Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Frances Webster Vandorn Ellet Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

FRANCES WEBSTER VANDORN ELLET AND HER DESCENDANTS

(Transcribed by Peggy Luce)

The pioneer brides of Kansas, how the memory of them, the bravery of them, thrills the heart! Young women of the East or South, carefully nurtured and sheltered in comfortable homes, brought to frontier settlements by their young husbands, and plumped down amid privations, dangers and loneliness, “to stick it out!” No narrative of pioneer life in Kansas, claiming to be complete in effect, is typical without reference to the young brides who came here in the Sixties and Seventies, to help their valiant husbands win the West. They were the poetry, the romance of the new young life, and its richest promise.

El Dorado’s first pioneer bride came in the fall of 1870. In 1869 El Dorado had “a new one-room stone schoolhouse, a two-story hotel, and a two-story business building.” These signs of progress, and a few one-story log and sod houses, more or less close together, and probably, the pride of the young “metropolis,” several frame houses, pert and proud, met the sight of Lieutenant Edward Carpenter Ellet’s bride when she alighted from the stagecoach, and gazed about her, eager and curious. How wide and far the prairies must have looked, how defenseless the little huddle of houses!

But to El Dorado’s first bride, that golden October day, the little prairie settlement looked radiant with welcome, for there stood her husband’s father to greet them! He had come to El Dorado some time before, to build a house for his son, and to greet him when he should arrive with his bride. He was from the bride’s town, Bunker Hill, Illinois, and knew all her folks. How those three, standing in the sunshine, with most of El Dorado looking on, must have talked and talked Bunker Hill, asking and answering a rush of questions about old friends and neighbors “back home!” The stagecoach coming in was the event of the day. How important, then, must that day have been to the whole town, when the stagecoach brought the first bride to town!

The bride, only sixteen at the time of her marriage, was a VanDorn – Miss Frances Webster VanDorn. “Little Fan,” they called her at home. The VanDorns were a proud old Southern family, and here she had come, at love’s behest, to a new country without traditions, without history, with nothing but a future! Her father, Thomas Jefferson VanDorn, was a relative of that famous General Earl Van Dorn, for whom the Confederate ram, “Van Dorn,” was named. He was a descendant of Wasington Irving’s sister, Mary Irving.

The young bridegroom, twenty-five years of age at the time of his marriage, was the son of a great Civil War hero, General Alfred W. Ellet, one of the command at the capture of Vicksburg. After the war, General Ellet returned to his home in Bunker Hill. Four years later, in 1869, he made a trip to Kansas, and later came to El Dorado to see that his son was properly and comfortably houses. So there he was, to meet the bride and bridegroom at the stagecoach! Later General Ellet returned to El Dorado to establish his residence, and lived there until his death, in 1895.

Three children were born of the marriage of Lieutenant Edward Ellet, and his wife; two sons, Alfred Washington, named for his distinguished grandfather, and Charles, named for Charles Ellet, Jr., a Civil war hero, and a daughter, Henrietta Wilbur. Little Henrietta grew to womanhood in her home town. On June 17, 1903, she married Ray E. Frazier, one of El Dorado’s well-known and best-beloved citizens. Ray Frazier died in Colorado Springs, December 16, 1918. Mrs. Frazier and the daughter, Henrietta, were spending the winter in Colorado Springs, because the Frazier home in El Dorado had been almost entirely destroyed by fire and was being remodeled, and the presence of so many new families, brought to El Dorado by the oil boom, made it practically impossible to secure a residence here at that time.

Mrs. Frazier’s home is a treasure house of beautiful and revered family souvenirs. So numerous and varied are they that the guest, so fortunate as to see them, is fairly bewildered. There are hundreds of letters from soldier heroes; from General Alfred W. Ellet, her paternal grandfather, and from Charles Ellet, Jr., his soldier brother, famous engineer and naval commander, who helped build the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, and planned and built the first wire suspension bridge above Niagara Falls and across the Ohio river at Wheeling, Ohio. These letters are priceless as source material for history.

There are delicate miniatures and daguerreotypes, fascinating in their significance of an age of dignity and elegance; there are gold-decorated, leather-bound diaries of the year 1831, and autograph albums, military commissions, wedding certificates, school diplomas, samplers, rare old newspapers, portraits, old books and manuscripts – a collection the value of which can not be estimated.

And, fascinating to dream over, holding in one’s hands, old lace caps, thin as cobwebs and almost as frail. And some yard lace that once belonged to Mary Irving, and a lace baby cap, made of the “Irving lace.” And grandmother Van Dorn’s night cap, the grandmother who traced her ancestry back to Governor William Bradford of Massachusetts. Folded in a special case, is a letter written in 1784 by Henry Muhlenberg, the founder of the German Lutheran ministry in America. And moneys, old bills of worn and faded paper; a five-pound note, printed in 1760 by Benjamin Franklin. And, richest and most beautiful in its brave beauty, its gleaming, golden beauty, the sword presented to General Ellet, by the Ram Fleet. With two heavily-fringed sashes, one of old-gold color, the other of dull red, and a faded red-white-and blue bade of fluttering ribbon lengths the handsome sword is an epitome of a career. It is wrapped in a chamois shield, and fastened securely in a velvet lined, stout wooden box made for it. Lifting the sword from its box, and drawing it from the beautiful scabbard, slowly and with “long, long thoughts” of all it represents of courage and loyalty, is an experience that thrills the heart. This sword is now a valued possession of General Ellet’s great grandson, Edward Carpenter Ellet.

One of the most interesting of the old newspapers is a copy of the Ulster County gazette, dated January 6, 1800. The columns of the pages are heavily outlined in dead black, in tribute to Washington, whose recent death had called forth many expressions of praise. One of these, a twenty-four line poem, “The Death of General Washington. By a Young Lady.” In the last stanza the Ulster County lady rises to vervid rhetoric:

“Weep, Kindred Mortals, weep! No more you’ll find

A man so pure, so just, so kind!

Rejoicing Angels, hail the heavenly sage!

Celestial Angles, greet the Wonder of the Age!”

Mrs. Frazier’s maternal grandmother attended a private school in Jacksonville, Illinois, her expenses for Board, Fuel and Lights being $1.50 per week!! Her diploma, a lovely yellow parchment, reads: “This Certifies that Miss Henrietta Frances Wilbur has completed the prescribed Course of Study in the Jacksonville Female Academy, and by her Proficiency and Correct Deportment merits this Testimonial of Our Approbation. Jacksonville, June 23, 1847.” The diploma is signed by William H. Williams, principal, and John A. Jones, president of the Academy. Instruction in drawing, painting and music was given in this leading female academy of Illinois, and Henrietta Frances Wilbur was an apt pupil. Her artistic and musical talent was inherited by her daughter, Frances van Dorn Ellet, who was one of the first organists in the First Methodist Church of El Dorado at that time located on North Gordy street and First Avenue. For twelve years she played the pipe organ in the First Presbyterian church of El Dorado.

And there’s the quaintest, most beautiful marriage certificate of one of Mrs. Frazier’s long-ago ancestors. A marvel of intricate design and symbolism, exquisitely colored, a description can give no idea of its artistic beauty. Occupying the lower portion of the design are surging light green waves, the Sea of Life. On either side of the Sea of Life, grandly curving, and almost encircling it, are brown branches of a large and luxuriant growth, the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life has broad, flat-spread leaves of a beautiful Nile green; among the branches are birds’ nests, and, here and there, little bird couples making delicate love. On the leaves to the right is engraved Scriptural advice to wives; on the leaves to the left, Scriptural advice to husbands. Above the Sea of Life is a spanning marble arch, on which is engraved Scriptural advice to the twain, as one flesh. Each end of the arch rests securely on two handsomely-bound books, Statue Law and the Holy Bible.

Behind the colored design, a subtle admonishment, are lines of well nigh invisible letters, gray uniform in size and placement. On close scrutiny these letters resolve themselves into the names of domestic relationships of life, father, aunt, niece, cousin, and so on, even to great-grandmother. A solemn covenant marriage was then, and solemnly, entered into, as this charming old testament proves.

And there’s the diploma of Mary or Molly Israel, an authentic document of the closing years of the Eighteenth century. Mary was a graduate student of the ladies’ school in America, and this was the first Commencement of the school, the occasion was one of importance. And it is this fact that makes Molly Israel’s diploma of surpassing interest and value today.

Philadelphia was the capital of the new republic, the center of its social and political life. Rank and fashion foregathered there. Washington was President, and Thomas Paine was writing brilliant diatribes against the existing order of things when Mary was attending the Academy.

Mary was Mrs. Frazier’s great-grandmother, and we know all about her graduation because Mrs. Frazier has a copy of the newspaper that records, with prideful detail, the momentous event. The paper is The Philadelphia Gazette and Universal daily Advertiser of December 20, 1794. The Gazette, in acknowledgment of the important occasion, devoted a column and a half to the Commencement, printing in full the long, dignified address to the graduates. “A distinguished company was present,” says the Gazette. “The Lady of the President of the United States, the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States, and a very respectable number of citizens. The exercises were introduced by a pertinent and well-adapted prayer.”

The prayer was by the Reverend Dr. MacGraw. The single phrase, “a pertinent and well-adapted prayer,” characterizes the Commencement better than pages of description could. It was an age of long, earnest petition, “pertinent petition,” of profound reliance upon such communion with God, and the prim young ladies, in their rich satin and laces, sat erect and gave attention to every word of that prayer. And the Representatives and the Senators and the Lady of the President of the United States listened and gravely approved.

“A number of orations and dialogues were pronounced by the young ladies,” says the Gazette, “with considerable grace and elocution, soft music being heard in the intervals. An ode was also performed by the ladies of the future destinies of their country.” The benediction was pronounced by the Reverend Dr. Green.

The address was by John Swanwick, Esquire, one of the Trustees. “Fathers, legislators, Fellow Citizens,” he began.

“The revolution of every sun, which to the United States is sure to convey some addition of emolument, or of civilization is peculiarly honored on the present occasion with a spectacle the most touching. The representatives of this great empire, joined to the representatives of one of its most distinguished members, present at an examination held as to the proficiency in literature of this rising Seminary – a scene so novel, it is hoped, will excuse a few observations, dictated by the occasion, and which it falls to my lot to deliver as one of the Trustees, at present entrusted with the care of an institution so highly interesting.

You will easily perceive the pleasure communicated to us who are citizens of Philadelphia by the urbanity with which you have been pleased to notice our progress in the useful arts. The flower garden before you, solicitously cultivated by the care of an industrious over-seer, was indeed calculated in its own nature to have engaged your feelings – but small indeed had been our satisfaction in this alone were we not warranted by the hope, suggested by many of your political arrangements, that new resources were dawning for education throughout America. We have other sisters than those present at this commencement not placed so fortunately for their own advancement, on whom, as it were in perspective, we behold your goodness lavishing a profusion of blessings in as much as your labours shall have a tendency to endow them with a nobler train of useful and ornamental accomplishments.

Certainly the exhibition which has this day been offered to your view is well calculated to support your ardor in this interesting undertaking. Youth and innocence protected by the guardian genius of instruction is here made to offer to the country the brightest trophy of which it could be proud, a trophy equal to that obtained by the victory of knowledge over ignorance, and one of course well calculated to please a government whose peculiar boast it is that its powers rest on the intelligence and virtue of its citizens.

The institution of seminaries for the public instruction of young ladies in the various branches of polite literature is, for aught I know, one of the singularities which mark this happy country. In other nations institutions of this kind have been lavished in profusion on the other sex, but when was there seen before a commencement for young ladies so numerously attended and honored by all that was dignified in the government of the country? This perhaps is a spectacle as yet reserved for you, who as equal guardians of the community, most protect the growth of knowledge alike in all conditions and in all sexes. If so, may we not congratulate America on this new proof of her civilization, and look up with confidence to you for its future support and protection. The influence of the fair sex over our modes of thinking and of acting has been in every age the theme of poets and historians. How fortunate, then, most it be for us if that influence be secured in favor of our government and laws in, as it were, their infancy.

We display not to the fair sex, our desire to monopolize knowledge or to check the growth of their education – consequently they must be charmed with an order of things so favorable to themselves. They will of course recommend it to their children, and all the obligations contained in the invaluable name of mother, will be secured as a bulwark around our inestimable Constitution. What can be more likely to secure the wish of the Noble Venetian for our country – I mean the wish of its perpetuity of freedom and happiness.

Legislators of Pennsylvania: It was once my happiness on another, and a more honoured occasion, to plead before you the interests of science. The want of time, incident to the close of the session, then prevented your investigation of this momentous subject. You have since been addressed respecting it by a higher authority, and have acknowledged your sense of its importance. Yet may I still be permitted to repeat to you in the language of the constitution of the State, “That the Legislature shall, as soon as conveniently may be, provide by law for the establishment of schools, throughout the State, in such manner that the poor may be taught gratis, and that the arts and sciences shall be promoted in one or more seminaries of learning.”

I am sure that you will not let these splendid clauses of our frame of government remain any longer inactive, but will be incited by this; by every circumstance around you, to a vigorous pursuit of this essential business. This institution itself will, I am told, be of the number of those who solicit something from your parental kindness during the present session. I am confident it will not, can not ask in vain.

Young Ladies: I have felt the usual pleasure in the progress visible in your studies. Never forget this happy day in which the result of these studies was honoured by the presence of the representatives of this great nation. Prepare laurels for the brows of these fathers of the country who take so great a part in your prosperity; support their honor and in the value of their labors when they themselves shall be no more, and join in the prayers which are everywhere offered for their conservation and felicity, in things temporal and perpetual.”

There were eight young lady graduates, in all, and here is the wording of Mary’s diploma:

“The Trustees of the Young Ladies’ Academy of Philadelphia, having carefully examined Miss Molly Israel in Spelling, Reading, Writing, English, Grammar, Arithmetic, Geography, Rhetorick and Composition, do hereby make known that she is well acquainted with those Branches of English Literature, and at a public Commencement hath been admitted to the highest Honours of the Institution. Desirous, therefore, of perpetuating the Testimony of her Merit, they have, in conformity to the Charter and rules of the said Academy, caused the Seal of their corporation to be annexed to the Diploma, and the same to be witnessed by the Names of the Officers. Conferred this Eighteenth Day of December, the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety-Four.”

John W. Forney, publisher of Forney magazine, said of Mary Israel Ellet, in an artic published in the Philadelphia Press:

“Her familiarity with American history for seventy-five years, including many of the characters who figured in and after the Revolution, -- her patriotic ancestors and descendants,-- her own passionate love of country, inherited from one and transmitted to the other, her spotless reputation—entitle her, I think more than any other of her sex to the appellation of “American Cornelia.” In writing of her, I cherish no purpose of vain eulogy. I write solely to preserve the record of a remarkable life, that it may not be lost among men, and to present an example which every American woman may study with pleasure and proft****Rarely has there been such a resemblance between two persons, as between the illustrious Roman matron and Mary Ellet. Both renowned for purity of character, vigorous intellect and a virtuous ambition, their love of country was supreme.”

Francis Webster VanDorn Ellet was born in Bunker Hill, Illinois, January 31, 1854, and as has been set forth in this sketch, came from an ancestry almost as renowned as that of her distinguished husband, Edward Carpenter Ellet. She was the daughter of Thomas Jefferson and Henrietta (Wilbur) VanDorn. Thomas Jefferson VanDorn, was a scion of Southern forebears, dating back into the pre-Revolutionary period. As above stated, he was a near relative of Gen. Earl VanDorn, Confederate chieftain and for whom was named the Confederate Ram VanDorn, which participated in the defense of Memphis when captured by General Ellet’s fleet.

Mrs. Ellet was versatile and everything she did had the qualities of artistry and excellence. She excelled in painting pictures and china, as organist and pianst; in riding, skating, dancing, home-making and entertaining. To the astonishment of herself and her art instructors, Laura Wilds and Nettie Williams, a picture she painted and exhibited at the Kansas State Fair, won the blue ribbon. This picture and others that she painted hang on guest room walls of the Frazier home, and in a cabinet in this home are many fragile china plates which Mrs. Ellet delicately and exquisitely painted, each plate portraying a different scene. Mrs. Ellet could skate farther up the Walnut River and could make the most expert “figure eights” on the ice of any of the skaters, of that period, old-timers say. With ease and grace she rode her horse, “Fairy,” over the prairies. Harry Gardner in his story, “El Dorado in 1870,” writes of Mrs. Ellet’s beauty and states that she had what the French call chic, and that the parties she gave caused many young men to long for a home of their own and “hastened the benedict act” in several instances. Among Mrs. Ellet’s closer companions of that period of El Dorado, were Emma Crook Frazier, Lillian Gardener, Sarah Burdett, Cornelia Ewing and Annie Knowlton.

Each hunting season Mr. Ellet and his brother, William H. Ellet went to the mountains and returned with wild game. To preserve these trophies of the hunter’s skill, Mrs. Ellet went to Lawrence and studied taxidermy in University of Kansas, under Professor Dyche. In this, as in other arts, she was proficient, and was urged by Mrs. Nora Brumback to teach taxidermy in Brumback Academy, which she did for a time. Under her skillful direction, the students mounted eagles, deer heads and other wild game then abundant here.

Mrs. Ellet died in El Dorado, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Ray E. Frazier, on October 12, 1928. She was described in The El Dorado Times as “a talented musician, a write of exquisite verse, one of rare charm and sublime character, a perfect mother, benevolent and kind, and an inspiration and leader in the development of the social and culture life of the community.”

Turning now from the family history to the present, Mrs. Ray E. Frazier accompanied by her daughter, Henrietta, to Pair for eight months directly after the daughter’s graduation from El Dorado High School in 1924. In 1926-27, Mrs. Frazier, accompanied by her family, composed of her daughter, Henrietta, her niece, Zelda Ellet, and her nephew, Edward Carpenter Ellet, went on the first University Cruise Around the World – that historic First University Afloat, on which Henry J. Allen was professor of journalism, it will be remembered. It was a year of romance, for on the cruise, Henrietta met George Thomas Wofford and Zelda met James Francis Price. Henrietta and George were married in April 1928. They have two children, George Tomas Wofford, III and Ray Frazier Wofford. They live in Birmingham, Alabama. Zelda and James were married in April 1928. They have two children, James Francis Price, Jr., and little Zelda price, and live in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. Edward Carpenter Ellet and Jane Reigart were married on August 19, 1934, and reside in Wichita.

Zelda Price and Edward Carpenter Ellet are children of Charles and Edna (Dodge) Ellet. Edna Dodge Ellet died in 1909. Charles Ellet was again married, his wife being the former Martha Blois, of Palo Alto, California. Charles, Martha Jane, Frances and Elizabeth are the children of Charles and Martha (Blois) Ellet. The family lives in Palo Alto.

Alfred W. Ellet married Lida Lewis, of Kansas City, Missouri. They now reside in El Dorado, Kansas.

After pouring over the treasures of the Past, in Mrs. Frazier’s home, the family treasures of one hundred years ago and more, treasures so intimate and revealing, so touching in their intimations of love and bravery and sacrifice – turning, in short, from the Past, to the Present; going out into the open street, where motor cars whizzed by, and modern life, insistent and commercial, claims all values for its own, was painful in its sudden contrasts. Mrs. Frazier seems, by virtue of these keepsakes, these treasures from the East and the South, to be a child of many climes, and of many different eras. Loyal to her own state and her own town, as she is, her heart is loyal to the dear days when the authors of these letters, these diaries and albums; the people who sat for these portraits and read these old books; who wore these delicate laces, and silken military sashes, were actors in the human scene called The Present. Happy little Kansas girl, to have kept through all the changing fortunes of love and sorrow, her heart atune to “the choir invisible,” whose music is the gladness of the world.