Skip to main content

Mary E Woodruff (1843-1920)

Mary Woodruff was born 1843 in Bohemia.  Her father was Martin Woodruff and she had a sister named Sophia(1842) and a brother, Frank(1851).  Mary and her family immigrated to Milwaukee in 1860.  
1870 Census of Milwaukee, Wisc.
She met and married fellow Bohemian Frank Peshek.  They had seven children together before divorcing sometime after 1882; Sophia (1863), Frank (1868), Mary (1869), John Albert (1872), William (1875), Robert James (1879), and Rose M (1882). By this time, they had moved north, to Green Bay.
1880 Census of Fort Howard, Wisc.
  Mary Woodruff remarried sometime after Rose is born, to a Frank Joseph Jolley, who then adopts Rose.  It's unclear what happened between Mary and Frank Peshek, and why they separated.  The Federal census of 1890 was destroyed by fire, and the next census I have to go on is the state census of 1895.  In 1895, Mary Woodruff Peshek is now Mary Jolley and she is living in Appleton, a widow, with her daughter Rose and another daughter from her second marriage, Jessie Ida Jolley. 
1900 Census of Appleton, Wisc.
The four youngest Peshek children would still be dependent and living at home, but only Rose was adopted by Frank Joseph Jolley.  Did Mary abandon her other children?  Did Frank Peshek raise them on his own? I'm still looking for answers for this blank period of their life.

Mary resided in Appleton, until her death November 3rd, 1920.   
Appleton Post Crescent November 3rd, 1920

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Martin Woodruff (1795-1899): The Elder

Who is Martin Woodruff?  Martin is my 4th great-grandfather.  The only information I have to support this are a few newspaper articles from the Appleton Post-Crescent. from the Appleton Post-Crescent, Sept. 30th, 1898. And then almost exactly a year later, his obituary appears. from the Appleton Post-Crescent , Sept. 28, 1899, Thursday. From these articles we get his approximate birth date, February 1795, in Bohemia.  His arrival in the States in 1854, residence in Milwaukee, and then death date of September 21, 1899, in Green Bay. I can't find him anywhere in the census for Milwaukee, or Green Bay.  His death doesn't appear to be noted in the Green Bay newspapers.  Why did he move to Green Bay, if his only child lived in Appleton?  Does he have other relatives?  Is Woodruff even his birth name?  If he is from Bohemia, its probably changed to sound more American.  What other name variants should I be looking for?  Wotruf?...
Post a Comment
Read more

Appleton

The territory where Appleton is today was traditionally occupied by the  Ho-Chunk  and the  Menominee . The Menominee Nation ceded the territory to the United States in the  Treaty of the Cedars  in 1836, with  Chief Oshkosh  representing the Menominee.  In the Menominee language, Appleton is known as  Ahkōnemeh , or "watches for them place".   Fur traders seeking to do business with Fox River Valley Indians were the first settlers in Appleton. Hippolyte Grignon built the White Heron in 1835 to house his family and serve as an inn and trading post. Germans, Dutch and Poles were some of the first immigrants to come to Appleton. Oneida Indians also live in the Oneida reservation just north of town.  Appleton shares its history with Lawrence University, for the two grew simultaneously.  With the financial backing of Amos Lawrence, the Lawrence Institute was chartered in 1847. Samuel Appleton donated $10,000...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wisconsin State Normal Schools

Nineteenth century higher education was mainly reserved for men.  Victorian notions of separate gender spheres assigned rigorous academic pursuits to men. Professors were almost always male and passed on their knowledge to their male students.  As women defied these notions and entered classrooms, they were constantly reminded that they were outsiders in a male world.  In the 1870s, men and women studied separately in some subjects, and some classes segregated female students in the back of the classrooms. Any subjects that were vocational, such as surveying, navigation, agriculture, or engineering were not considered suitable courses for women to study.  In the 1880s and 1890s, women mainly studied in the "modern Classical" and "english" liberal arts courses. Normal schools were teacher-training schools and in the Midwest many normal schools functioned as all-around institutions of higher learning.  Almost always coeducational, state normal schools we...
Post a Comment
Read more