Obituary: Capatola Viola Menefee nee Eller

CANON CITY DAILY RECORD, CANON CITY, FREMONT COUNTY, COLORADO- MONDAY, MARCH 5, 1956

MRS. CAPITOLA (sic) V. MENEFEE DIES SUNDAY MORNING

Mrs. Capitola Viola Menefee, 68, late of 1018 Harrison avenue, passed away in a local hospital at 1:45 a.m. Sunday following an extended illness.

Mrs. Menefee was born in Tyrone, Okla., Jan. 11, 1888, and moved to Florence from Alva, Okla., in 1946.  She came to Canon City in 1949.

She was a member of the First Christian church of Canon city, the American Legion and the VFW auxiliary.  She was married to Paul R. Menefee, who survives, in Medicine Lodge, Kan., Aug. 26, 1931.

Besides her husband, she is survived by two children, Mrs. Odie Smith of Wichita, Kan., and Mrs. Kenneth Garrett of Farmington. N.M., eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

Also surviving are the following brothers and sisters: Bill Eller of Alva, Okla.; Joseph Eller of Granite City, Ill.; Harrison Eller of El Centro, Calif.; Mrs. Helen Gauze of El Centro, Calif.; and Mrs. Ida Williams of Beaman, Mo.

Funeral services will be held from the Holt chapel at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, the Rev. L.A. Fleming officiating, assisted by the Rev. Lloyd R. Sparks.  Interment will be in Lakeside cemetery.

Eller and Associated Burials, Alva, Woods Co., OK, 1900-1969

Alva Municipal Cemetery, Alva, Woods Co., OK

Name: Ditzenberger, Ruby

Birth: ???, Alva

Death: 13 Apr 1908, Alva

Plot: 06-046-02

Notes: infant dau. of Wesley and Capatola (Eller) Ditzenberger, no stone

Name: Ditzenberger, Wesley

Birth: 14 Jul 1879, Boone, Co., IN

Death: 18 Apr 1908, Alva

Plot: 06-046-05

Notes: son of Henry and Elizabeth (Davis) Ditzenberger, husband of Capatola Viola Eller, no stone

Name: Warrick, Catherine

Birth: Sep 1832, IL

Death: 25 Dec 1900, Alva

Plot: 09-025-06

Headstone Transcription: Catherine; wife of L.W. Warrick; Died Dec. 25 1900; Age 66 Years 3 Months 16 Days; He giveth his beloved sleep.

Notes: dau of Isaac and Cinthy (Davis) Brown of IL, wife of L.W. Warrick

Name: Eller, Mattie A

Birth: 12 Jan 1905, OK

Death: 1 Jan 1969, Alva

Plot: 06-047-06

Headstone Transcription: Mattie Eller; Jan. 12 1905; Jan. 1 1969

Notes: dau. of James and Mary (McGinley) Beck, wife of Raymond R. Eller, married 5 Apr 1925, Woods Co., marked stone adjacent to her husband's

Name: Eller, Raymond R

Birth: 17 Dec 1899, Alva

Death: 13 Aug, 1947

Plot: 06-047-05

Headstone Transcription: Ray R Eller; Oklahoma; Pvt Air Corps; World War II; Dec 17 1899; Aug 13 1947

Notes: son of Nick F. and Marietta (Warrick) Eller, wife of Mattie A Beck, married 5 Apr 1925, Woods Co., marked stone adjacent to his wife's; Ray was a WWII army veteran.

Name: Eller, Nick F

Birth: Aug 1862 or 1850, IL

Death: 15 Jan 1932, Alva

Plot: 06-046-08

Headstone Transcription:  Nick F. Eller; 1850-1932

Notes: husband 1st to Marggret Jane Warrick, married ca. 1886, 2nd to her younger sister, Marietta, married March 1897, Woods county, early cement contractor in Alva

Name: Warrick, Marietta (C.?)

Birth: Sep 1872, IL

Death: 28 Mar 1931

Plot: 09-025-08

Notes: dau. of L.W. and Catherine (Brown) Warrick, 2nd wife of Nick F. Eller, no stone, interred near her mother

Name: Eller, infant

Birth: ???

Death: ???

Plot: 06-046-01

Notes: infant of Nick F. and Marietta (Warrick) Eller, no stone

Name: Eller, infant

Birth: ???

Death: 13 May 1911

Plot: 06-046-3N

Notes: infant of Nick F. and Marietta (Warrick) Eller, no stone

Name: Eller, infant

Birth: ???

Death: ???

Plot: 06-046-3S

Notes: infant of Nick F. and Marietta (Warrick) Eller, no stone

Name: Eller, Charley

Birth: Nov 1901, Alva

Death: 21 Jan 1915, Alva

Plot: 06-046-06

Notes: son of Nick F. and Marietta (Warrick) Eller, no stone, killed after falling from a water tank wagon which tragically ran over him

Sparlin/Ryan Dates and Such

In this excerpt from a letter written by my uncle in 1992, "Dad"  is Estal Earnest Sparlin.  Like my uncle, I am providing this information just in case someone doesn't already have it, and I scanned it to remove the transcription step with its potential for errors.

For anyone finding the scan difficult to read, here's the transcription:

Minnie Lucrettia Ryan, born January 11, 1876

Maggie An Ryan, born May 27, 1878

Estella Lonore Ryan, born December 26, 1879

Ernest Eldrige Ryan, born September 20, 1881

Corre Rosett Ryan, born February 10, 1883

Dace Balnose Ryan, born March 6, 1884

Walter Gray Ryan, born April 5, 1885

Fredrich Dean Ryan, born April 6, 1886

Bertha May Ryan, born September 23, 1887

Lulie Edith Ryan, born August 27, 1889

Orson Ryan, born September 27, 1891

Jacob Irvin Ryan, born February 17, 1893

George Ervin Ryan, born February 17, 1893

Claud Clifford Ryan, born June 21, 1895.

I have in addition a few index entries from the online site, On Demand Court Records.  These are dates of Sparlin/Ryan marriages in Oklahoma and represent the date filed at a courthouse.  In this format, the first number of the date is the month.

County: Kay (Newkirk)

Case: Tripp, Harriet and Sparlin, Estal E.

Date Filed: 8/29/1928

County: Kay (Newkirk)

Case: Sparlin, Bertha M. and Paxton, James E.

Date Filed: 11/24/1919

County: Kay (Newkirk)

Case: Utah, Ollie and Sparlin, O.C.

Date Filed: 11/05/1927

County: Pawnee

Case: Sparlin, O C and Ryon, Bertha

Date Filed: 3/20/1906

With enough money and time, the originals of these documents could probably be obtained from their respective courthouses.  No doubt they hold a treasure trove of information.  Unfortunately, there are hundreds of similar documents I would like to order, and my bill would be in the tens of thousands if I paid for all of them I would like to see.

Happy Hunting!

Jacob Wesley Ditzenberger Date of Death

I have two sources for the date of Wesley's death in Alva, Woods Co., OK.  One is the cemetery records for the Alva Municipal Cemetery.  That date says simply "1909."  The other I found in a record at the Alva Library called "Early Records of Alva Mortuaries: 1900-1930."

The entry looks like this,

DITZENBURGER, Wesley
o  -Mak Eller
d  -ca. 18 Apr 1908

The codes at the front of the transcript explain that "d" = death and place, but it fails to explain the "o".  Looking at other records with an "o" didn't help me at all, and although I can explain the "Eller," because Wesley married a girl named Eller, and it was probably her father, Nick Eller, who paid for the burial, I don't know what Mak means.  My best guess is a transcription error, so that "Mak" is Nick, the "o"wner of the plot.

In a nearby grave lies Ruby Ditzenberger, d. 13 Apr 1908, and this is his first daughter who died very young and only 5 days before her father if the Apr 18th date for his death is used.  It is even possible that a 3 and an 8 were mistaken, and they died on the same day, one or the other.

Another date to throw into this mix is the birth of Wesley's second daughter, Myrtle Edith, which was 8 Nov 1908.  When I only had the online cemetery information, which provided a date of death for Wesley as 1909, I was never quite sure whether he lived to see Myrtle born or not.  I now think he passed away before her birth.

The newest information I have convinces me this is the case, in fact.  I recently found a Woods county courthouse index entry for Capatola Ditzenberger's second marriage, and the date is 18 Feb 1909.  If Wesley died in 1909, then an early 1909 marriage is a tad inappropriate for remarriage.  I think it's more likely Wesley passed away in early 1908 along with his first daughter, Ruby, and I amended my Ancestry.com family tree accordingly.

Obituary: "death of Wm. Eller", 1 Jan 1892, Wellsford, Kiowa Co., KS

 .
Source: Seward County KS Archives Obituaries, The Liberal Lyre, Seward County, Friday, January 1, 1892.

We are sorry to chronicle the sudden death and accidental death of Wm. Eller, who was well known by many of our readers.  Last Thursday in company with his wife and daughter-in-law, he went to Wellsford to spend Christmas with relatives.  When the train reached that place, it was dark, and while he was walking from the station with a little child in his arms, he stepped off the platform and fell a distance of about four feet, striking his breast on a tie and his head on a rail.  The child was not hurt, but Mr. Eller died the next morning.  A very sad Christmas for his relatives and friends, all of whom have the sympathy of our people.

The William Eller whom I am attempting to identify appears on the 1890 census in Oklahoma Territory in Hardesty, just south of Liberal, KS, and he would have relatives in Wellsford, KS (mentioned in the article), specifically two sons, one married, which provides him a daughter-in-law.  William's wife appears on the 1895 Kansas state census, residing with one of the sons, but without William, so I estimate his death between 1890 and 1895.

The article circumstantially fits William's profile, but I need more.  What if this is another William Eller?  The name is common enough.  I don't find another on the KS or OK censuses at the right time, but I still can't be certain.  I am now trying to find another article in an area paper mentioning the same incident.   Surely this was noteworthy enough to appear in a Kiowa or Pratt county paper, which might incidentally mention another name or other significant data.

Kansas Historical Society has a newspaper collection, but on reels not yet digitized.  Not so easy to access, but it may be the only way to find what I need.

From their index, the following newspapers were those I found most likely to contain the item:

Preston Plain Dealer  3/9/1889--1/7/1893   Preston  Pratt  KS  P 1188 

Pratt County Times and Iuka Traveler  4/25/1890--3/11/1892   Pratt  Pratt  KS  P 995 

Pratt County Union  9/3/1891--8/30/1894   Pratt  Pratt  KS  P 957 

Pratt County Republican  9/10/1891--9/20/1894   Pratt  Pratt  KS  P 978  

Kiowa County Signal [1st]  1/30/1891--3/2/1894   Greensburg  Kiowa  KS  G 720 

Kiowa County Times  7/5/1889--11/11/1892   Greensburg  Kiowa  KS  G 791 

Republican Banner  4/24/1891--2/22/1895   Greensburg  Kiowa  KS  G 801 

 

Update: Mabel Elsie Ditzenberger Young (1908-2010)

In the biography I wrote for Lillian Blanche Byrum, I briefly speculated on the fate of her six children.  At that time, I knew that five of the six had passed away, but I did not know about Mabel Elsie, whom I thought was the source of information in a post I discovered from 2002, so I presumed her living at that time.  Nor did I know as I wrote in November 2010 that she had passed away only a month earlier in October 2010.

The SS death index provides a date and place of death of 7 Oct 2010, Scottsdale, AZ.  I also received the following comment at my family tree,

Mabel is my (...relative...). She died October 7, 2010, in Phoenix, Az., at the age of 101. She asked that her body be donated to science. The ashes will be buried at the So. Whitley Cemetery, in So. Whitley, Indiana, along side her husband Harold. 

There is a shared headstone pictured at the find-a-grave memorial for Mabel and her husband, Harold V. Young.

RIP

Update: Lillian Blanche Byrum Ditzenberger

Based on what I had dug up by 2010, I  wrote a biography for Lillian Blanche Byrum. Recently, I came across an obituary for one of her children, Ferdinand Dewey Ditzenberger, and transcribed it here.  "Dewey" had been recorded as an inmate of the Indiana School of Feeble Minded Youth from at least 1918 through 1920, which makes it interesting to find that he was farming before 1950 as mentioned in his obituary.   Even more recently, I came across a more complete set of digitized Indiana newspapers containing more details of the divorce issues between Lillie and her absent husband, John Bert Ditzenberger.

The first is the most sensational, comparing John Bert to a "Brigham Young."  The second reports follow-up on the divorce suit.  After that follows a legal notice printed in three separate editions, each a week apart, probably a legal stipulation.  Last are two short articles in separate newspapers making announcement of the divorce court decision.  In the end, I still don't know whether John Bert was ever heard from again.

The Fort Wayne News and Sentinel (Fort Wayne, Indiana), 14 Mar 1919

A REGULAR BRIGHAM YOUNG

John Ditzenberger Was Thrice Illegally Married.

John B. Ditzenberger, is according to a divorce complaint filed against him today by his wife, Lillie Ditzenberger, in the superior court, through her attorneys, Robert A. Buhler, and Heaton, Yaple and Heaton, one of the most confirmed exponents of Mormonism to figure in the Allen county courts in many a day.  Mrs. Ditzenberger avers that the defendant has entered into three different bigamist marriages since he deserted her September 1, 1912.

The plaintiff avers that she was married to the defendant September 19, 1997, and that they lived together until the defendant deserted her and her six children.  She says that he left for parts unknown, failing to leave sufficient money to provide herself and children with the necessities of life.  For the past seven years, she claims, he has wholly failed and neglected to provide for the plaintiff and children, and that as a result she has expended the sum of $3,500 for the children in the past seven years.

Mrs. Ditzenberger avers that her husband entered into a bigamist marriage with a woman in St. Louis in 1913, and that two years late he was again illegally married in the same city.  In the years 1917, she alleges that he entered into his third bigamist marriage with a woman at Topeka, Kan., under the alias, John Howard.

Mrs. Ditzenberger also avers that her husband is the only living heir of Nelson Ditzenberger, who died intestate in 1918, and that the estate of the decedent consists of money in the bank and in real estate, situated in Whitley county, the same having a probable value of $15,000.

The plaintiff further states that since the demise of the said Nelson Ditzenberger, the defendant has, under the name of John Howard, taken out letters of administration of the estate of Nelson Ditzenberger.  She further states that there is now on deposit at the Tri-State Loan & Trust company, in the name of Nelson Ditzenberger, deceased, and subject to the order and control of this defendant, several thousand dollars, the exact amount of which is not known to the plaintiff, and she fears that the defendant will cause these funds to be removed and placed beyond the jurisdiction of the court.

Mrs. Ditzenberger, accordingly, asks for a divorce, alimony in the sum of $10,000, and a restraining order, enjoining him from disposing of the funds under his control.

The Fort Wayne News and Sentinel (Fort Wayne, Indiana), 20 Mar 1919

FILES SUIT FOR SUPPORT

Lillie Ditzenberger Wants $12,000 from Husband John

Lillie Ditzenberger today, through her attorneys, Robert A. Buhler, and Heaton, Yaple and Heaton, in the superior court, filed suit against John B. Ditzenberger, alias John Howard, for support.  She avers that since he deserted her he has paid the plaintiff but $6 for support of the family.  She asks a restraining order preventing him from setting aside property rights, and placing property owned by him, beyond the control of the court.  The plaintiff avers that she is entitled to $12,000 from the defendant, and asks that the court order property to which the defendant is heir to, sold to satisfy this claim.

Fort Wayne News and Sentinel, 24 Mar 1919 (Same notice repeated on 31 Mar 1919 and 7 Apr 1919)

Notice to non residents

State of Indiana Allen county

Lillie Ditzenberger vs John B Ditzenberger, John B. Ditzenberger Alias John Howard, John Howard Administrator of Estate of William Ditzenberger Deceased et al

IN THE SUPERIOR COURT ALLEN COUNTY INDIANA JANUARY TERM 1919  NUMBER 1944

It appearing to the satisfaction of the Clerk of said Court by the affidavit of a disinterested person that the following named defendant John B. Ditzenberger deceased non resident of Howard John Howard Administrator of the Estate of William N Ditzenberger deceased are not-residents of the State of Indiana that that a cause of action exists against said Defendants in favor of said Plaintiff for support and injunction demanding $12,000.00

Notice is therefore by order of Court hereby given said non resident Defendants of the filing and pendence of said complaint and that unless they appear before the Judge of said Court on the 18^th day of May 1919 and answer or demur thereto the same will be heard and determined in their absence

Attest Kent SWEDT Clert,

Robt A Buhler, Heaton, Yaple & Heaton, attorney for plaintiff

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 14 Jun 1919

COURT NOTES

In superior court yesterday Judge Baliou granted a divorce to Lillian Ditzenberger from John B. Ditzenberger.  They have six children.  In finding for the plaintiff the court gave plaintiff control of the children and allowed her $1,500 alimony and also $1,500 for the support of the children.

The Fort Wayne News and Sentinel (Fort Wayne, Indiana), 14 Jun 1919

COURT NOTES

Lillian Ditzenberger has been granted a divorce from her husband, John B. Ditzenberger, in the superior court.  The plaintiff was likewise given the custody of the children, $1,500 for their support, and granted alimony in the sum of $1,500.