I wish to honor my great-grandmother Elizabeth Mathilda (Roland) Prather Chambers. Unfortunately, our lives overlapped for only two and a half years, so I do not remember her. As I piece together things I have heard and read about her she comes forth as a strong, self-reliant, pioneer woman. I wish I had known her.
Elizabeth Mathilda Roland, daughter of James and Eliza Jane (Arnold) Roland, born 18 July 1833, near Putnamville, Putnam County, Indiana; migrated in a covered wagon to Iowa with her parents in 1847; married Jonathan C.
Prather, 13 October 1850, in newly organized Lucas County, Iowa; became a young widow with an infant daughter and unborn son in October 1852, when Mr. Prather died; married for the second time on 10 June 1860 to Joseph Chambers, a young widower with an infant son; became caretaker of the land and their four children in 1862 when Joesph enlisted in 36th Iowa Infantry for service in Civil war; received no word from Joseph during the year he was held in Camp Ford, a Confederate prisoner of war camp in
Texas; welcomed her husband home in June 1865 after he was mustered out of the 36th suffering from chronic diarrhea contracted while at Camp Ford; gave birth to five more children during the next ten years; mourned the death of a six-months-old daughter; sustained Joseph when he subcontracted to build a section of railroad and was left without funds to pay off the workers when the main contractor went bankrupt; helped accumulate money to pay off the debt by selling her land as well as his, but it was not enough; moved to Rooks
County, Kansas in 1879 hoping to improve Joseph's health with a change of climate; became a widow for the second time at the age of forty-seven years, with five underage children to support when Joseph died on 25 September 1880; lived in extreme poverty as the family stayed on the land for another year, in order to prove up their Soldiers Homestead Claim and gain title to the land; sold the land; moved her children to Harrison County, Iowa where both her mother and her son from her first marriage lived; purchased land in
Harrison County using Joseph's lump-sum retroactive disability pension that was approved after his death; provided a home on the farm for her children while they grew to adulthood, and was assisted in the farm work by her sons as they became old enough to help; paid the final hundred dollars owed to the railroad workers in Lucas County sometime after her return to Iowa; gave up farming in 1898 and sold her farm; bought a house in Missouri Valley and moved to town; died at the home of her son Francis in Calhoun Township,
Harrison County on 28 December 1925. So ended the life of a courageous pioneer woman. 7/1/96 |
