Sarah Elizabeth Layman, my 2nd great-grandmother, was born in 1861 in Ohio, the eldest child of John and Savilla (Wells) Layman. She was born just over twelve months after her parents were married, in Union County, northwest of Columbus in central Ohio. The prior year when the 1860 census was enumerated, John and Savilla were living in Millcreek Township, Union County, Ohio, near the town of Watkins. John was a farmer. In 1870, Sarah, her three younger sisters and her parents were living in Owl Creek Township, Woodson County, Kansas near Neosho Falls. John was still farming and reported his land was worth $500. Sarah was married in 1880, when she was nineteen years old, to John Henry Glander (aged twenty-four), also an Ohio native, in Miami County, Ohio. Just a few months later when the 1880 census was taken, John and Sarah were living with Sarah’s parents in Madison Township, Jay County, Indiana. Both Johns were farmers.
Among my ancestors it is relatively unusual to find a family that moved around the country. For John Layman, his wife Savilla and their eight children (six daughters and two sons, though one of the sons died in infancy) to move between Ohio, Kansas, Indiana and back to Ohio would have been considered risky and unnatural by most of their extended family. When they returned to Ohio, it was not to their native Union County, but to Paulding County, in the northwest corner of the state and across the border from Allen County, Indiana. All their children ended up settling in either Paulding County, Ohio or Jay County, Indiana. My grandmother (Sarah’s granddaughter) told me that all of John and Savilla’s daughters were “good seamstresses and cooks”.
In 1900, John, Sarah and their four children John (“Bert”), Dora, Mary and Andrew were living in Harrison Township, Paulding County, Ohio. John was still farming. In 1904 Sarah gave birth to a baby girl who only lived three weeks. The 1910 census located the Glander family (John, Savilla and youngest son Andrew) still living in Harrison Township, Paulding County, Ohio; John was still operating the farm. John and Sarah still lived in Harrison Township, Paulding County, Ohio when the census was taken in 1920, in Sarah’s brother Andrew’s home, also with Sarah and Andrew’s elderly mother Savilla. Andrew and John were farming together. In 1930, John and Sarah were living with their daughter Della and her family at 2016 George Street in Grand Rapids, Kent County, Michigan. At that time, they were retired. (This was the same Della who would later take in her brother Bert after his wife’s death.) It seems that John and Sarah decided soon after to move to their own home nearby, and in the 1931 and 1932 Grand Rapids city directory, they were living at 2032 St George Avenue SW. While I wish I could resolve the discrepancy between the census record and the directory, neither George Street nor Saint George Avenue exists in today’s Grand Rapids, so while I can confirm that they would have lived in the southwest quadrant of Kent County (like me!) I don’t know exactly where.
Shortly before John’s death, Sarah wrote to her brother Andrew Layman. One of Sarah’s great-granddaughters, to me a second cousin once removed, has saved the letter for almost a century. She lives less than a mile from me and until memory issues became a barrier, we shared research and correspondence. It read:
“Wednes. Morn. Dear brother, We were glad to get your letter, got a big good long letter from Anna Bertie and little Mary this week. Also one from Mary English too. They was pleased you had given them such a good visit. Well Andrew about the cemetery lot. Warren is layed on the south end of the lot and the baby on the north end making Warren’s the first grave on the south end and the baby’s the last one on the north. I felt it would be better to lay us down next to the baby of course leaving plenty of room between the baby’s grave and pa’s grave for mine providing pa goes first but no one knows I may go first yet. I don’t feel sometimes like my strength would go very far but god is able to give us strength as we go long. He is good. Pa seemed to rest pretty good last night he is awful weak but he wants to wait on himself as much as he can. He got up twice last night to the vessel by himself of course it was right by the bed. I herd him every time. It is mail time. Sarah.”
The letter is not dated, but it would have been written while both John and Sarah were ill in 1935. It seems she is calmly telling her brother where to bury her and her husband after their passing. I’m not sure there is a record (other than this letter) of the burial of Pearly Elizabeth Glander, their youngest baby who died in infancy, but Sarah does seem to tell that she was buried in Wiltsie Cemetery and that she would like to be buried between her baby and her husband. I believe the only possibly “Warren” to whom she could be referring is Della’s first husband Warren Jacob Younts, who had died in 1920 at the age of only thirty-seven. Paul Younts, Warren’s grandson, was certain that Warren was buried in Paulding County, Ohio; however, Geraldine Thornton, Warren’s granddaughter, was equally certain that Warren was buried in Montcalm County, Michigan. It’s possible I’ll not find out for certain, but Sarah seemed sure in 1935!
John died at the age of seventy-nine years in 1935, from cancer of the jaw. His obituary said, “He moved to Grand Rapids, Mich., about nine years ago,” thus giving us better information about when he and Sarah left Ohio – it must have been about 1926. Sarah died less than a month later from a heart attack after she had recovered from pneumonia. Della, who cared for her parents in their last months, related the particularly pathetic circumstances in a letter to a family member, writing that as John died, Sarah cried out to say she would follow him shortly. Sarah’s obituary, which bears significant marks of having been written by Della, told: “…she was married to John Henry Glander, who preceded her to that blessed home above, just two- and one-half weeks before her departure from our midst. She lived in Paulding County, Ohio, most of her married life, having moved to Michigan with her husband some few years ago. She was a charter member of the Bethel Wesleyan Methodist Church, changing her membership to the First Church of the Nazarene in Grand Rapids, near where she lived at the time of her death. …Her life has been one of faith and joy in her Redeemer, and while we sustain the loss of a godly mother and friend, she has gained her eternal home in heaven where loneliness, sorrow and care are banished by Christ’s presence and His love is the strength and joy of life forever.” I wish Della would have focused more on what Sarah meant to her and her family, rather than making sure she, Della, got all the credit for moving her elderly parents to her home, her neighborhood and her church.
[Della may one day get her own blog entry. We wouldn’t have gotten along. Undoubtedly she was the force to be reckoned with in her family, and it does not surprise me that though many of her extended family came to her in need, many others seemed to be trying to get as far away as possible.]
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