY, HENDRICK, FILETTA

Posted By: Reid R. Johnson (email)
Date: 6/23/2024 at 12:43:45

Clayton County Register, 26 Feb. 1948.

Nelly Peery Price, a resident of Elkader for more than forty years, died in San Diego, Calif., Feb. 13, 1948.

Born in Trenton, Missouri, on October 10, 1868, the daughter of Judge Stephen and Emma Hendrick Peery, her early years were spent in that community. As a young girl she entered the University of Iowa, where she was graduated in 1890. After a year's absence she returned to the university for the study of law, graduating from that department in 1893. She was admitted to the Iowa bar the same year, becoming one of the early woman lawyers of the country.

She was married to Valmah T. Price of Elkader, in 1894, at her family home in San Diego, Calif.

Coming to Elkader as a bride, she found herself a member of a family which had played an important part in the history of Clayton county. Judge Eliphalet Price, after a half century in the county had already passed from the stage; but his son, the late Realto E. Price, born near Guttenberg in 1840, still had many active years before him, and his son, her husband, Valmah T. Price, was just starting his career, carrying the legal tradition of his family into a third generation in Clayton county.

Mrs. Price entered actively into the life of the community, holding charter memberships in Chapter BZ of the P.E.O., the Coterie, the Delta Dek, the former Shakespeare Club, and the local chapter of the D.A.R.; and active membership in the Eastern Star, whose fifty year pin and Past Worthy Matron's insignia she wore.

She was preceded in death by Filetta, her eldest child, in 1900; by her mother-in-law, Sarah Filetta Price, in 1925; and by her husband in 1931.

After her husband's death she remained in Elkader to manage the home of his father, Realto E. Price, until he also died in 1935. Then she moved to California, where her two sons had preceded her, to make her home with her sisters, Dr. Bessie E., J. June, and Hortense E. Peery, in San Diego. It was in that home that she suffered her last illness of several months.

She is survived by her three sisters in San Diego, Calif., and by two sons, Peery and Valmah T. Price, Jr., both of Los Angeles, Calif.

Funeral services were held from the Witt funeral home in Elkader at 1:30 Saturday, and from the Congregational Christian church at 2 o'clock. The Rev. Herbert G. Kelly officiated. Burial was in the Price family lot in the East Side cemetery.

Pallbearers were: H. J. Conrad, W. W. Davidson, Norbert Niemeyer, L. D. Dittmer, Max Bishop, and J. W. Downie.

Mr. and Mrs. Peery Price and Mr. and Mrs. Valmah T. Price Jr. came from Los Angeles to attend their mother's funeral.