Katie Ann Gordon was born in January 1862 in Mason County, Illinois, the youngest child of David Alexander Gordon and Catherine (Hull) Gordon. David and Catherine were married in 1844 in Allen County, Indiana, and in 1850 they and their two small children were living in Whitley County, Indiana. In 1860, David, Catherine and their six children were living in rural Mason County, Illinois. David was a farmer. When baby Katie was only six months old, her father David enlisted in the Union Army, in Company A, 85th Illinois Infantry Regiment. The regimental history of the Illinois 85th tells: “This regiment was organized at Peoria about Sept. 1, 1862, at a time when the government needed troops, as the Federal forces had been beaten back at Bull Run a short time before and Bragg was threatening Louisville, Gen. Nelson being driven back to that point. The regiment was one that was ordered to Louisville immediately after its organization, hence the members left their work, families and friends, and were hurried immediately to the forefront of the battle. Before they knew what dress parade meant, they opened the battle of Perryville by making a bayonet charge early on the morning of that bloody day.” David Gordon was taken prisoner at Perryville on 8 October 1862, and died a prisoner of war in Danville, Kentucky, on 27 October 1862. Katie was only nine months old and would never remember her father. At the close of the Civil War, his widow Catherine applied for his military pension and returned to northeastern Indiana, where her mother and most of her siblings were still living.
In 1870, Katie, aged about 9 years, was living with her mother and three older siblings in Eel River Township, Allen County, Indiana. The 1880 census located Katie, then 18, residing with her mother and grandmother, still in Eel River Township, Allen County, Indiana. At the age of nineteen years, Katie was married in 1881 in Allen County, Indiana to Robert L. Freeman, an Indiana native. Robert was thirty-seven years old when they married. In his youth he had, like Katie’s father, served with the Union Army. He had enlisted in the 88th Indiana Infantry just two weeks prior to David Gordon’s enlistment and had also fought at the battle of Perryville. After the close of the war, Robert had been married to Sarah McBride, had four children (two of them died in infancy), and was widowed when Sarah died in 1879. When the census was enumerated in 1880, Robert and his sons, Scott and Franklin, ages 12 and 7, were living in Eel River Township, Allen County, Indiana. Katie was married to a man twice her age, with two school-aged stepsons. She had five children with Robert, the eldest of whom was born just nine months and five days after her wedding. Goldie was born in 1882, Sylvia (my great-grandmother) in 1886, Hutoka in 1889, George in 1894, and Robert in 1895. When baby Robert was only four months old, his father, Katie’s husband Robert Freeman, died at the age of only fifty-two years. His obituary told: “Robert L. Freeman, one of the most widely known farmers in the county, died Sunday night very suddenly at his home, near Huntertown. He had eaten supper and sat down to enjoy a chat, when suddenly he fell out of his chair to the floor and died immediately. Coroner Harrod was called out yesterday, and assisted by Dr. Greenwell of Huntertown, made an examination. He found that death resulted from a blood clot on the brain.”
Katie’s daughter Hutoka (Katie had an older sister Hannah Hutoka, so it was a family name) died in 1897, when she was seven years old, and baby Robert died a month later, when he was still only aged one year. Katie was married again in March 1899 – this time she was thirty-seven years old – to George Washington Houser, an Indiana native. He was thirty-eight. Their daughter Edith was born three months later. Katie had three children with George – Edith was born in 1899, Chauncey in 1901, and Leslie in 1903. George (a farmer), Katie, their daughter Edith and Katie’s children Sylvia and George Freeman lived together in Eel River Township, Allen County, Indiana when the census was taken in 1900. George and Katie moved to California at the same time as Katie’s daughter Sylvia and her husband Albert E. Hollopeter, about 1909. So, in 1910, George, Katie, Edith, Chauncey and Leslie Houser and George Freeman were living together in Fresno County, California. George was working as a farm laborer. The Housers returned to Indiana at the same time as the Hollopeters, about 1915. Katie was present when her mother died in 1917.
After the family returned from California, records never show George and Katie together again. The 1920 census located George, Edith (and her husband Emery Fuqua), Chauncey, Leslie, and (curiously) Katie’s son George Freeman residing together in Eel River Township, Allen County, Indiana. George, still farming, reported himself widowed. Katie, definitely still alive, told the census taker she was divorced; she was working as a servant for a private family – Thomas and Junie Rhodes - and living at her workplace in Churubusco, Whitley County, Indiana. When George Washington Houser died in 1934, his obituary listed among his survivors: “…three sons, George and Chauncey of Huntertown and Leslie of Fostoria, O.; a daughter, Mrs. Edith Fuqua of Huntertown…” It is interesting to note that George Washington Freeman was (probably) not the son of George Washington Houser – he was the son of Robert L. Freeman. Given (1) the given names of the two men, (2) even after George Houser and Katie split up, her son George still lived with his stepfather George Houser for many years, and (3) George Freeman was listed as a son of George Houser in the latter’s obituary, family members (including me) have speculated over the intervening years that perhaps the younger George was the son of the elder George, despite the fact that Robert Freeman was alive and presumably well when George was born in 1894. It is possible – the two families were certainly acquainted and lived near each other, and after Robert’s death Katie was definitely pregnant with George’s daughter Edith before she married him – but we don’t have any proof. It’s not a mystery I can solve with any clarity, but I have thought a few times about using the sketchy facts I do have to write a fictional novel!
In 1930, Katie was living alone (this time she did report herself widowed, though George was still alive in 1930) in Churubusco, Whitley County, Indiana. Katie Ann Gordon Freeman Houser passed away in 1939, at the age of seventy-six years. Her death certificate gave cause of death as “chronic myocarditis” complicated by arteriosclerosis. Her obituary told: “Mrs. Katie Ann Houser, former Churubusco resident and well-known throughout this region, died Wednesday evening at the home of a daughter, Mrs. Bert Hollopeter, near Lake Everett, with whom she had lived the past two years. She had been ill with complications several months.” Except for her children Hutoka and Robert, who died in childhood in 1897, all her children survived her.
Of all my great-great-grandmothers, I think Katie must have had the most interesting life. (Of course, “I wish you an interesting life” is considered a curse in many cultures, and I wouldn’t wish to have lived Katie’s life myself.) She would have had to work just as hard as all the other women of her generation – backbreaking household work without the assistance of labor-saving devices; gardening, harvesting, canning; keeping her husbands and children fed and in clean and serviceable clothing and linens. But she traveled – from her native Illinois to Indiana with her mother after the death of her father, from Indiana to California and back. She was born into a nation at war; experienced life in a household of women with her mother and grandmother when she was young; she had two experiences of family life of her own; she lived through the first World War (her son George served aboard the USS Wyoming in 1918 and 1919) and in her old age she was independent and lived alone, wealthy enough to make loans and gifts of money to her family members. When she needed full-time care at the end of her life, she moved in with her daughter and family. She likely knew much more of the world than the average American woman her age.
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