Bits & Pieces

I love mining old newspapers for family history bits and pieces. Here is today’s haul.

Death of an Old Lady

Here is the obituary of my great, great, great-grandmother, Elise Faivre, that appeared in the Stark County Democrat (Canton, Ohio) on Thursday, October 29, 1891. Sixty-one grandchildren… Imagine that!

In the text below, I have corrected misspelled surnames.

Mrs. Frank Gaume died at the old homestead one mile south of Louisville, Monday afternoon at 4 o’clock. Deceased was eighty-two years of age and was an old pioneer, having come to this country with her parents fifty-eight years ago. She was a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Faivre and was married in this city [Canton, Ohio] in St. John’s Church 57 years ago. She was the mother of 12 children of whom eight survive her, Mrs. Paul Rebillot; Mrs. Louis Menegay, and Mrs. Gus Cheveraux of Louisville; Mrs. Frank Voisard of Canton; Mrs. Saunier of St. Mary’s, Kansas; Mrs. Constantine Saunier of Denver, Colorado; Louis Gaume, of California, and Frank Gaume of Topeka Kansas [my great, great-grandfather]. She leaves sixty-one grandchildren and sixteen great-grandchildren. Funeral will take place Wednesday at ten o’clock from the residence of Paul Rebillot.

Elise Favier, the daughter of Joseph Favier and Marie-Angelique Voisard, married Jean Baptiste Francois Xavier Jeanin-Gaume, son of Luc Francois Jeanin-Gaume and Marie Therese Pequignot, on August 17, 1834, at Canton, Stark County, Ohio. She died on October 26, 1891, at Louisville, at age 81. On October 27, 1891, she was buried at St. Louis Church, Louisville, Stark County, Ohio.

Elise’s father, Joseph Favier, was born in Grand Fontaine, Switzerland, in 1783 and was later a soldier in Napoleon’s army before the family immigrated to the United States in the early 1830s, where he became a merchant and owned a dry goods store in Belfort, Ohio.

Elise was widowed in 1868 and in the 1870s the household consisted of just her and her granddaughter Della Gaume, my great-grandmother. I believe this next item that appeared in the Stark County Democrat December 17, 1874, in a section titled “Louisville Correspondence” refers to Elise as “Mrs. Gaume.”

I’ll Be Home for Christmas

Here are a couple of items with facts I did not know about Elise’s son, my great, great grandfather, Frank Gaume, a Civil War veteran who was wounded at the Battle of Stones River in Tennessee, and who voluntarily entered the Old Soldier’s Home at Fort Leavenworth Kansas in the early 1900s. Prior to that he was living in St. Mary’s Kansas.

One item in the St. Mary’s Star (St. Marys, Kansas) (Friday, April 15, 1904), revealed that he was at one time the night watchman at St. Mary’s College where his son-in-law, my great-grandfather, Dr. August DeBacker taught French and biology.

The Thursday, December 28, 1905 edition of the St. Mary’s Star informs us that while at the Old Soldier’s Home, Frank was the head chef for the officer’s mess.