Great Aunt Lou

My great Aunt Lou was the local school marm in a one room school house in Neodesha Kansas. She and her husband Charles were well traveled and owned  properties or shares in properties from Kansas and Oklahoma to California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Texas in their time. They had no children of their own but were fondly known as Uncle Charlie and Aunt Lou by many. In the above picture, Lou is shown with Doris Vine, a family friend. She wrote the following poem in Doris' honor:

The following article was written about her family:

Kansas and Kansans: Volume 4
On December 15, 1883, Mr. Wingate was married at Radical City, Montgomery County, Kansas, to Miss Ida M. Thornton, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. F. M. Thornton, the latter of whom died in 1877, while the former still survives and resides with his son-in-law, Mr. Wingate. Francis Marion Thornton was born in Smith County, Tennessee, December 10, 1827, and was three years of age when taken by his parents to Schuyler County, Illinois, where he was reared and lived until he had a family of three children. He then removed to Rome, Iowa, where he read medicine and began practice in Jefferson County, that state, continuing to be thus engaged until 1865. Prior to this time, for twelve years, he had been in the ministry. In 1865 he was drafted into the United States service as a soldier during the Civil war, and took up arms as a member of Company H, Fifteenth Regiment, Iowa Volunteer Infantry. With this organization he completed a service of nine months, and when he received his honorable discharge returned to Iowa, but in the spring of 1866 came to Kansas and located in Leavenworth County. Here he practiced until 1872 when he changed his field to Liberty Township, and built up a large practice for which he cared until his retirement in 1890. Doctor Thornton is independent in his political views, and has served as township trustee two terms and was a justice of the peace while in Leavenworth County. As doctor, citizen and public official, he has always commanded the highest respect of his fellow-citizens. He and his family are members of the Baptist Church. In 1851 Doctor Thornton was married to Miss Nancy Scott, of Schuyler County, Illinois, who died at Liberty, Kansas. They were the parents of eight children, as follows: Simeon, who is engaged in blacksmithing at Liberty; Martha, who died at Independence, Kansas, as the wife of R. Grant, who has been engaged in the lumber business at Kansas City and Chicago; Mary, who married first James Van Cleve, deceased, and second L. H. Clevenger, and resides at Hunter, Missouri, where Mr. Clevenger is a farmer; Louisa, who married Charles Kirwin, a retired farmer of Neodesha, Kansas; Ida M., who is now Mrs. Wingate; Abel H., who died aged eleven days; Curtis, who died aged four years; and Sherman Scott, who is a policeman at Coffeyville.