Elsie M. Osborn

OSBORN, BRICKER, NICHOLSON

Posted By: Pat Hochstetler (email)
Date: 5/12/2006 at 18:58:25

Earlham Library Obituary Collection
1997

Elsie M. Osborn, rural Earlham, died April 1, 1997, at Earlham Care Center from heart failure.

Services were held April 5, at Bear Creek Friends Conservative Meeting House in rural Earlham. Burial was in Bear Creek Cemetery in rural Earlham. Kuhn Funeral Homes in Earlham was in charge of arrangements.

Survivors include sons, Charles Osborn, Tulewater, Ore., Lawrence Osborn, Jeromesville, Ohio, Francis Osborn, Minnetonka, Minn., and Otis Osborn, Van Alstyne, Texas; and a daughter Osa Bricker, Earlham; 18 grandchildren; and 31 great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her parents, her husband Robert, three sisters, three brothers and a grandson.

Elsie M. Nicholson was born May 20, 1905, in rural Earlham. She began her formal education in the one-room country school located adjacent to the Bear Creek Friends Meeting House. She attended three years of high school at Scattergood Boarding School of West Branch, and one year at Olney Friends Boarding School near Barnesville, Ohio. Upon graduation from high school, she attended William Penn College in Oskaloosa, where she majored in home economics. Following two years of college, she took a job as a cook at Scattergood School.

She married Robert Osborn on Aug. 31, 1929, at the Bear Creek Meeting House. Following their marriage, the couple moved to her husband's birthplace in south-eastern Kansas where they farmed for nine years. After The Depression, the couple gave up farming in Kansas and moved in 1939 to the rural Earlham community where she was born and raised. For the next three years, her husband worked as a farm hand for her brother, Arthur. In 1941, the family bought a farm near Dexter, where they lived and worked for the next 13 years. Her husband's failing health forced them to give up farming.

During the next seven years the couple with their daughter spent one year at Monteverde, Costa Rico. She worked for six years in the kitchen at Olney Friends Boarding School.

In 1960, the couple returned to Earlham and operated a Dairy Queen restaurant until the mid 70s. During the interim she ran the Parkview Custodial Home at Earlham for several years. She operated a greenhouse at their home on the east edge of Earlham. In 1993, she moved to Earlham Health Care Center where she lived for four years.

She was a birthright member of the Bear Creek Friends Meeting in the rural community where she was born and raised.