Lepeltak, Eunice, 1871-1922

LEPELTAK

Posted By: Lydia Lucas -Volunteer (email)
Date: 6/13/2021 at 20:33:33

From the Alton Democrat, March 27, 1925:

LEFT ESTATE OF $20,000

Miss Eunice Lepeltak, adopted daughter of a former Alton pastor, when she passed on about three years ago, left an estate estimated at around $20,000. After providing for a feeble minded niece, at present at the Christian home in Council Bluffs, Miss Lepeltak left the bulk of her fortune to various educational and charitable institutions. The N.W.C. Academy [of Orange City] recently received a bequest of $1300. Hope College at Holland Mich. and Central College at Pella each received a like amount. Various other institutions were remembered and the different foreign mission boards of the Ref. church are also mentioned in the will. Atty. A. Te Paske of Sioux Center, a friend of the family when they lived at Greenleafton, Minn., is one of the administrators of the estate, which has not been entirely settled as yet.

Rev. Lepeltak was one of the early pastors of the Alton Ref. church. He was a generous man in his relations with others but practiced the Dutch qualities of thrift and frugality in his way of living and thus acquired quite a little fortune.

[This was Rev. Peter Lepeltak -- see his obituary, posted separately.]

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An article (in Dutch) in the Sioux Center Nieuwsblad, April 12, 1922, is rather fuzzy but this is the gist of it:

A. Te Paske went to Paonia, Colorado on Tuesday with regard to the legacy of Miss Eunice Lepeltak who recently died there. The honorable Dr. and Mrs. Lepeltak and their faithful foster daughter Eunice, who lived for many years in Alton and moved to Colorado for their health, have died and are buried there now.

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RESEARCH NOTES:

FindaGrave.com has Eunice Lepeltak, 1871-1922 (with a photo of the headstone), buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Paonia, Delta County, Colorado. Rev. Peter Lepeltak (1842-1912) and his wife Dena (1846-1910) are also buried there.

In Colorado Wills and Probate Records on Ancestry.com, her Delta County Proof of Death document has her as Eunice A. Lepeltak, whose real name is Eunice A. Terbeest[??, the handwriting is nearly illegible]; she died on January 17, 1922. This is followed by a handwritten transcription of her will.