Mom asked me whether I’d noticed how much older Laura Goff was than her sisters. Well no, they all looked “old” to me.
It’s actually more obvious in this family photo, with Floy, Lottie, and Laura in the center back, with youngest sister Cora leaning against their father. Laura married in early 1890 and became a mother late that year.
Laura was born in 1868, then three children who didn’t live very long: Phoebe Caroline “Cally” (1870), Riley Ephraim (1872), and Rose Emma Jane (1874). Those three died in late 1873 to spring of 1875, and are buried in the old cemetery at Monteith, in Guthrie County, Iowa.
Recently I found a small envelope of tintypes. I’m so thankful I had kept them. I’m sure that two of them are of my great grandmother, Laura (Jordan) Goff as a girl and one is the wedding picture of her parents (another one like it was labeled).
But there are three tintypes of babies, two of them labeled. I’m sure that the unmarked one is of one of the three Jordan children who were lost long ago.
I’ve seen the gravestones for these little ones when searching for ancestors in the cemetery at Monteith.
When I was a girl, Great Grandmother Laura Goff lived with her daughter, Grandma Leora (Goff) Wilson at Guthrie Center. Neither drove, so I remember Mom taking them to Casey, a town in southern Guthrie County, to see their sister and aunt, Cora (Jordan) Cowden. My sis Gloria and I were along that day, but it was pretty boring to us to listen to old ladies talking. Oh, I wish I’d paid attention, maybe even asked questions!
The youngest Jordan, Frederick David, was born a year before his oldest sister, Laura Goff, became a mother, when Leora Goff was born. When Fred Jordan grew up, he married Rectha Wilson in 1909. When Leora grew up, she met Clabe Wilson at Fred and Rectha’s house in Monteith. Leora and Clabe were married in 1914.
For those of you who’ve read Leora’s Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression, the youngest Jordan sister was the Cora Parrish who hired Doris Wilson in their Guthrie Center restaurant. Yes, that one who wondered how Leora had raised a daughter who didn’t know how to cut up a chicken!