Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Louisa Howe Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

MRS. LOUISA HOWE

(Transcribed by Peggy Luce)

Mary Louisa Songer, later Mrs. Elbridge Howe, was born March 2, 1854, near Veedersburg, Indiana, where the Songers had owned land for years. She was one of the eleven children of George and Susannah (Bonebrake) Songer. George Songer, born April 25, 1824, was the son of Adam Songer (born 1792, died 1861) and Mary (Keeling) Songer (born 1797, died 1833). Susannah (Bonebrake) Songer, Mrs. Howe’s mother, was born November 1, 1822, and was a daughter of Jacob Bonebrake (born 1789) and Mary Magdalene, or Polly, Bonebrake, (born 1794).

In 1871 George Songer came to Kansas with his two sons James and Dayton, homesteading a claim two miles south of Rosalia. In 1872 he returned to bring his other children to the new home. Relatives in Indiana witnessed the departure of the motherless children with misgivings, for Kansas was well known in the East as a frontier state, sparsely settled and abounding with Indians – a picture not greatly overdrawn at that time. Louisa Songer, however, was not sorry to come. A relative who was present later wrote: “Louisa said farewell by playing on the accordion; she gave a tune still remembered, then started west rejoicing. She wrote a letter saying that the Indians had been driven west and they were on to Kansas.”

When Mr. Songer and the younger children arrived at Humboldt, at that time the end of the railway line, they were met by the two boys, in a lumber wagon, for the two-day trip to the new home on the barren prairie of Butler County. Though long, the trip was fun to the youthful brothers and sisters; there was a certain glamour too about the tiny house on the claim to which the family went after passing through El Dorado, then a village of a dozen or more houses.

Three years alter, when the Indians seemed about to become dangerous, Louisa Songer and her sister, Elizabeth, were sent back to Indiana for safety, returning to Kansas in 1876.

When she was nineteen years old, Louisa Songer married one of El Dorado’s pioneer citizens, Elbridge Howe, then lessee of El Dorado House, El Dorado’s first hotel, which stood where the Citizens state Bank now stands. Mr. Howe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1820, left home in 1841, traveled for a time, and located in El Dorado before 1870.

While in the real estate business, Mr. Howe, invested in Butler County land, among other properties. After his death in 1901, Mrs. Howe, with faith that the land would increase in value, kept it year after year, when the only income from it was for pasturage, an amount insufficient to pay even the tax. Her faith was amply rewarded in 1916, in the El Dorado oil boom.

In 1913, Mrs. Howe bought the property at 411 South Denver street, living there with her three daughters, Myrtle, Mable Lila and Nina Elsie. In 1922 she sold the property to the W. F. Kaisers, moving into the brick home at 501 south Denver Street, where she lived until her death.

During her long residence in El Dorado, Mrs. Howe was a loyal church member and regular attendant. She was for many years a member of the El Dorado First Presbyterian church. She was an ideal mother and grandmother, and was happiest when surrounded by her children and grandchildren who often visited in her home.

Mrs. Howe died at her home in El Dorado, April 8, 1932.

All of Mrs. Howe’s descendants are living. Myrtle Howe, now Mrs. William H. McDaniel of Gainesville, Texas, has five children; Harold Ray (married Edna Beatrice Linn, and has two children, William Robert and Louisa (Lee); Margaret Eloise (married Osburne Francis Wilson); Lois Estelle (married J. A. Gilliland); Wilma Helen and Wallace H. Mable Lila Howe, now Mrs. Clarence Leeman McDaniel of Gainesville, Texas, has four children; Dorothy Mable, Roy Lee (married Virginia Scruggs); Mary Frances and Clarence Ray. Nina Elsie Howe, now Mrs. Charles W. Startford of El Dorado, has two sons, Charles Russell Kent, born April 23, 1910, and Frank Burnette, born July 31, 1912.