Jennie A. Smith 1836-1925

SMITH, WICKWIRE, KEEFE

Posted By: Netha M Meyer (email)
Date: 4/1/2003 at 18:39:07

Jennie A Smith County Pioneer Dies in Ladora

Jennie A. Smith died at her home in Ladora Monday afternoon at 2 o’clock at the advanced age of 89 years, six months and 28 days. The immediate cause of her death is given as heart failure, superinduced by extreme old age.

Jennie Augusta Wickwire was born of French-Scotch parents January 5, 1836 at Salisbury, Addison County, Vermont, near the shores of beautiful Lake Champlain on the west and the foothills of the Green Mountains on the east.

Left an orphan at 12, she was adopted by Mr. & Mrs. D.A.. Bennett, of Bridport, Vt., with whom she made her home for nine years. Her education was obtained in the Bridport schools and a seminary at Burlington, VT., where she was a student for several years.
Husband Killed in War

November 17, 1857, she became the bride of Moses H. Keefe. To this union two sons, James N. and William H. were born. The husband and father served in the Civil War as a member of Company K, First Vermont Cavalry. He fell, mortally wounded, in the battle of Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864.

April 11, 1867, Mrs. Keefe was married to Justus D. Smith, a blacksmith and wagon maker of Shareham, Vt. In the fall of that year Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Smith’s two sons by her former marriage, turned their faces toward the ‘Great West’ and left the Green Mountain state to locate at Victor, Iowa.

The following year the older son, James, succumbed to the ravages of typhoid and his body was buried at Victor. Others in the family suffered severe sickness, and this undoubtedly was the cause of the Smiths returning to Vermont in the fall of 1868.
Return to Victor
Early in 1873, however, they returned to Victor, where Mr. Smith engaged in blacksmithing and wagon making for three years, when he moved his family to a farm south of Ladora. In 1879 he again took up his trade, now locating in Ladora.

Mr. Smith died April 18, 1895, after being an invalid for many years. For 30 years Mrs. Smith has lived by herself in a cozy home in the north part of town where she found it a pleasure to do her own housework, even in the later years of life when the eye usually dims and the hand falters. She was, too, an inveterate reader and kept well abreast of current topics.

Although living alone, this venerable woman was surrounded by many friends who ever kept in daily touch with her life. Her only visit to her beloved Vermont since 1873 was made in 1907 in company with the H. J. Chandler family.
No Blood Ties

She leaves no blood relation, her son William, having died in Des Moines a year and half ago, but she leaves a host of friends who will genuinely mourn her death.

Like ‘the man in the house by the side of the road’ she has in truth been ‘a friend to all’. Seldom has a mind and body run so evenly the race of life for nearly 90 years. In religion she was a devoted Presbyterian, and was ever an untiring worker in the interest of the Sunday School and Church.

Calm of mind and peaceful of soul, death to her was a welcome transition from earthly life to the ‘mansion not made by hands eternal in the heavens’.

Funeral services were held at the home Wednesday afternoon, conducted by Rev. E.W. F. Holler, pastor of the Presbyterian church of Brooklyn. The pallbearers were: Claude Carey, H.B. Fields, Ben McKusker, Ed Sims, H.H. York, and H. R. Shaull. Burial was in the Victor cemetery beside the bodies of her husband and two sons.