The Munro Great-Grandparents of Lillie Belle Read

Leicester (Lester) Munroe and Lurany Ralph

Leicester (pronounced Lester and later written that way) was born 16 April 1795 in Cooperstown, Otsego, New York to David and Anna Andrus Munroe. Lurana (Lurany) Ralph was born 5 April 1801 in Susquehanna, Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, parents unknown.

They were married 14 September 1817 in Penfield, Monroe, New York, and moved to Lockport, the Niagara County seat. The following children were born to them there:

• David Madison, b. 25 February 1820
• Mary Anne Celina, b. 28 December 1821
• Dow Ralph, b. 8 June 1824
• William Orlando, b. 25 September 1826

Dow Ralph (age 4) died in 1828 and the family moved to Carleton, Monroe, Michigan, where the following children were born:

• Adams Fernando Munroe, b. 23 March 1829
• James Ralph Munroe, b. 18 October 1833
• Lurana Maria Eliza Munroe, b. 29 July 1835

The family moved to Pittsford, Hillsdale, Michigan, and there the following children were born:

Leicester Munroe

• Harriet Adelia Jane Munroe, b. 28 March 1838
• Henry Harrison Munroe, b. 13 May 1841
• Edmond Vallios Munroe, b. 10 March 1843

The 1840 Census in Pittsford found the family all together, and a man aged 80–90 lived with them, as did a woman aged 70–80. Since Lester’s mother died in 1817 in Monroe County, New York, and his father died in 1837 in Pittsford, Hillsdale, Michigan, this probably means that Lurana’s parents, the Ralphs, lived with the Munroe family.

These elderly people (the Ralph parents) were both gone in 1850, probably having passed away in Hillsdale County, as the family was still living there in Pittsford when the 1850 Census was taken. In May 1843, Mary Anne married Jabez Northrup in Pittsford, Hillsdale, Michigan.

1850 Census with Leicester and Lurana Munroe
and their family on lines 7 - 14

Leicester was a farmer with land valued at $150 in 1850. At the same time, his 29-year-old son David was a farmer with land valued at $300. Since they still lived together, probably a check of the land records would show that Lester had turned over much of his land to his son.

Before 1854, the family moved to Branch County. Harriet (age 14) died in 1852, in either Hillsdale or Branch county. In June 1854, William married Ann Charlotte Flanders in Kinderhook, Branch, Michigan. In June 1855, Maria married James M. Pound in Branch County. In September 1856, James married Roxana Ralph in Branch County. In February 1857, David married Mrs. Elizabeth Rose Browning, place unspecified.

In 1860 the Census showed the family living in Ovid, Branch County, Michigan. Leicester was still farming, with his real estate valued at $100, and his personal property valued at $125. Adams married a woman named Ann sometime after that census was taken.

Lurana Ralph Munroe died 1 January 1866 in Ottawa County, Michigan.

Their son Edmond died 10 June 1866, at the age of only 23, place not specified.

Leicester was apparently missed by the census taker in 1870.

In 1880, Leicester Munroe lived with his son Henry and family in Olive, Ottawa, Michigan. Henry’s wife, Maria, died in December 1882 in Olive.

Leicester moved to Kalamo, Eaton, Michigan sometime in the 1880s and died there on November 16, 1890. He was buried in the little cemetery there. Because his son David died and was also buried there the next July, it is possible that Leicester was living with David and family in Kalamo.

William Orlando Munroe and Ann Charlotte Flanders

William Orlando Munroe was the 3rd son and 4th child of Leicester and Lurana Ralph Munroe of New York. He was born in Lockport, Niagara, New York on 25 September 1826. When he was two, his brother closest to him in age, Dow Ralph Munroe, died. The family moved to Monroe County, Michigan before he turned three years old. He gained four younger brothers and two younger sisters while the family was there and in Hillsdale County. In Hillsdale County, they lived in the town of Pittsford. William’s grandfather, David Munroe, died there in 1837 just before William turned 11. William’s elder sister, Mary Ann, married Jabez Northrup there in 1843 when William was 16.

Around the same time, probably William’s Ralph grandparents died—they were likely living with the family in Pittsford. The family moved to Kinderhook, Branch, Michigan before 1854. In 1852, William’s sister Harriet, age 14, died. Within a four-mile radius, just across the border of Indiana near Jamestown, lived a beautiful girl named Ann Charlotte Flanders, who caught William’s eye.

Ann Charlotte Flanders was born in Pennsylvania in 1837 or late 1836. Her parents were Christian W. and Mary Ann Flanders. She was the eldest of six children. Her siblings were Mary Ann (1839), Robert W. (1841), Elizabeth (1842), John M.R. (1845), and Loisa A. (1849). (In the 1840 Census, the parents were between 20 and 30, the two eldest girls were under 5, and there was a boy 10–15 living with them—possibly a brother of one of the parents.) When the 1850 Census was taken, they were living in Jamestown, Steuben, Indiana, about four miles south of Kinderhook, Michigan. Christian Flanders appeared in 1864 tax lists living in Noble township, just west of Kinderhook.

William Orlando Munroe and Ann Charlotte Flanders were married on June 1, 1854 in Kinderhook, Branch, Michigan. She was 17 years old; he was 27.

William does not seem to have had a steady trade. The family moved around quite a bit in the next fifteen years. In 1860 William was a teamster. In 1870 he was a carpenter. We do not know all the jobs he had in all the places they lived. The following children were born to them, the first five each in a different place:

• Anna Jane Munroe, b. 18 September 1855 in Branch County, Michigan.
• William Lester Munroe, b. 21 April 1858 in New London, Waupaca, Wisconsin.
• Mary Lurana Munroe, b. 17 January 1861 in Oshkosh, Winnebago, Wisconsin.
• Charles Henry Munroe, b. 9 May 1863 in Green Bay, Brown, Wisconsin.
• James Deyoe Munroe, b. 18 March 1865 in Bear Creek, Manistee, Michigan.
• John David Munroe, b. 31 August 1867 in Bear Creek, Manistee, Michigan.

William’s mother died in January 1866 and six months later his brother Edmond died. His and Ann’s baby, John David, died at the age of four and a half months, on 15 January 1868 in Bear Creek. A greater disaster befell the family when Ann Charlotte Flanders Munroe died the next year on 21 July 1869 in Bear Creek. She was only 32 years old. The family was broken up by her death; probably William could not care for all of the children by himself. Thirteen-year-old Anna took over the housekeeping and the care of eleven-year-old Lester and four-year-old James, but nine-year-old Mary and seven-year-old Charles were farmed out to relatives.

The 1870 Census found Charles and Mary living with William’s brother James and his wife, Jane, and their three children who were younger than Charles and Mary. James was a preacher. Charles and Mary were reported to be 11 and 8 years old, respectively, which does not agree with the family records of their ages, but the census taker or their aunt or uncle could easily have mixed up and changed their ages. William’s family in the same census has all the ages right, but the birth places are incorrect, and Anna’s name is spelled Hannah.

William Orlando Munroe

There is a marriage record for William Munroe and a widow, Mrs. M. L. Smith, in Kinderhook, Michigan in 1873. Family records contain no corroboration that William Orlando Munroe married a second time, but it is entirely possible. She may have died not long after their marriage, which could explain why we knew nothing about this.

William’s daughter Anna Jane Munroe died just before her 21st birthday, on 26 August 1876 in Grand Haven, Ottawa, Michigan.

In 1880 William must have been missed by the census takers. Later he lived with his son Lester’s family in Arkansas. While he was with them, his 5-year-old grandson Claudy died in January 1897. William Orlando Munroe died in Little Rock at the age of 71 on 21 April 1898.

 

William Lester Munroe and Mary Jane Whittenton Johnson Munroe

William Lester Munroe

William Lester Munroe was the second child and first son of William Orlando Munroe and Ann Charlotte Flanders Munroe. He always went by the name “Lester.” He was born 21 April 1858 at New London, Waupaca County, Wisconsin. His sister Anna was 2½ when he was born. The family moved to Oshkosh in Winnebago County, and there his sister Mary Lurana was born when Lester was almost 3. They moved again, to Green Bay in Brown County, and there his brother Charles Henry was born when Lester was 5. The family moved again, to Bear Creek in Manistee County. There, when Lester was almost 7, his brother James Deyoe was born. They were still living in Bear Creek when Lester’s youngest brother, John David, was born at the end of August 1867, when Lester was 9.

Lester’s family endured a loss the next winter when his baby brother, John David, died. A year and a half later their mother, Ann Charlotte Flanders Munroe, died on 21 July 1869, and the family suffered severely. Lester’s father could not take care of all the children, so the two middle children, Mary and Charles, went to live with their uncle and aunt James and Jane Munroe. They would never be all together again. Anna took over the household duties, and Lester helped as much as he could. They had the care of their little brother, James, while their father worked.

Lester’s father remarried, to a widow named M.L. Smith in 1873. Sadly, Lester’s sister Anna died only a month away from her twenty-first birthday in 1876.

Later in life Lester swore he would never allow his own family to be broken up the way his father had had to do. His sister Mary became close to Lester and James later on, but Charles did not.

Lester moved to Arkansas in search of work, and there when he was 26, he met and married a widow, Mrs. Mary Jane Johnson, who had two children (though one of them had probably died by this time). Despite her coming from a staunch Southern family that had sympathized with and fought for the Confederate Cause in the Civil War, and despite Lester’s being not only a Northerner but practically a carpetbagger to boot, he seems to have overcome their prejudices for a time.

Mary Jane Whittenton (sometimes spelled Whittington) was born in 1857 in Jackson, Madison County, Tennessee to Solomon and Mary Whittenton. Her father had died in 1874, almost a decade before she met Lester, as had her older brother, William, and younger sister, Jos Lane. Her living siblings were Valerie Jane (1851–1936), Mary Ann (1855–1885), and Frances Elizabeth (1856–1910). Her younger brothers were Thomas Jabe (1861–1910), and Bedford Forrest (1864–1887). Within a few years her sister Mary Ann and brother Bedford Forrest died also.

Mary Jane had married Barney S. Johnson on May 2, 1876 in Jackson, Madison, Tennessee. They had moved to Bald Knob, White, Arkansas and had the following children:

• Emma, born in 1877, probably died before 1884
• Annie Sophronia, also known as Annie Frona, born in October 1879

Barney was killed in an accident in the summer or fall of 1880. Emma must have died sometime in the next few years, because after Lester Munroe married Mary Jane, no records of any child except Annie Frona turned up. Annie Frona reported her birth year as 1880 a lot of the time, but since she was a 6-month-old baby on the 1880 census, she had to have been born in 1879. Mary Jane’s younger daughters said that she and Barney also had a son named either Eugene or Sam, but no records have ever been found about him. If he existed, he must have been born the autumn after his father’s death and died soon afterward, but it is more likely that he never existed; instead, his existence was likely a mistake for the actual child, Emma, who died very young.

Lester and Mary Jane were married June 1, 1884 in White County, Arkansas. He worked at whatever odd jobs he could get, and the family was very poor. They lived in rural White County—or at least his wife lived there and he traveled around working and sending whatever money he could make home to her. Their first child was born there:

• John William, 8 May 1885

Six months later in an effort to get a steady income, he enlisted in the Army at St. Louis, on 12 November 1885. His enlistment papers say his occupation was that of a painter. Apparently he couldn’t stick the army and deserted on March 16, 1886 somewhere in Ohio. He went home to White County where soon the twins were born:

• Flora, 14 June 1886
• Florence, 14 June 1886

After the birth of the twins, the family went to Jackson, Madison, Tennessee, where Mary Jane’s mother and siblings lived. There the two little babies died, Flora on October 28, and Florence on November 10. Mary Jane’s mother also died, December 20, 1886, about a month after Florence. The deaths of their children and Mary Jane’s mother must have been a terrible blow to Lester and Mary Jane. They moved back to Arkansas and lived for a time in Newton County. There the following children were born:

• Agnes Telitha, 29 February 1888
• Allie May, 11 May 1889
• Claude Solomon, 19 April 1891
• Lillie Belle, 13 September 1892

In early 1893 the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma sold to the United States government a strip of land along the northern border of Oklahoma, and the U.S. government opened it up to white settlers in September 1893. Over 100,000 prospective settlers raced to claim plots of land, the Munroes among them. They lived at Newkirk, Kay, Oklahoma for some months, and there their second-to-the-last daughter was born:

• Jessie Jane, 28 May 1894

But whatever they tried in Oklahoma did not work out and they moved back to Arkansas, this time living in the city of Little Rock. It was there that Lester’s father, William Orlando Munroe, came to live with them. And it was there that their last child was born on Christmas day:

• Medora A, 25 December 1895

Lester and Mary Jane must have been sorely grieved when their son Claudy died at the age of five on 26 January 1897. A little over a year later Lester’s father, William Orlando Munroe, died at the age of 71.

Mary Jane’s sister was married to a photographer who had a studio just east of Little Rock in Saline, Lonoke County. They took their little girls over there and had a picture done of them. Clockwise from the top left they are: Allie May, Lillie Belle, Jessie Jane, Medora, and Agnes Telitha.

The family was still very poor, and when anybody got sick they did not have the money to call a doctor. This proved to be a disaster when Mary Jane got sick in the winter of 1899. She died at the age of about 42 on March 3, 1899, leaving Lester to try to keep the family together. The family consisted of his stepdaughter Annie, who was about 19, and his children John (14), Agnes (12), May (10), Lillie (6), Jessie (5), and Dora (3).

John had suffered blindness as a result of untreated conjunctivitis and was enrolled as a charity case at the Arkansas School for the Blind in Little Rock. He was listed as a pupil there on the 1900 Census, taken in May when he had just turned 15. He recovered his eyesight in time. Lester kept the children as well as he could as he traveled around looking for work. Perhaps Mary Jane’s sister over in Lonoke County took the girls in from time to time. Mary Jane’s daughter Annie also probably took care of her little sisters, at least some of the time. The 1900 Census showed Annie was boarding with a family and working as a servant. She married Clint Cusick in June 1902. Annie, and later her children, always stayed in touch with her half-brother and sisters.

Meanwhile, Lester was having less and less luck at finding and keeping jobs. He had had some good jobs now and then. At one time he was a finishing carpenter for the Iron Mountain Railway coaches. But that hadn’t lasted. Perhaps after his wife was dead, his Southern neighbors were far less likely to cut him any slack and resented him for living among them and taking jobs from Southerners like themselves. Perhaps also Lester’s in-laws were angry at his poverty and inability to provide a good enough living to keep Mary Jane alive and well, let alone provide a decent living for his children. Whatever the problems, in about 1903 when Lester heard about the Bureau of Reclamation’s scheme to build a series of dams on the Boise River (the Boise Reclamation Project), he packed up and moved his children on the train to Idaho.

Whenever he could, Lester found the means to have portraits done of his family. This portrait of him surrounded by his children must have been taken soon after the move to the West. Clockwise from the top they are: John William, Allie May, Lillie Belle, Medora, Jessie Jane, and Agnes Telitha.

In Idaho the children began to give Lester trouble, if they hadn’t already been doing so. Agnes was running around with boys and eloped just before Christmas 1904, when she was 16 years old, with a young man named Bill Allen. May and Lillie hatched a scheme to make some money by coating pennies with mercury and getting their little sisters Jessie and Dora (or Dodie as she was called) to pass them off as dimes in the drug store.

The job on the Boise Reclamation project did not last as long as Lester expected, and he packed up the family once more, loading all their goods into a spring wagon pulled by two horses, and riding their best horse, set off for the Oregon coast. Near the town of Vale, just over the Oregon border, they were going to camp for the night, and Lester, having found that they needed more supplies, rode back to the town. He left strict instructions for John and May to hobble the horses and keep a close watch on things until he returned. But the instant he was out of sight, John and May took the hobbles off the horses and had a grand time riding them around while Lille sat in their tent with Jessie and Dodie and told them stories to keep them entertained. When John and May came in, they didn’t think anything more about their father’s instructions. But when Lester returned in the morning, the two horses were gone. Either John and May had not hobbled them correctly, or they had been stolen. No matter that John was over 20 and May was a dignified 16 herself, the two got a whipping from their irate father.

They had to walk all the way across Oregon, for the one horse could not pull a loaded wagon with anybody riding in it. Many years later Dodie still complained about having to walk through the snows of MacKenzie Pass. It is not unreasonable to assume that everybody had to strap on whatever they could carry in makeshift backpacks. They arrived in Marshfield (now called Coos Bay) at the end of 1905 and there rented a small place for the girls to live while Lester and John went out to find work.

In about a year they moved up to Portland, taking a ship from Coos Bay. At the mouth of the Columbia River, the ship was towed across the dangerous part and into the port. They arrived in Portland in 1907, after the great Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition was over. Lester had not wanted to be there with the crowds attracted by a World’s Fair. Agnes came with her husband Bill in tow, and he went out to work with Lester and John. Sometimes they would get jobs that kept them away from home for several weeks at a time. For a time, John and Bill rode the rails around the west as they worked, while Lester worked up and down the Pacific Coast. One time outside Denver John fell from the car and got all banged up. The Salvation Army picked him up and bandaged him and sent him on his way. He always had a somewhat crippled hand after that.

One reason Lester had wanted to move to Oregon was that his brother James and sister Mary had both moved there with their spouses. Mary had been in the South, actually in Little Rock, and when she and her husband moved away, she had kept writing to Lester and inviting him to join them. Lester felt drawn to be near his own family members. This picture of him with Mary and their brother James was taken in the 1920s.

The girls began working as soon as they could, and except for Agnes, they married as soon as they were 18. This photograph was taken of Lester with his daughters and their children in autumn 1917.

At left is Agnes, holding her daughter Mildred Nelson. Her daughter Mary Agnes Allen is standing beside her, and her son Edwin Nelson is holding her hand.
Back left is May, holding her son Ashley Sherman Hallett. Her daughter Pauline Rieboldt is standing in front of her, and Paul Rieboldt Jr. is standing in front of Pauline.
Seated center is Lester Munroe, holding Jessie’s son Cecil Page (left) and Lillie’s son Herbert Read (right).
Back center is Lillie, with her daughter Viola standing in front of her. Her son Carl would be born in early November 1917.
Back right is Jessie holding her daughter Thelma Page. Her son Francis Page is standing in front of her.
Seated right is Dodie holding her first son, Alfred Raymond Copeland, born in August 1917.

Lester built a house in Portland, and sometime after he sold it, he bought a small farm in McMinnville and lived there until the 1930s. In McMinnville all the Munroe children and their families would get together for huge Fourth of July picnics that lasted several days. The men would bring out trestles and set boards on them for long tables, and the women would cook and cook and cook. After Lester sold his farm to his daughter Lillie and her husband, he moved to San Diego to live the rest of his life with his daughter May.

John William Munroe married Margaret Cochrane, a Scottish immigrant, about 1920. Their daughter, Barbara, was born the next year. Margaret died in the early 1950s of cancer. John married again, but the marriage was something of a disaster and was very short. John died April 29, 1960 just short of his 75th birthday.

After Agnes eloped with William Henry Allen at Christmas 1904, the rest of the family moved to Oregon. Agnes and Bill followed soon after. Their daughter Mary Agnes was born in 1907 (Agnes had two other children with Bill, but they died as infants and nothing is known about them). They were divorced, and by 1914 she had married Ame Nelson. They had two children, Edwin (1915) and Mildred (1916). In 1923, Agnes married Ed Clow. Their two children were Naomi (1924) and Eugene (1926). Curiously, Agnes appears in the 1910 Census without her daughter, who cannot be found in any relative’s household. This is the census where Agnes reports that she has borne three children but only one is living. Then she has three children (Mary, Ed, and Mildred) with her in the 1920 Census when she was married to Ame Nelson. But in 1930 when she should have had at least the 4- and 6-year-olds if not also the 14- and 15-year olds, she is living with her husband Ed Clow and a servant woman who has a son. Her children do not appear in any other household in this census. It is very odd. In the 1940 Census she has her two Clow children living with her and her husband. Since her daughter Mary Agnes disappears from all official records and since nobody in the family ever seemed to talk about her, we think she must have died after her sole appearance in official records on the 1920 Census. Agnes grew more conservative in her behavior as she aged. She died December 12, 1967 at age 79.

Allie May Munroe married Paul Rudolph Rieboldt in October 1907 and had a daughter, Pauline May (1909), and then a son, Paul Jr (1912), and then Paul Sr. died in June 1912. May married Bud Hallett in March 1914 and they had a son, Ashley (1916). Bud died in Yokohama, Japan, in April 1918, probably a victim of the Spanish Influenza pandemic. May married third Owen Alderson Cade in December 1920. They had two children, Minnie Lee Love Cade (1924), and Owen Lester Cade (1926). They lived in the vicinity of San Diego, California, for the rest of their lives. May had her father, Lester Munroe, living with them when Lester died in June 1938 at the age of 80. May died December 26, 1975 in San Diego, aged 76.

Lillie married Lloyd Alvero Read in October 1910 and had Viola (1912), Earl (1914), Herbert (1915), Carl (1917), Loretta (1919), Charlotte (1921), Clarence (1925), Alice (1927), and Marjorie (1930). Earl lived for less than a month. After Marjorie left home, they adopted Barbara in 1952. They lived in a number of places around Oregon all of their very long lives. Lillie died March 16, 1992, age 99½.

Jessie Jane Munroe married Frank A. Page in 1912. They had Cecil (1913), Francis (1915), Thelma (1916), Hazel (1918), Thomas (1920), and Beatrice (1922). Jessie married a second time to a Mr. Putnam. Jessie’s second marriage didn’t last, and by 1940 Jessie had married George Downing, who had several children of his own. Either Mr. Putnam or George Downing had a daughter named Edith who ended up marrying Dodie’s son Clyde Copeland. Jessie informally took in two babies to rear, Mary and Barbara, in the mid-1940s. She separated from George, but they remained married although Jessie lived in California and George in Washington. Jessie’s health was not very good, and she died relatively young, at the age of 57 on September 26, 1951. Little Mary was sent back to her mother, and little Barbara was formally adopted by Jessie’s sister Lillie.

Medora “Dodie” Munroe married Fred Raymond Copeland in 1916. They had Alfred (1917) in Washington, and Clyde (1919), Iva (1921), and Jack (1923) in Oregon. Eventually Dodie and Ray made their home in Stockton, California. Dodie lived to be 100 years old, dying February 9, 1996.