CURPHEY, John Edward 1854-1944

CURPHEY, LAMB, FORBES, LANTZ, MORPHEW

Posted By: County Coordinator
Date: 10/8/2010 at 18:57:38

b: June 18, 1854
d: May 4, 1944

CONDUCT RITES FOR
OLDEST RESIDENT
OF NORA SPRINGS

John Curphey Succumbs
At Daughter's Home
In Jeffers, Minn.

Funeral services were held at 1 o'clock Saturday afternoon in the Church of Christ for John E. Curphey, 89, Nora Springs' oldest resident, who died Thursday morning, May 4, at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Harry Morphew, in Jeffers, Minnesota.

Mr. Curphey had been in very bad health since January, his advanced age causing extreme weakness, which resulted in several serious falls in his home. He was taken to the home of his daughter on March 18, and was cared for there until his death.

Stanley L. Haynes of Mason City conducted the funeral services and burial was in the Rudd cemetery, beside the resting place of his wife, Nettie.

John Edward Curphey was born June 18, 1854, in Chicago, Illinois. His father was of an emigrant family from the Isle of Man. His mother, Jane (Lamb) Curphey, was of a Scotch family who settled on U.S. government land at Elgin, Illinois, in 1836. His father died, a victim of the cholera scourge in Chicago, while John was an infant and hismother took him and a brother, Thomas, and a sister, Lois (known here as Mrs. Giles W. Mead), to live with her parents, near Hopkinton, Iowa.

It was from Hopkinton that John, at the age of 14, came by covered wagon with his mother and step-father, Carlos Havens, and his half-sister, Rosa, to a small farm which with its log house, they had purchased at the northeast edge of Nora Springs.

In 1882 he married Nettie Lantz and they took up a homestead near Wadens, Minnesota. Here about three years later his wife died suddenly and he returned to Nora Springs in order that hismother and sister might care for his two small daughters; and he assisted his aging mother and step-father on the farm -- which is the present Martin Schwade farm.

Mr. Curphey was one of the earliest attendants of the newly erected Church of Christ here, more than seventy years ago, and for the past 45 years had been an elder of that church. Except for the three years of his residency in Minnesota, he had spent the past 75 years of his life in Nora Springs.

In 1927 he was married to Mrs. Lora Forbes, a lifelong resident of Rock Grove township, who survives him. The survivors also include his two daughters, Mary Jane -- Mrs. Frank Dunham of Park Rapids, Minnesota, and Florence -- Mrs. Harry Morphew of Jeffers, Minnesota; and also by three step-daughters, Mrs. Maude Bitterman of Nora Springs, Mrs. Harry Heinselman of Charles City, and Mrs. Ed Hofler of Nora Springs.

[newspaper unknown]
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NOTES:
1. John was b. June 1854 and d. May 4, 1944.

2. His first wife was Nettie Lantz, of Nora Springs.

3. His father died in 1856 near Chicago.

4. John is buried in Evergreen Rudd Cemetery alongside his wife Nettie.

5. John E. Curphey is my gr-gr-grandfather; and his mother, Jane Lamb Curphey Haven, would be the sister of Helen Gaylord.

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Submitted to IaGenWeb by Joan Edmonson, 10/2010