Maynard, Mary Sophie, Mrs. Proctor E., 1840-1923

MAYNARD, HEGGIE, ROBINSON

Posted By: Lydia Lucas - Volunteer (email)
Date: 3/11/2012 at 09:33:31

DEATH CLAIMS AGED RESIDENT
Mrs. P. E. Maynard Succumbs to Attack of Pneumonia
Was One of the Early Settlers of Union County, S.D., Locating Near Elk Point in 1868

Mrs. P. E. Maynard, for many years a resident of Union county, S.D., and Hawarden, died at the home of her son, A. B. Maynard, in this city early Saturday morning following an immediate illness of a week's duration from pneumonia. Funeral services were held Monday afternoon at the Congregational church, conducted by Rev. Wm. F. Vance, and interment was made in Grace Hill cemetery. The services at the grave were conducted by the Order of the Eastern Star.

Mary Sophia Heggie was born in Bridgewater township, Washtenaw county, near the village of Clinton, Mich., Feb. 7, 1840, and departed this life Jan. 13, 1923, being 82 years, 11 months and 6 days of age. She was the second child of Robert and Bathsheba Robinson Heggie. An older brother, Henry, and a younger sister, Eliza, have preceded her in death. A younger brother, Holden, is still living in Michigan. Her parents were of English and Scotch stock and date back to Revolutionary times in America. Robert Heggie was born in North Carolina. Left an orphan in early childhood, he went to New York state with relatives. Bathsheba Robinson was born in Vermont and also went to New York state in her youth. Immediately after their marriage Robert Heggie and his bride went to the then wilderness country of Michigan, traveling by lake boats and wagon. A farm was cleared and a log house erected in which the children were born. Later a frame house was erected and an improved farm home created. Here the Heggie family lived for forty years.

Mary Sophia grew to womanhood in this farm home, attending the district schools and a short term at the State Normal School. She became a teacher in the schools of the neighborhood. Later she went to visit an uncle at Raymond's Corners, Pa., and remained there about two years, teaching district schools. Here she met Proctor E. Maynard who became her husband. They were married March 12, 1868, at her home in Michigan and at once started for the West. They came into Sioux City on the first regularly scheduled passenger train to reach that place. This was over the Sioux City & Pacific railroad from Missouri Valley. Sioux City was than a place of one or two thousand people. In May, 1868, they settled on a homestead about three miles northwest of Elk Point, arriving there by ox-team. Elk Point at that time consisted of a log store kept by Robert Green, a log hotel kep by E. B. Wixson, a stage barn and a few dwellings, mostly log structures. This homestead is now known as the Mrs. Ronne farm and the house, erected in the summer of 1868, still stands. They lived fifteen years on this farm, undergoing the privations of a new country and the hardships caused by blizzards, grasshoppers and floods. Under conditions that discouraged a majority of the first settlers and caused them to leave, Mr. and Mrs. Maynard stayed and built up a comfortable farm home and a modest competence. They were active in the life of the community, being charter members of the local Masonic organizations, the Grange and the G.A.R. Here their two children, Archibald Benton and Myra Edith, were born. Of this family only the son is now living, the daughter having died in 1900 and the father in 1908. In 1883 the farm was sold and the family moved into Elk Point and a year later to Beresford. In 1888 they moved to Hawarden which became their permanent home. From 1888 to 1904 Mr. Maynard was engaged in the mercantile business but then retired.

Mrs. Maynard's history is typical of a mighty and splendid army of pioneer home-builders, peculiar to the nineteenth century and America. Not seekers after adventure like the explorers and hunters, nor after riches like the gold miners, not restless rovers always moving to some new place, each generation went into the West to create a new farm and build it into a prosperous establishment for home and family life. They worked hard and expected to do so. They did not hope for much wealth and luxury. Rather, a comfortable home place where they might give their children education, pleasures and advantages more than they had enjoyed and a modest start in life, and spend their declining days in comfort, was the ideal of the settlers of the great Middle West. Therefore they built up all that made a part of such life. Churches, schools and social life were as much a part of their efforts as crops or goods. It required a high degree of courage and idealism to undertake the creation of all these things out of a raw country and many gave up the struggle. Always some remained, however, and were rewarded by seeing their hopes come true. The present young generation does not have the same opportunity of a new country. They are the inheritors of the pioneer work. They can scarcely render too great honor to those who have gone before them in making this country of today.

Source: Hawarden Independent, January 18, 1923.