Elizabeth Chapman Cowles

 

Elizabeth Chapman Cowles

In my previous post, I mentioned that I "discovered" some pictures I had taken of other pictures during the memorial of my late grandmother that I hadn't really processed in the two years since I had snapped them. I also mentioned my quest to locate a picture for all my 3rd great grandparents of which I had found 21 of them counting the recently discovered photo of my 3rd great grandfather Joseph Trimble Cowles. Well that count is now 22 with the introduction of my 3rd great grandmother Elizabeth Chapman Cowles above. Only 10 more to go!

I will be honest and that I don't know for 100% certainty that this is my 3rd great grandmother Elizabeth. But underneath it in the same handwriting that identified the picture in the previous post as Grandpa Joseph Cowles, this one simple said Grandma. They were also in the same photo album.

Elizabeth C Chapman Cowles was born to John and Jane Barr Chapman in 1833 in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania. I have been unable, thus far, to find much information about this family due to the timing of their move to Iowa sometime between 1840 and 1850 and lack of digitized newspapers of their location at that time. Hopefully that will change someday in the near future.

As I mentioned in the previous post about her husband, she would have four children, three of which lived past their childhood. Up until I wrote the last post, I knew she died on 30 Jan 1883 due to cemetery records but a new search for digitized newspaper records located a newspaper in the county seat of Wapello, Iowa had been digitized since the last time I had looked. I did a cursory search and immediately found a death notice for her in it.

Abdominal dropsy is a fluid build up in the abdominal cavity that can be caused by several things according to Google. Unfortunately, due to the style of the time and the fact that she was a female, the newspapers were very skimpy on information of her past. It is rare that I even see mention of her maiden name. More searches in the following day found a few more articles, mostly about awards she won for her yeast bread during multiple county fairs and of a melon she gifted the newspaper staff.

At one time, I'm fairly certain that I made a stop to the Oakland Cemetery in Morning Sun, Iowa (I really love the name of that town) and visited their gravestone. Another project of mine has been to visit the graves of all of my 3rd great grandparents since all but two are buried in Iowa and the two that aren't only missed by about 50 yards. But for some reason, I either didn't take a picture of misfiled the picture and haven't been able to locate it. Someday if I'm in the area again, I'll have to take/retake that picture and do a better job of filing it on my computer.