PIONEER MRS. SOMERS PETTINGILL CALLED TO REST

In 1871 we first sat at the table with the Newton Clark family, with the father, mother, her three brothers and three sisters; and later her father was sent to one of the government Indian schools as head of the school for I think two years. A short distance away lived her grandfather, Mr. Hagenbuck and family and both families were grand people. The father and mother and one sister were buried here; also the grandfather, grandmother and their daughter, Lucy. The oldest son, Henry Hagenbuck, who married Elam Clark’s daughter, Isidore, now lives in California where his wife died when in charge of a California post office.

Newton Clark came here at the request of his two brothers, Elam and Veteran E. H. Clark in 1857, and moving back to Indiana, and there Mrs. Pettingill was born in 1867. His brother Elam, wrote him he had a good farm ready for him covering old Fort Atkinson where Mrs. Pettingill was raised and schooled.

After her marriage to Doctor Pettingill, a son of one of the most prominent pioneer school masters in Washington county, and while her grandmother had charge of the Fort Calhoun post office, Mrs. Pettingill was one of the hardest working contingent of the women’s sewing society to which we owe the building of the old Congregational church, of which she was a member ever since the first church was built, and for a number of years before going to California a trustee of the building, and also active in Eastern Star and Red Cross work. Her husband was our family physician for over 30 years, and we were all intimate friends so we knew her for 48 years. Some years ago a horse ran away with her and a doctor called in consultation declared she never would be able to walk again, but after 3 or 4 years in bed and on crutches she was able to take up work again.

The family moved to California in 1918 with their son, Clark, a prominent electrician, and her married daughter, Catherine, and husband and two children.

She still has a brother, Charles, who makes his home here still, but is now on a visit to his sister, Bela Fenner, once a prominent merchant and postmaster here in Ft. Calhoun, now of Houston, Texas, and a brother, Edward, living near Fenners.

The family are all much missed here and will be for a very long time. W. H. Woods.

~~~Obituaries courtesy of the Nebraska Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file in the Blair, Nebraska Public Library~~~

Find a Grave Memorial #118490421