My Saline County Doanes
by Jody Kerssenbrock
I didn’t have the opportunity to learn much about
the family of my mother, Edith Doane Kersenbrock, because she died when I was
10. And at 10, I wasn’t much interested in family trees. My mother’s mother had
also died very young, and I didn’t have anyone around to ask when I did get to
the point of being interested.
As a young child growing up, I spent quite a bit of time with my cousins in
Wilber, Doug and Dee Doane, children of Leslie (Leck) and Genevieve Doane. But
they moved to Omaha about the time Mother died, and initially separated by
distance, we were not close again until years later. My Mother’s only other
living brother, George Doane, a West Point graduate lived in Indianapolis. He
died in the 1970’s.
However, when I was visiting in Nebraska in the mid ‘60’s, I read in the Crete
News about a Doane Family Reunion being held at Doane College. I contacted the
college about my connection with the Doanes and signed up for the reunion. I
knew only that my grandfather was Justin Reginald Doane who was at one time
Sheriff of Saline County, and his father’s name was James Coggswell Doane.
When we were children we spent much time with my mother’s and Uncle Leck’s
guardians, Uncle Frank and Aunt Lottie McElroy who lived in Wilber, Nebraska.
When Grandmother Elizabeth Harvey Doane died (mother was 2 years old and one of
5 children), I understand that Grandpa Justin Doane “went walkabout”, his grief
and pain too much to bear. Aunt Lottie was Grandmother Doane’s sister, both were
daughters of Charles and Mary Morrison Harvey of Wilber. Aunt Lottie and Uncle
Frank had lost a baby, so my “baby” mother and her two next oldest siblings,
Elmer and Leslie, “became” their own. Uncle Frank had a barber shop and played
in a band.
I believe that the first Doanes I met at that 1960’s Doane reunion in Crete were
brothers Bob and Charlie Doane and their wives Darlene and Marian from Essex,
Connecticut. (Charlie and Marian are the parents of Jane Doane Anderson.) They
had the “Doane book” of genealogy and found for me James Coggswell Doane who had
left Essex with his wife Marilla Johnson Doane to come to Nebraska as pioneers.
It was exciting to find that connection to my mother’s family, both in person
and in the book. When I returned to the east, I had the chance to become better
acquainted with these and more Doane and Doan “cousins”, including some in
Massachusetts, and others in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
The greatest unraveling of my mother’s Saline County Doane relatives came from
the Doane, Holcombe, Henke book written by Mary Alice Henke, copyrighted 1983.
On page 32 was a picture of James Coggswell Doane and much information about his
life. I shall use this book as my main source of information about Doanes to
whom I am quite closely related but never met.
James Coggswell Doane was born July 13, 1848, in Essex, Connecticut, one of
eight children of Abbie Pardee and George Edward Doane. George Edward picture)
was born in 1807, the son of Justus Doane and Phillipa Read; the names of these
people are found in Volume 1 of the Doane genealogy book on page 202. On January
20, 1869, James Coggswell Doane married Marilla Ezrina Johnson in Essex, CT. In
February, 1870, James and Marilla moved to Weeping Water, Cass County, NE, where
my grandfather, Justin Reginald Doane was born April 30th. The family moved from
Weeping Water in October 1870, to what would become Western, NE, in Saline
County.
from Mary Alice Henke,
“Before coming west, James was a mechanic and worked on ships in the boatyards
in CT. In Western, he homesteaded, operating a blacksmith shop on the prairie
east of town. When the post office was opened at Western in 1871, he moved his
business into town, occupying a shop built of sod.” From an article I had about
the cultivator James Coggswell Doane invented, Sasha found this engineer’s
drawing and description from the United States Patent Office.
“James took an active interest in politics and represented South Fork Precinct
on the Board of Supervisors when the county was under township organization in
1884-1885.
After retiring as blacksmith, James became a deputy county sheriff. When rural
mail routes were established, he became carrier on Route 2 out of Western, the
duties of which he performed up to a few weeks before his death on August 16,
1911, at the age of 63 years. James was the oldest citizen of the town at the
time of his death. He was a member of the Masonic Order. Services were held at
the home on North Hill, conducted by Rev. George M. Morey of Lincoln. Interment
was in Plainview Cemetery at the north edge of Western.” 1880 United States
Federal Census
about James Doane
Name:
James Doane
Home in 1880: South Fork, Saline, Nebraska
Age: 31
Estimated birth year: abt 1849
Birthplace: Connecticut
Relation to Head of Household: Self (Head)
Spouse's name: Marilla
Father's birthplace:Connecticut
Mother's birthplace:Connecticut
Occupation:Blacksmith
Marital Status:Married
Race:White
Gender:Male
Household members:
Name Age
James Doane 31
Marilla Doane 31
Reggie Doane 10
Lewie Doane 8
Allein Doane 6
Florence Doane 10M
James Coggswell and Marilla Ezrina Johnson Doane family
standing, L to R:
Louis St. John Doane (1872-1949),
Susan Aileen Doane Holcombe (1873-1911),
Justine Reginald Doane (1870-1943),
Lestern Barton Doane (1889-1932),
Florence Elma Doane Hawk (1879-1923),
Willard Storms Doane (1887-1962)
Seated L-R,
Bertha Marilla Doane Warnock (1881-1978),
father James Coggswell Doane (1848-1911), and
mother Marilla Ezrina Johnson Doane (1849-1943).
As I said earlier, my grandfather, Justin Reginald Doane was born in 1870 at
Weeping Water, shortly after his parents moved to Nebraska. He received his
education in Western and studied for one year at the Union District School. He
assisted with farming near Western for a few years, and then moved to Wilber, NE
where he was Deputy Sheriff of Saline Co. from 1894 to 1897. He was elected
Sheriff in 1898.
Justin Doane was united in marriage to
Elizabeth Jane Harvey of Wilber on December 28, 1898. They had five children,
Mabel Elizabeth Doane (1899-1934) George Harvey Doane (1902-1975), Reginald
Elmer Doane (1904-1922), Leslie Stannard Doane (1908-1992), and Edith Jeanne
Doane (1912-1948). In 1912 the family moved to a farm near Canton, KS, returning
to Nebraska the following year. Elizabeth Doane died of a ruptured appendix in
July, 1914, and Justine was not able to keep the five children, ranging in age
from 2 to 14 years, together. Mabel and George, the two oldest went to York, NE,
to live with James Bascom Harvey, Eizabeth Harvey’s brother (who earlier was
captain of the University of Nebraska football team).
The three youngest, Elmer, Leslie and Edith were placed with Elizabeth’s sister,
Lottie and her husband Frank McElroy in Wilber. After pulling himself together,
Justin was in charge of bridge construction on the bridges in Saline County,
until his health forced him to discontinue this work. He returned to Western and
made his home with his aged mother, and served as Justice of the Peace. Mary
Alice Henke continues, “Justin Reginald Doane was a tall impressive looking
gentleman with a fine character and friendly, congenial personality.”
I never knew Mother’s older sister Mabel Doane McMath, a nurse who died of
tuberculosis and is buried in the Hope, Arkansas, cemetery, but when I was in
the hospital as a child, her husband Sam McMath sent me a fine silver mesh
purse.
I was particularly fond of Uncle George and his wife Aunt Violet Doane, and when
mother died, they later told me that they had wanted to adopt me. Uncle Leck and
his family moved to Omaha about the same time Mother died, and I didn’t see much
of them until I went to the university in Omaha. At that time I became quite
close with my cousin Dee and her young family. Doug and I are only 2 weeks apart
in age, so when the family lived in Wilber, we were great pals. We attended each
other’s birthday parties, and on summer weekends we all gathered at Aunt Lottie
and Uncle Frank’s for a picnic which included homemade apricot sherbet…the
recipe calls for a quart of heavy cream.
And now, to my immediate Doane family, as the years passed:
After graduation, Uncle “Leck” Leslie Doane lived and worked in Wilber, married
to Genevieve Sims Stetson, with children Delores “Dee” and Douglas Doane. For 3½
years he served as Registrar of Deeds, and as Clerk of the District Court for 4
years. Les was a musician through high school, and later had a dance band, Les
Doane’s Hungry Six Brass Band, specializing in Bohemian and German polkas and
waltzes. After moving to Omaha where he lived for 18 years, he worked in sales
and as an FHA appraiser.
My mother, Edith Jeanne Doane graduated from Wilber High School and studied
voice with Dr. George Aller at Doane College. She taught country school for a
year, and for three years was bookkeeper in Wilber city offices. Edith was an
accomplished vocalist; she sang for various occasions, including as a soprano
soloist with the Cretonians, a male glee club directed by Dr.Aller. George
Kersenbrock sang with this group, and this is how Edith and George met. George
graduated from Doane in 1933, and the couple were married in 1934.
Edith continued singing, was a member of the Crete Music Club and Crete Women’s
Club, and was active in the Girl Scout movement. She sang in the Methodist
church choir on Sunday mornings and directed the Episcopal church choir Sunday
afternoons. During WWII when Doane College had the Navy V12 Unit training
program, we often had young sailors eat Sunday dinner with us. Mother was a whiz
at putting vegetables with a roast or chicken into the oven before we left for
church which we would have when we returned. (Dad raised chickens for meat and
for eggs to supplement meat rations during the war.)
Edith and George had three children, Janice, born in 1935, Joan or Jody, born in
1937, and Paul born just before the war in 1941. For the first dozen years of
their marriage, George and Edith lived in the large house in which George grew
up, with George’s mother living with them. The only heat in the upstairs came
from the chimney column that came up from the wood cookstove in the kitchen, and
the floor registers. We slept under feather comforters and changed clothes
downstairs during the cold of the year.
On an icy January day in 1948, Edith’s car was
carried onto the tracks of the main line of the Burlington Railroad which
crossed Main Street in Crete. The barriers across Main Street at that
intersection which exist now are as a result of the crash that ended her life
that day. My sister Janice had just celebrated her 13th birthday, I was 10½ ,
and Paul was 6½ years old.
Janice attended Doane for one year and then went into nurse’s training at
Lincoln General Hospital. She received her Bachelor of Science Degree from
Nebraska Wesleyan and taught nursing. She now lives in Fair Oaks, CA, with her
husband of over 50 years, Bob Stone. Their one daughter Julie lives with her
husband Wayne Eberly, a Presbyterian minister, and family of four children in
Houston, TX. My sister and her husband have spent much of their time over the
years with their grandchildren.
My brother Paul Kersenbrock, like my father, was tall; he was a star on his high
school and college basketball teams. Paul married his Doane College sweetheart,
Echo Platts, and they raised three daughters, Kim, Suzy and Cindy. Paul received
a Masters Degree in deaf education and taught at the Indiana School for the Deaf
in Indianapolis before returning to Crete. In Nebraska he worked in construction
materials sales, was a lay minister in the Methodist church, announced Doane
basketball games, and wrote a book on brewing beer, a favored hobby. Paul died
of a massive coronary at the very young age of 45, 24 years ago this month.
My niece and Paul and Echo’s daughter, Kim Kersenbrock, Doane alumnae, married
Rex Mueller; they have a Doane college-bound son, Ryan, and a daughter Leslie a
junior in high school. They live in Omaha where Kim is an art therapist in the
Omaha Public Schools. She is also adjunct faculty here at Doane, teaching an
introductory class in Art Therapy.
Niece Suzy Kersenbrock Cochnar, Doane alumnae, married her high school
sweetheart, Jack Cochnar. Suzy taught art in middle school in Lincoln before
coming to work in Admissions at Doane. She and Jack have four youngsters:
Michael, a 2010 Doane graduate; Valerie, a Doane freshman, Alyssa a sophomore in
high school and 9 year old Nathan. Suzy and Jack own the TaeKwanDo studio in
Crete.
Niece Cindy Kersenbrock Bicker, alum of Bethany College in Kansas, is also an
artist. (The girls inherited this talent from their mother, Echo Platts
Kersenbrock Easton, also adjunct faculty at Doane.) Cindy is married to Micah
Bicker, and they have 3 youngsters, 14 year old Elliot, 11 year old Naomi and 7
year old Clara. Cindy teaches art in Hiawatha, KS, schools.
I’m the last of “My Saline County Doanes” about whom to write. I took after
mother and studied voice, earning my living as a free lance musician for a dozen
years in New York and Munich, Germany. I lived away from Crete 44 years, in
college and graduate school, then singing, teaching, working for an advertising
agency, and later marrying. My first husband, Don Sabath, was an artist
affiliated with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia; I
inherited two stepchildren when I married him.
Don died and a few years later I married another widower, Harold Hofreiter, and
inherited another six stepchildren. The children of my stepkids are my
grandchildren, and I stay in close contact with all of them. I have lost two
stepsons to massive coronaries and a stepdaughter to cancer.
Here in Crete, I am a Worship Leader at Trinity Memorial Episcopal Church which
my grandmother Doane attended as a child of Mary and Charles Harvey; and where
my mother, Edith Doane Kersenbrock directed the choir for services. I am also
active in politics and am involved with the Aging Coalition Advocacy Group for
AARP Nebraska. On the website of Trinity Memorial,
www.trinitymemcrete.org is more
history about the church, on the National Register of Historic Places, written
by Janet Jeffries and by me.