Listed at six months in the 1880 census. I know her parents died young and Ellen was left to be raised by a minister and his wife. There was later an official lawsuit inquiry into the handling of her money which the minister had control of. There was no settlement forthcoming so the courts must have upheld the ministers responsibility. She was the Ideal picture of a grandmother. I adored her. A great storyteller and entertainer of children. She was all soft and pink...beautiful skin of a creamy texture. When I knew her, her hair was a soft snowy white worn up in a "gay Gibson" fashion of the former century. My father told me she rose at 4:00 AM to bake a row of pies that extended the length of a serving board mounted along one side of the farmhouse kitchen. Her bread was a memory he held strongly all his life. She would cut slabs from a warm loaf and smear it with butter and sprinkled sugar, a treat outstanding to my father. He was the child of her oldest surviving child. He was only a year younger than her youngest son. Because my father's parents were practicing Catholics, getting to Sunday Church had to be accomplished in this very sometimes non-practicing household. My greatgrandmother would hitch a gray farmhorse named Nellie to a two person conveyance ( Dad used the term buggy/sulkey , black leather hood that popped up or down) and take him to early Mass so he could still play with his cousins while his parents went later. They had a special bond that just glowed and spilled over onto me as his child. Her warmth was a special spot in my childhood. Over her bed hung a portrait of HER grandmother who was a full blooded Indian. This is a source of much controversy in the family. When Ellen died, she and her husband John were living with their daughter Ethel and her husband Harold. Harold and John Libby were volatile housemates and many a storm erupted. John left the house after Ellen's death, and the whereabouts of the portrait has never been satisfied.
Ellen Fitzgibbons (b. 1880, d. Aft. 1954)
Notes for Ellen Fitzgibbons: