Howard did not want to be a farmer so graduated as a stenographer from Gem City Business College at Quincy, Ill. He accepted a position in Denver, Col., which he held for several years then disappeared. After several months he wrote from Long Beach, Calif., that he had suffered a bad case of small pox which left his face quite pitted. He had gone to Long Beach to keep from meeting his friends and have them notice his marked face.
Later he worked for the U.S. Post Office and worked up to chief purchasing agent and inspector for the states of Minnesota and North and South Dakota. His work carried him across snowy country of the three states by horse and sleigh in sub-zero temperatures in winter to outlying post offices where if the accounts were discrepant, he could lay charges against a post office manager.
Retiring about 1950, he has been living quietly with his wife, Virginia, at their home at Oneonta Knoll, South Pasadena, Calif. Then have one child, Howard Jr., who is married and lives in Granada Hills, Los Angeles, Calif. Howard is 83 now.
Stella took her first eight grades at the Pleasant Hill School, which was built on one corner of father’s farm about 100 yards from our home. She attended the Normal School at Macomb, which is now Western Illinois University and emerged with a country school teacher’s certificate. She applied for the Wiley School a mile south of our home and taught there until she married Herbert Toland, a farm young man of Bardolph district.
To this union were born six children, but she has been a widow for nearly 40 years as Herb suffered a heart seizure while farming Dad’s farm after we came to Canada. She is living in her 81st year at 224 East Carroll Street, Macomb, Ill. 61455. She was treated to a surprise Aug. 15, 1965, when about 50 of her friends and relatives gathered to celebrate her 80th birthday.
As a young mother of two little sons she was severely threatened with tuberculosis. Up to the time of the birth of the second child she had shown no signs of the dread disease which had proved fatal for her mother. But their life at Clarence, Mo., where Herb had a job at a mule feeding station, had so taxed his strength and health that he had dropped from his usual 160 to 135 while she had gone into the first stages of the disease.
They quit their jobs and returned home, where they worked for father and lived in the old home, while we moved to 408 S. Dudley St., Macomb. Father had a screen wire partially enclosed porch attached to the back of the house and the four Tolands slept in it for two years. Both Herb and she regained their health so well that she has lived for nearly 60 years since her threatened attack. It was Ken’s and Lorna’s joy to be present at her birthday party and meet many of her 50 descendants, as well as other relations and friends of hers and ours.
In speaking of it afterward, he explained Stella had at the party, asked them to a dinner in her apartment a few days later, which they accepted. In Ken’s words, “She is such a spry old lady that she cooked and served our gang with a wonderful meal. We wondered if she was not 50 instead of 80.”
Ralph Booth Switzer took his first eight grades at Pleasant Hill School and stayed home to help Dad farm for several years before he entered Macomb Normal and graduated in 1912. He taught in LaHarpe, Ill. and Monmouth, Ill., where he met and later married Orrie (Lady) May Taliaferro (pronounced Tolliver).
She was born and raised in Kentucky where her Negress nurse had called her Lady and the name stuck so well she never hears the Orrie May. Ralph and she lived on Dad’s farm until 1920, when they rented the Taliaferro farm a 1/2 mile east of Roseville, Ill., which they have lived on since and now own a portion of.
Lady resumed her teaching and continued until she was pensioned off but has been in her home for many years now. They tell us their home is 110 years old but was so strongly built that they had it renovated some years ago instead of tearing it down and building a more modern one. They have three children, Evelyn, Helen and Vincent, all married with children, one of who has children.
Minnabel was born October 7, 1901 and took her first three grades at Pleasant Hill School before we moved to Macomb. She finished her elementary schooling at Logan school there and was also a Normalite as were Stella, Ralph, Moms and myself before her. She spent her teaching career in Domestic Science, majoring in Foods but has been retired for some years now, having earned a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree, the latter at the University of Colorado at Denver.
She has been so active in her life that upon retiring she took a job as charwoman to care for a whole floor of a large hotel in Macomb, but has changed the past year to caring for a motel in preference to accepting a desk job. Her address is P.O. Box #95 in preference to giving a street and house address, so if she wants to change her home, she will not have to notify correspondents to that effect. Sis drives her own car but did not marry. She is 66 this next October.
Next: Switzer Nephews & Nieces