McKIBBEN, Mrs. Julia B.: Died 1939

MCKIBBIN, BALDWIN, CHENEY, LEFFERTS

Posted By: Volunteer: Sherri
Date: 7/22/2015 at 21:20:24

MRS. JULIA McKIBBEN INJURED IN ACCIDENT

Mrs. W.M. Walker and Miss Helen Walker, drove to Ottumwa, Tuesday to see Mrs. Julia B. McKibbin, who is in the Ottumwa Hospital, suffering from a fracture of the left leg, just above the knee. Mrs. McKibben is doing well and is in excellent spirits.

The accident which caused her injury, occurred half way between Ottumwa and Bloomfield, Friday evening about 6 o'clock, shortly after a heavy rain. Mrs. McKibbin and her son George B. McKibbin had driven from Chicago to Mt. Pleasant, for commencement, at Iowa Wesleyan College, of whose Board of Trustees Mr. McKibbin is president, and were on their way to Bloomfield to spend the night with relatives there. As they were going up a hill, on the Bloomfield road, another car, belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Rucker, of Ottumwa, skidded in an attempt to avoid a deep hole, striking the McKibbin car in a head-on collision. Both cars were heavy and the impact wrecked them without overturning either one. Mrs. McKibbin was on the back seat, and was thrown violently to the floor. Mr. McKibbin being behind the wheel was uninjured. The occupants of the other car were thrown through the windshield, and so badly cut that they were taken to St. Joseph's Hospital.
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**Handwritten: 1939

Mrs. Julia B. McKibben

Mrs. Julia Baldwin McKibbin passed away at Glendale, California, on Wednesday, April 5th, after an illness of only five days. Mrs. McKibbin is well known to Keosauqua people, who claim her as their own. On December 16, 1855, she was born here, the youngest daughter of Charles and Rachel Baldwin. On July 20, 1886 she was married to Dr. George J. McKibbin and continued to live in Keosauqua for five years longer, when they moved to Salt Lake City. When Dr. McKibbin's health failed, they returned to Keosauqua, where he died April 12, 1895. He was buried Easter Sunday forty-four years ago. After Dr. McKibbin's death, she remained at home caring for an invalid mother, and except for brief periods, Keosauqua rmained(sp) her home until 1912. During one of these interludes, she was an instructor in Iowa Wesleyan College, where in her youth she and her brothers had been students, and at a still later period she was for several years the head of Hershey Hall, dormitory for women at Iowa Wesleyan, while her son was in college there. After a winter in Washington, D.C., a year or two in Chicago and several years as the house mother of a sorority house in Iowa City, she took up her permanent abode in Chicago as a member of her son's household.

Mrs. McKibbin was a lifelong and devoted Methodist, and a member of the P.E.O, sisterhood for nearly sixty years, having been initiated during her student days at Iowa Wesleyan. She was a woman of great intellectual energy, of wonderful memory, and of keen interest in all the persons whose lives had ever touched hers, even remotely. Her interest in Keosauqua and its citizens never dimmed. She was a writer of short stories in which she liked to perpetuate characters or incidents remembered from her early life there, and of one novel entitled "Miriam".

In spite of lameness and advancing years, Mrs. McKibbin continued to live a full life until Friday March 31, when she suffered a stroke. Each winter she has spent in some warm climate, Florida, Alabama, or California. This past winter she had spent most happily in home of Dr. and Mrs. Hardy A. Ingham, in Glendale, California. Dr. Ingham was her beloved pastor in Keosauqua thirty-five years ago. In neighboring cities were many other friends of her early years. In no other part of the Unites States would there been near at hand so many whom she had known as a girl and as a young woman. Her son and his wife were with her at last, and her passing was peaceful and without suffering, an appropriate close for a rich life.

Funeral services were conducted at Glendale by Dr. Ingham on Friday April 7th, Bishop Michell, a former pastor in Chicago offered the prayer, Rev. C.V. Cowan and Rev. C.L. Tennant, former Keosauqua pastors, were also present. Burial was at Bloomfield by the side of her husband, on the following Monday, with Dr. Stanley B. Niles of Iowa Wesleyan College in charge.

Mrs. McKibbin is survived by her son George B. McKibbin of Chicago, his five children, her two older sisters, Mrs. J.W. Cheney, of Minneapolis, and Mrs. C.W. Lefferts of Council Bluffs, and by ten nieces and nephews.

Source: Van Buren Co. Genealogical Society Obituary Book E, Page 96, Keosauqua Public Library, Keosauqua, IA