Son of Jabez Spencer (1778-1856) and Mary (Clark or Wood) Spencer (1778-1844) of Cherry Valley, Ostego County, New York. Married Lorany Thompson in Cherry Valley, New York on February 8, 1829. The couple had four sons: Jabez (b. 1830, murdered in Nevada), Addison (b. 1832), Avery (b. 1834), and Milton (b. 1836). The family moved from New York to Boone County, Illinois in June of 1844. According to the Boone County directory published in 1877, Mr. Spencer owned 400 acres of land and had served as School Director and Road Master as well as the first Assessor in the town of Flora, Illinois.
Genealogy re-typed from Dorothy Christine Shelden July 12, 2010 by Barbara Wilson Krause - Original written Christmas, 1983
FIRST GENERATION - My great, great grandparents
In the late 1820's Jabez I. (J) Spencer was married to Lurany
Thompson, both of Cherry Valley, (Otsego County) New York. The name Jabez comes from a rather obscure reference in the Old Testament, which at least says that "Jabez was more honorable than his brethren." There was a Jabez Spencer who served in the Revolution, but he may have been only a relative, not a direct ancestor. Lurany (sometimes spelled Lurana) was the daughter of Avery Thompson and Eleanor McKean, who is said to have been the daughter of Major Robert McKean, a Revolutionary hero. Her odd name is said to be a broken down form of the French name "Lorraine". My grandfather, who was her grandson, said there was "some French-Canadian among his ancestors but he didn't know where.
About 1844, Jabez I. (J.) and Lurany came to northern Illinois, part way by canal boat, the rest by covered wagon, with their four sons, Jabez, Addison, Avery and Milton. The boys' ages ranged from seven or eight to the early teens. Cherry Valley, Illinois was named by former neighbors of theirs, but the Spencers settled on a farm in Boone County, a few miles away. They first lived in a low area near the Kishwaukee River, said to be unhealthy (probably malaria-bearing mosquitoes) but after Addison died of a fever at seventeen, they moved to the farm on Blood's Point Road, buying it from the man who homesteaded it. This farm belonged to our family until the 1930's when my grandfather sold it, although it had been rented since 1905. Avery was killed in an obscure battle of the Civil War. He was then in his early thirties and unmarried. Jabez I. (J.) died in the early winter of 1890, Lurany early in the 1900's. They are buried in Flora Cemetery, across the road from Flora Community Church, in a long row with all four sons, Milton's wife Nancy, and about six of Milton and Nancy's children who died young. My grandfather had the stones set in a concrete base long ago, so they have not disintegrated as marble often does, but the surfaces are weathered and not easy to read.
SECOND GENERATION - My great grandparents
Young Jabez Spencer married Sarah Witter (always called Sally" in the early 1850's. They had four children - Joseph, Frank, Mary and Jay. When the youngest was born the grandparents wanted him called Jabez, but his father said "Enough of us have suffered with that name." So they shortened it.
In 1862, the second year of the Civil War, while little Jay was still an infant, his parents were divorced. This was unusual at that time. The trouble was over another woman, but I know no details. He went to California, and later Nevada, where he was killed about ten years later, shot in a quarrel over his second wife. I know no more about him except that my Grandpa (his son) told Mother once his father came to visit and started to scold the two little boys for something, but old Jabez I. (J.) interfered, telling his son if he wouldn't take the responsibility of raising them he had no right to rebuke them. Also Grandpa remembered his grandfather going out west and bringing back the body.
After the divorce Jabez I. (J.) promised his daughter-in-law a farm if she would keep the children together and near them, but she was bitter and wanted to get away from the scene of unhappiness. Also, (according to Spencer family tradition) her brothers "thought they could get more" in a cash settlement. In exchange the old couple demanded two of the grandchildren. Sally took her oldest son (named for her father, Dr. Joseph Witter, and Mary the only girl went to Minnesota, married a widower with a family, and remained there all her life.
Jabez I. (J.) and Lurany took Frank, about four and the sickly baby whom no one expected to live. Pulling him through was the best thing she ever did for her husband and herself, as he became the prop of their old age.
THIRD GENERATION - My grandparents
Jay Spencer was born November 9, 1861. He had no middle name, but later in life adopted the initial "L" telling his friends it stood for Lazy. Of all these people, next to my mother, he is the one whom I knew best and loved most.
At around twenty, he saved up money and went to Minnesota to see his mother. He told my Mom, long afterward, it was a disappointing experience. She was wrapped in her step-children and the son and daughter she had raised, and they did not get at all close to each other. (I have since thought she may have been embarrassed in the presence of the baby, now grown up, whom she had in a sense abandoned, not expecting him to live.) However, he formed a friendly relationship with his brother Joseph and sister Mary which continued all their lives. They may have visited their grandparents earlier, though I never heard of such a visit. There is a picture of Joe as a boy with his cousin Ella Spencer, uncle Milton's daughter, which suggests this.
Incidentally, the only one of Uncle Milton's many children who married and raised a family, was a son Edward, who was Grandpa's playmate as a boy. He was four years younger than his cousin Jay, but Grandpa was always frail and small of his age, so people even took them for twins. I know where to get in touch with some of Cousin Ed's grandchildren, and if I ever do that research will do so. Also, incidentally, Grandpa, that "sickly baby" lived past eighty and was fond of saying he had outlived many doctors who predicted a short life for him.
Around 1888, Jay Spencer married Dorothea Kruse, (always called Dora) a German immigrant who worked as hired girl for his grandparents. Jabez I. (J.) and Lurany were so pleased with her they even said she was "too good for Jay"! Dora was the youngest of a family of five sisters who came here with her widowed mother and a couple of brothers-in-law when she was nineteen. She worked very hard learning English from her various employers and later spoke it with no discernible accent. Also she taught herself to read and write English from her little daughter's primers after they were in bed. In middle age, people didn't believe she had never gone to school in this country for a single day.
After Jabez I. (J.) died, Lurany lived alone in the big farm-house while Jay and Dora and their two little girls occupied the small tenant house, and even added Dora's mother, who the little girls called "Gersamamma" (that's the way Mom pronounced it, I never saw it written.) Although Charlotte Kruse knew almost no English and Jay very little German, she always said her "Yankee son-in-law was the best of the lot," not surprising as he was a very kind person and her other daughters' husbands held to the masterful German tradition.
Dora's brother John Kruse, had remained in Germany, near Berlin, in what is now East Germany. She corresponded with his family until her death in September, 1933. Then we lost touch. We have many relatives in Belvidere (second cousins in my generation) but had no direct contact with them after Grandma died. She had fallen out with her German-American brothers-in-law during World War I, telling them bluntly - when they got sentimental about the Kaiser and the Fatherland - "Here in American you can retire in comfort and leave good farms to your sons. What would you have had if you had stayed in Germany? Nothing!"
FOURTH GENERATION - My Parents
Jay and Dora Spencer's two children were Ella Dora, born June 2, 1891 (my mother). And Elsie Sarah, born September 29, 1894, whom I always called Auntie. No room here for Mother's anecdotes about their childhood on the farm. After Grandma Lurany died, they lived only a few years in the farmhouse (now town down). When Ella graduated from the one-room Irene school, in 1905, she took the examination in Belvidere to teach country schools - and passed it, getting her certificate to teach although she was only fourteen and tiny for her age. She never used it.
The family were very close, and didn't want to send her to high school in Belvidere, since she would have to live with some of her mother's relatives all week. I suspect Grandpa, who had never really liked farming and was now free from obligation to his grandmother, used this as an excuse to rent the farm and move to Cherry Valley. He bought the house where I live now and the vacant lot next door to use for a garden. He wanted to buy the next lot to pasture his horses, but old Mr. Lee who owned it wouldn't sell. His son Raymond was getting married. The house which was built there for him and is still there.
Cherry Valley had a three-year high school, taught at that time by Mr. Jameson, a former college professor who had taken this comparatively easier job when his health broke down. He wanted Ella to go on to take her fourth year in Rockford after she graduated in 1908, - Cherry Valley was on the Interurban (rural trolley line) and had the best public transportation it has ever had, at that time. But she decided to go to Brown's Business College and then to work in an office.
She was working for the Rockford Gas, Light & Coke Company when she was married in 1916, and hoped to go on working for a while, but they wouldn't employ married women, and let her go with very little time to train a successor. She once told me with quietly malicious satisfaction it was a full year before they got the books balance again.
Ella Spencer married Elvin LeRoy Shelden of Winnebago in November 1916. They lived in Rockford, moving four times during their short married life, attending first Court Street Methodist Episcopal Church and later Grace Church (which my little brother called his church) as nearer their home. Their children are Dorothy Christine Shelden, born November 27, 1917, never married Robert Spencer Shelden, born January 14 1920, died January 24, 1920, a victim of one of the terrible influenza epidemics of that period. Richard Spencer Shelden, born July 30, 1922 (married Bernita Brown), Janet Elsie Shelden, born November 6, 1924 (married Neal Hildebrand).
Elsie Spencer married Clarence Peterson of Cherry Valley, on July 3, 1930. We kids called him Uncle Pete; all his friends called him Click. He died in March 1963. Auntie in April 1977. Their son, Robert Spencer Peterson, born August 22, 1931 lives in their old home on Lawrence Street in Cherry Valley.
Genealogy re-typed from Dorothy Christine Shelden July 12, 2010 by Barbara Wilson Krause - Original written Christmas, 1983
FIRST GENERATION - My great, great grandparents
In the late 1820's Jabez I. (J) Spencer was married to Lurany
Thompson, both of Cherry Valley, (Otsego County) New York. The name Jabez comes from a rather obscure reference in the Old Testament, which at least says that "Jabez was more honorable than his brethren." There was a Jabez Spencer who served in the Revolution, but he may have been only a relative, not a direct ancestor. Lurany (sometimes spelled Lurana) was the daughter of Avery Thompson and Eleanor McKean, who is said to have been the daughter of Major Robert McKean, a Revolutionary hero. Her odd name is said to be a broken down form of the French name "Lorraine". My grandfather, who was her grandson, said there was "some French-Canadian among his ancestors but he didn't know where.
About 1844, Jabez I. (J.) and Lurany came to northern Illinois, part way by canal boat, the rest by covered wagon, with their four sons, Jabez, Addison, Avery and Milton. The boys' ages ranged from seven or eight to the early teens. Cherry Valley, Illinois was named by former neighbors of theirs, but the Spencers settled on a farm in Boone County, a few miles away. They first lived in a low area near the Kishwaukee River, said to be unhealthy (probably malaria-bearing mosquitoes) but after Addison died of a fever at seventeen, they moved to the farm on Blood's Point Road, buying it from the man who homesteaded it. This farm belonged to our family until the 1930's when my grandfather sold it, although it had been rented since 1905. Avery was killed in an obscure battle of the Civil War. He was then in his early thirties and unmarried. Jabez I. (J.) died in the early winter of 1890, Lurany early in the 1900's. They are buried in Flora Cemetery, across the road from Flora Community Church, in a long row with all four sons, Milton's wife Nancy, and about six of Milton and Nancy's children who died young. My grandfather had the stones set in a concrete base long ago, so they have not disintegrated as marble often does, but the surfaces are weathered and not easy to read.
SECOND GENERATION - My great grandparents
Young Jabez Spencer married Sarah Witter (always called Sally" in the early 1850's. They had four children - Joseph, Frank, Mary and Jay. When the youngest was born the grandparents wanted him called Jabez, but his father said "Enough of us have suffered with that name." So they shortened it.
In 1862, the second year of the Civil War, while little Jay was still an infant, his parents were divorced. This was unusual at that time. The trouble was over another woman, but I know no details. He went to California, and later Nevada, where he was killed about ten years later, shot in a quarrel over his second wife. I know no more about him except that my Grandpa (his son) told Mother once his father came to visit and started to scold the two little boys for something, but old Jabez I. (J.) interfered, telling his son if he wouldn't take the responsibility of raising them he had no right to rebuke them. Also Grandpa remembered his grandfather going out west and bringing back the body.
After the divorce Jabez I. (J.) promised his daughter-in-law a farm if she would keep the children together and near them, but she was bitter and wanted to get away from the scene of unhappiness. Also, (according to Spencer family tradition) her brothers "thought they could get more" in a cash settlement. In exchange the old couple demanded two of the grandchildren. Sally took her oldest son (named for her father, Dr. Joseph Witter, and Mary the only girl went to Minnesota, married a widower with a family, and remained there all her life.
Jabez I. (J.) and Lurany took Frank, about four and the sickly baby whom no one expected to live. Pulling him through was the best thing she ever did for her husband and herself, as he became the prop of their old age.
THIRD GENERATION - My grandparents
Jay Spencer was born November 9, 1861. He had no middle name, but later in life adopted the initial "L" telling his friends it stood for Lazy. Of all these people, next to my mother, he is the one whom I knew best and loved most.
At around twenty, he saved up money and went to Minnesota to see his mother. He told my Mom, long afterward, it was a disappointing experience. She was wrapped in her step-children and the son and daughter she had raised, and they did not get at all close to each other. (I have since thought she may have been embarrassed in the presence of the baby, now grown up, whom she had in a sense abandoned, not expecting him to live.) However, he formed a friendly relationship with his brother Joseph and sister Mary which continued all their lives. They may have visited their grandparents earlier, though I never heard of such a visit. There is a picture of Joe as a boy with his cousin Ella Spencer, uncle Milton's daughter, which suggests this.
Incidentally, the only one of Uncle Milton's many children who married and raised a family, was a son Edward, who was Grandpa's playmate as a boy. He was four years younger than his cousin Jay, but Grandpa was always frail and small of his age, so people even took them for twins. I know where to get in touch with some of Cousin Ed's grandchildren, and if I ever do that research will do so. Also, incidentally, Grandpa, that "sickly baby" lived past eighty and was fond of saying he had outlived many doctors who predicted a short life for him.
Around 1888, Jay Spencer married Dorothea Kruse, (always called Dora) a German immigrant who worked as hired girl for his grandparents. Jabez I. (J.) and Lurany were so pleased with her they even said she was "too good for Jay"! Dora was the youngest of a family of five sisters who came here with her widowed mother and a couple of brothers-in-law when she was nineteen. She worked very hard learning English from her various employers and later spoke it with no discernible accent. Also she taught herself to read and write English from her little daughter's primers after they were in bed. In middle age, people didn't believe she had never gone to school in this country for a single day.
After Jabez I. (J.) died, Lurany lived alone in the big farm-house while Jay and Dora and their two little girls occupied the small tenant house, and even added Dora's mother, who the little girls called "Gersamamma" (that's the way Mom pronounced it, I never saw it written.) Although Charlotte Kruse knew almost no English and Jay very little German, she always said her "Yankee son-in-law was the best of the lot," not surprising as he was a very kind person and her other daughters' husbands held to the masterful German tradition.
Dora's brother John Kruse, had remained in Germany, near Berlin, in what is now East Germany. She corresponded with his family until her death in September, 1933. Then we lost touch. We have many relatives in Belvidere (second cousins in my generation) but had no direct contact with them after Grandma died. She had fallen out with her German-American brothers-in-law during World War I, telling them bluntly - when they got sentimental about the Kaiser and the Fatherland - "Here in American you can retire in comfort and leave good farms to your sons. What would you have had if you had stayed in Germany? Nothing!"
FOURTH GENERATION - My Parents
Jay and Dora Spencer's two children were Ella Dora, born June 2, 1891 (my mother). And Elsie Sarah, born September 29, 1894, whom I always called Auntie. No room here for Mother's anecdotes about their childhood on the farm. After Grandma Lurany died, they lived only a few years in the farmhouse (now town down). When Ella graduated from the one-room Irene school, in 1905, she took the examination in Belvidere to teach country schools - and passed it, getting her certificate to teach although she was only fourteen and tiny for her age. She never used it.
The family were very close, and didn't want to send her to high school in Belvidere, since she would have to live with some of her mother's relatives all week. I suspect Grandpa, who had never really liked farming and was now free from obligation to his grandmother, used this as an excuse to rent the farm and move to Cherry Valley. He bought the house where I live now and the vacant lot next door to use for a garden. He wanted to buy the next lot to pasture his horses, but old Mr. Lee who owned it wouldn't sell. His son Raymond was getting married. The house which was built there for him and is still there.
Cherry Valley had a three-year high school, taught at that time by Mr. Jameson, a former college professor who had taken this comparatively easier job when his health broke down. He wanted Ella to go on to take her fourth year in Rockford after she graduated in 1908, - Cherry Valley was on the Interurban (rural trolley line) and had the best public transportation it has ever had, at that time. But she decided to go to Brown's Business College and then to work in an office.
She was working for the Rockford Gas, Light & Coke Company when she was married in 1916, and hoped to go on working for a while, but they wouldn't employ married women, and let her go with very little time to train a successor. She once told me with quietly malicious satisfaction it was a full year before they got the books balance again.
Ella Spencer married Elvin LeRoy Shelden of Winnebago in November 1916. They lived in Rockford, moving four times during their short married life, attending first Court Street Methodist Episcopal Church and later Grace Church (which my little brother called his church) as nearer their home. Their children are Dorothy Christine Shelden, born November 27, 1917, never married Robert Spencer Shelden, born January 14 1920, died January 24, 1920, a victim of one of the terrible influenza epidemics of that period. Richard Spencer Shelden, born July 30, 1922 (married Bernita Brown), Janet Elsie Shelden, born November 6, 1924 (married Neal Hildebrand).
Elsie Spencer married Clarence Peterson of Cherry Valley, on July 3, 1930. We kids called him Uncle Pete; all his friends called him Click. He died in March 1963. Auntie in April 1977. Their son, Robert Spencer Peterson, born August 22, 1931 lives in their old home on Lawrence Street in Cherry Valley.
Son of Jabez Spencer (1778-1856) and Mary (Clark or Wood) Spencer (1778-1844) of Cherry Valley, Ostego County, New York. Married Lorany Thompson in Cherry Valley, New York on February 8, 1829. The couple had four sons: Jabez (b. 1830, murdered in Nevada), Addison (b. 1832), Avery (b. 1834), and Milton (b. 1836). The family moved from New York to Boone County, Illinois in June of 1844. According to the Boone County directory published in 1877, Mr. Spencer owned 400 acres of land and had served as School Director and Road Master as well as the first Assessor in the town of Flora, Illinois.
Genealogy re-typed from Dorothy Christine Shelden July 12, 2010 by Barbara Wilson Krause - Original written Christmas, 1983
FIRST GENERATION - My great, great grandparents
In the late 1820's Jabez I. (J) Spencer was married to Lurany
Thompson, both of Cherry Valley, (Otsego County) New York. The name Jabez comes from a rather obscure reference in the Old Testament, which at least says that "Jabez was more honorable than his brethren." There was a Jabez Spencer who served in the Revolution, but he may have been only a relative, not a direct ancestor. Lurany (sometimes spelled Lurana) was the daughter of Avery Thompson and Eleanor McKean, who is said to have been the daughter of Major Robert McKean, a Revolutionary hero. Her odd name is said to be a broken down form of the French name "Lorraine". My grandfather, who was her grandson, said there was "some French-Canadian among his ancestors but he didn't know where.
About 1844, Jabez I. (J.) and Lurany came to northern Illinois, part way by canal boat, the rest by covered wagon, with their four sons, Jabez, Addison, Avery and Milton. The boys' ages ranged from seven or eight to the early teens. Cherry Valley, Illinois was named by former neighbors of theirs, but the Spencers settled on a farm in Boone County, a few miles away. They first lived in a low area near the Kishwaukee River, said to be unhealthy (probably malaria-bearing mosquitoes) but after Addison died of a fever at seventeen, they moved to the farm on Blood's Point Road, buying it from the man who homesteaded it. This farm belonged to our family until the 1930's when my grandfather sold it, although it had been rented since 1905. Avery was killed in an obscure battle of the Civil War. He was then in his early thirties and unmarried. Jabez I. (J.) died in the early winter of 1890, Lurany early in the 1900's. They are buried in Flora Cemetery, across the road from Flora Community Church, in a long row with all four sons, Milton's wife Nancy, and about six of Milton and Nancy's children who died young. My grandfather had the stones set in a concrete base long ago, so they have not disintegrated as marble often does, but the surfaces are weathered and not easy to read.
SECOND GENERATION - My great grandparents
Young Jabez Spencer married Sarah Witter (always called Sally" in the early 1850's. They had four children - Joseph, Frank, Mary and Jay. When the youngest was born the grandparents wanted him called Jabez, but his father said "Enough of us have suffered with that name." So they shortened it.
In 1862, the second year of the Civil War, while little Jay was still an infant, his parents were divorced. This was unusual at that time. The trouble was over another woman, but I know no details. He went to California, and later Nevada, where he was killed about ten years later, shot in a quarrel over his second wife. I know no more about him except that my Grandpa (his son) told Mother once his father came to visit and started to scold the two little boys for something, but old Jabez I. (J.) interfered, telling his son if he wouldn't take the responsibility of raising them he had no right to rebuke them. Also Grandpa remembered his grandfather going out west and bringing back the body.
After the divorce Jabez I. (J.) promised his daughter-in-law a farm if she would keep the children together and near them, but she was bitter and wanted to get away from the scene of unhappiness. Also, (according to Spencer family tradition) her brothers "thought they could get more" in a cash settlement. In exchange the old couple demanded two of the grandchildren. Sally took her oldest son (named for her father, Dr. Joseph Witter, and Mary the only girl went to Minnesota, married a widower with a family, and remained there all her life.
Jabez I. (J.) and Lurany took Frank, about four and the sickly baby whom no one expected to live. Pulling him through was the best thing she ever did for her husband and herself, as he became the prop of their old age.
THIRD GENERATION - My grandparents
Jay Spencer was born November 9, 1861. He had no middle name, but later in life adopted the initial "L" telling his friends it stood for Lazy. Of all these people, next to my mother, he is the one whom I knew best and loved most.
At around twenty, he saved up money and went to Minnesota to see his mother. He told my Mom, long afterward, it was a disappointing experience. She was wrapped in her step-children and the son and daughter she had raised, and they did not get at all close to each other. (I have since thought she may have been embarrassed in the presence of the baby, now grown up, whom she had in a sense abandoned, not expecting him to live.) However, he formed a friendly relationship with his brother Joseph and sister Mary which continued all their lives. They may have visited their grandparents earlier, though I never heard of such a visit. There is a picture of Joe as a boy with his cousin Ella Spencer, uncle Milton's daughter, which suggests this.
Incidentally, the only one of Uncle Milton's many children who married and raised a family, was a son Edward, who was Grandpa's playmate as a boy. He was four years younger than his cousin Jay, but Grandpa was always frail and small of his age, so people even took them for twins. I know where to get in touch with some of Cousin Ed's grandchildren, and if I ever do that research will do so. Also, incidentally, Grandpa, that "sickly baby" lived past eighty and was fond of saying he had outlived many doctors who predicted a short life for him.
Around 1888, Jay Spencer married Dorothea Kruse, (always called Dora) a German immigrant who worked as hired girl for his grandparents. Jabez I. (J.) and Lurany were so pleased with her they even said she was "too good for Jay"! Dora was the youngest of a family of five sisters who came here with her widowed mother and a couple of brothers-in-law when she was nineteen. She worked very hard learning English from her various employers and later spoke it with no discernible accent. Also she taught herself to read and write English from her little daughter's primers after they were in bed. In middle age, people didn't believe she had never gone to school in this country for a single day.
After Jabez I. (J.) died, Lurany lived alone in the big farm-house while Jay and Dora and their two little girls occupied the small tenant house, and even added Dora's mother, who the little girls called "Gersamamma" (that's the way Mom pronounced it, I never saw it written.) Although Charlotte Kruse knew almost no English and Jay very little German, she always said her "Yankee son-in-law was the best of the lot," not surprising as he was a very kind person and her other daughters' husbands held to the masterful German tradition.
Dora's brother John Kruse, had remained in Germany, near Berlin, in what is now East Germany. She corresponded with his family until her death in September, 1933. Then we lost touch. We have many relatives in Belvidere (second cousins in my generation) but had no direct contact with them after Grandma died. She had fallen out with her German-American brothers-in-law during World War I, telling them bluntly - when they got sentimental about the Kaiser and the Fatherland - "Here in American you can retire in comfort and leave good farms to your sons. What would you have had if you had stayed in Germany? Nothing!"
FOURTH GENERATION - My Parents
Jay and Dora Spencer's two children were Ella Dora, born June 2, 1891 (my mother). And Elsie Sarah, born September 29, 1894, whom I always called Auntie. No room here for Mother's anecdotes about their childhood on the farm. After Grandma Lurany died, they lived only a few years in the farmhouse (now town down). When Ella graduated from the one-room Irene school, in 1905, she took the examination in Belvidere to teach country schools - and passed it, getting her certificate to teach although she was only fourteen and tiny for her age. She never used it.
The family were very close, and didn't want to send her to high school in Belvidere, since she would have to live with some of her mother's relatives all week. I suspect Grandpa, who had never really liked farming and was now free from obligation to his grandmother, used this as an excuse to rent the farm and move to Cherry Valley. He bought the house where I live now and the vacant lot next door to use for a garden. He wanted to buy the next lot to pasture his horses, but old Mr. Lee who owned it wouldn't sell. His son Raymond was getting married. The house which was built there for him and is still there.
Cherry Valley had a three-year high school, taught at that time by Mr. Jameson, a former college professor who had taken this comparatively easier job when his health broke down. He wanted Ella to go on to take her fourth year in Rockford after she graduated in 1908, - Cherry Valley was on the Interurban (rural trolley line) and had the best public transportation it has ever had, at that time. But she decided to go to Brown's Business College and then to work in an office.
She was working for the Rockford Gas, Light & Coke Company when she was married in 1916, and hoped to go on working for a while, but they wouldn't employ married women, and let her go with very little time to train a successor. She once told me with quietly malicious satisfaction it was a full year before they got the books balance again.
Ella Spencer married Elvin LeRoy Shelden of Winnebago in November 1916. They lived in Rockford, moving four times during their short married life, attending first Court Street Methodist Episcopal Church and later Grace Church (which my little brother called his church) as nearer their home. Their children are Dorothy Christine Shelden, born November 27, 1917, never married Robert Spencer Shelden, born January 14 1920, died January 24, 1920, a victim of one of the terrible influenza epidemics of that period. Richard Spencer Shelden, born July 30, 1922 (married Bernita Brown), Janet Elsie Shelden, born November 6, 1924 (married Neal Hildebrand).
Elsie Spencer married Clarence Peterson of Cherry Valley, on July 3, 1930. We kids called him Uncle Pete; all his friends called him Click. He died in March 1963. Auntie in April 1977. Their son, Robert Spencer Peterson, born August 22, 1931 lives in their old home on Lawrence Street in Cherry Valley.
Genealogy re-typed from Dorothy Christine Shelden July 12, 2010 by Barbara Wilson Krause - Original written Christmas, 1983
FIRST GENERATION - My great, great grandparents
In the late 1820's Jabez I. (J) Spencer was married to Lurany
Thompson, both of Cherry Valley, (Otsego County) New York. The name Jabez comes from a rather obscure reference in the Old Testament, which at least says that "Jabez was more honorable than his brethren." There was a Jabez Spencer who served in the Revolution, but he may have been only a relative, not a direct ancestor. Lurany (sometimes spelled Lurana) was the daughter of Avery Thompson and Eleanor McKean, who is said to have been the daughter of Major Robert McKean, a Revolutionary hero. Her odd name is said to be a broken down form of the French name "Lorraine". My grandfather, who was her grandson, said there was "some French-Canadian among his ancestors but he didn't know where.
About 1844, Jabez I. (J.) and Lurany came to northern Illinois, part way by canal boat, the rest by covered wagon, with their four sons, Jabez, Addison, Avery and Milton. The boys' ages ranged from seven or eight to the early teens. Cherry Valley, Illinois was named by former neighbors of theirs, but the Spencers settled on a farm in Boone County, a few miles away. They first lived in a low area near the Kishwaukee River, said to be unhealthy (probably malaria-bearing mosquitoes) but after Addison died of a fever at seventeen, they moved to the farm on Blood's Point Road, buying it from the man who homesteaded it. This farm belonged to our family until the 1930's when my grandfather sold it, although it had been rented since 1905. Avery was killed in an obscure battle of the Civil War. He was then in his early thirties and unmarried. Jabez I. (J.) died in the early winter of 1890, Lurany early in the 1900's. They are buried in Flora Cemetery, across the road from Flora Community Church, in a long row with all four sons, Milton's wife Nancy, and about six of Milton and Nancy's children who died young. My grandfather had the stones set in a concrete base long ago, so they have not disintegrated as marble often does, but the surfaces are weathered and not easy to read.
SECOND GENERATION - My great grandparents
Young Jabez Spencer married Sarah Witter (always called Sally" in the early 1850's. They had four children - Joseph, Frank, Mary and Jay. When the youngest was born the grandparents wanted him called Jabez, but his father said "Enough of us have suffered with that name." So they shortened it.
In 1862, the second year of the Civil War, while little Jay was still an infant, his parents were divorced. This was unusual at that time. The trouble was over another woman, but I know no details. He went to California, and later Nevada, where he was killed about ten years later, shot in a quarrel over his second wife. I know no more about him except that my Grandpa (his son) told Mother once his father came to visit and started to scold the two little boys for something, but old Jabez I. (J.) interfered, telling his son if he wouldn't take the responsibility of raising them he had no right to rebuke them. Also Grandpa remembered his grandfather going out west and bringing back the body.
After the divorce Jabez I. (J.) promised his daughter-in-law a farm if she would keep the children together and near them, but she was bitter and wanted to get away from the scene of unhappiness. Also, (according to Spencer family tradition) her brothers "thought they could get more" in a cash settlement. In exchange the old couple demanded two of the grandchildren. Sally took her oldest son (named for her father, Dr. Joseph Witter, and Mary the only girl went to Minnesota, married a widower with a family, and remained there all her life.
Jabez I. (J.) and Lurany took Frank, about four and the sickly baby whom no one expected to live. Pulling him through was the best thing she ever did for her husband and herself, as he became the prop of their old age.
THIRD GENERATION - My grandparents
Jay Spencer was born November 9, 1861. He had no middle name, but later in life adopted the initial "L" telling his friends it stood for Lazy. Of all these people, next to my mother, he is the one whom I knew best and loved most.
At around twenty, he saved up money and went to Minnesota to see his mother. He told my Mom, long afterward, it was a disappointing experience. She was wrapped in her step-children and the son and daughter she had raised, and they did not get at all close to each other. (I have since thought she may have been embarrassed in the presence of the baby, now grown up, whom she had in a sense abandoned, not expecting him to live.) However, he formed a friendly relationship with his brother Joseph and sister Mary which continued all their lives. They may have visited their grandparents earlier, though I never heard of such a visit. There is a picture of Joe as a boy with his cousin Ella Spencer, uncle Milton's daughter, which suggests this.
Incidentally, the only one of Uncle Milton's many children who married and raised a family, was a son Edward, who was Grandpa's playmate as a boy. He was four years younger than his cousin Jay, but Grandpa was always frail and small of his age, so people even took them for twins. I know where to get in touch with some of Cousin Ed's grandchildren, and if I ever do that research will do so. Also, incidentally, Grandpa, that "sickly baby" lived past eighty and was fond of saying he had outlived many doctors who predicted a short life for him.
Around 1888, Jay Spencer married Dorothea Kruse, (always called Dora) a German immigrant who worked as hired girl for his grandparents. Jabez I. (J.) and Lurany were so pleased with her they even said she was "too good for Jay"! Dora was the youngest of a family of five sisters who came here with her widowed mother and a couple of brothers-in-law when she was nineteen. She worked very hard learning English from her various employers and later spoke it with no discernible accent. Also she taught herself to read and write English from her little daughter's primers after they were in bed. In middle age, people didn't believe she had never gone to school in this country for a single day.
After Jabez I. (J.) died, Lurany lived alone in the big farm-house while Jay and Dora and their two little girls occupied the small tenant house, and even added Dora's mother, who the little girls called "Gersamamma" (that's the way Mom pronounced it, I never saw it written.) Although Charlotte Kruse knew almost no English and Jay very little German, she always said her "Yankee son-in-law was the best of the lot," not surprising as he was a very kind person and her other daughters' husbands held to the masterful German tradition.
Dora's brother John Kruse, had remained in Germany, near Berlin, in what is now East Germany. She corresponded with his family until her death in September, 1933. Then we lost touch. We have many relatives in Belvidere (second cousins in my generation) but had no direct contact with them after Grandma died. She had fallen out with her German-American brothers-in-law during World War I, telling them bluntly - when they got sentimental about the Kaiser and the Fatherland - "Here in American you can retire in comfort and leave good farms to your sons. What would you have had if you had stayed in Germany? Nothing!"
FOURTH GENERATION - My Parents
Jay and Dora Spencer's two children were Ella Dora, born June 2, 1891 (my mother). And Elsie Sarah, born September 29, 1894, whom I always called Auntie. No room here for Mother's anecdotes about their childhood on the farm. After Grandma Lurany died, they lived only a few years in the farmhouse (now town down). When Ella graduated from the one-room Irene school, in 1905, she took the examination in Belvidere to teach country schools - and passed it, getting her certificate to teach although she was only fourteen and tiny for her age. She never used it.
The family were very close, and didn't want to send her to high school in Belvidere, since she would have to live with some of her mother's relatives all week. I suspect Grandpa, who had never really liked farming and was now free from obligation to his grandmother, used this as an excuse to rent the farm and move to Cherry Valley. He bought the house where I live now and the vacant lot next door to use for a garden. He wanted to buy the next lot to pasture his horses, but old Mr. Lee who owned it wouldn't sell. His son Raymond was getting married. The house which was built there for him and is still there.
Cherry Valley had a three-year high school, taught at that time by Mr. Jameson, a former college professor who had taken this comparatively easier job when his health broke down. He wanted Ella to go on to take her fourth year in Rockford after she graduated in 1908, - Cherry Valley was on the Interurban (rural trolley line) and had the best public transportation it has ever had, at that time. But she decided to go to Brown's Business College and then to work in an office.
She was working for the Rockford Gas, Light & Coke Company when she was married in 1916, and hoped to go on working for a while, but they wouldn't employ married women, and let her go with very little time to train a successor. She once told me with quietly malicious satisfaction it was a full year before they got the books balance again.
Ella Spencer married Elvin LeRoy Shelden of Winnebago in November 1916. They lived in Rockford, moving four times during their short married life, attending first Court Street Methodist Episcopal Church and later Grace Church (which my little brother called his church) as nearer their home. Their children are Dorothy Christine Shelden, born November 27, 1917, never married Robert Spencer Shelden, born January 14 1920, died January 24, 1920, a victim of one of the terrible influenza epidemics of that period. Richard Spencer Shelden, born July 30, 1922 (married Bernita Brown), Janet Elsie Shelden, born November 6, 1924 (married Neal Hildebrand).
Elsie Spencer married Clarence Peterson of Cherry Valley, on July 3, 1930. We kids called him Uncle Pete; all his friends called him Click. He died in March 1963. Auntie in April 1977. Their son, Robert Spencer Peterson, born August 22, 1931 lives in their old home on Lawrence Street in Cherry Valley.
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