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Note: Newspaper Clipping
MARTINEAU, Emeline Olin, wife of Albert Martineau, mother of Charles and Frank A. Olin. Services conducted by Bishop M. L. Flake were held at 2 p.m. today from Mesa Fifth Ward Chapel. Interment in Greenwood. Meldrum Mortuary, Mesa.
In memory of EMELINE OLIN MARTINEAU Born July 23, 1872 Dwight Illinois
Passed away May 11, 1948 Mesa, Arizona
Services 2:00 P.M. May 14, 1948 L.D.S. Fifth Ward Chapel Mesa, Arizona
Officiating Bishop Marion L. Flake O My Father Duet Invocation John F. Nash When They Ring Those Golden Bells For Me Reese Verner Speaker Pres. H. L. Payne Sometime We'll Understand Duet Benediction Willard Jones
Organist Clara Buck
Duet Rebecca Phelps Ross Beimhalt
Bearers Wendell Martineau Duane Martineau Ernest Martineau Joseph Martineau Howard Martineau Lloyd Martineau
Concluding Services Mesa City Cemetery Dedication Bishop Flake MY LIFE STORY It was during the years between 1852 and 1857 that John Ellsaesser with his family of 12 children left their home in Herrington Wertenburg Germany and came to America the land of promise. They settled in the state of Ohio in Bucklin Twnshp., Jackson County, near or in the town of Portsmouth. It is not known how long they lived here but on September 16, 1857, Grandfather John Ellsaesser died and soon after this the family moved to Dwight, LIvingston Co., Ill. My father Charles Theodore Ellsaesser being only 9 years old at his father's death and Uncle Theobald being only five at the time. The older children worked out, but the load of caring for grandmother and his younger borther fell on my father at an early age. When he was only fourteen, he worked on the Railroad as a section hand, supporting his mother and younger brother. On this account he received very little schooling never got farther than the 3rd grade, or as was called in those days the 3rd Reader. As he grew older he got a job working for David McWilliams in the lumber yard, and at the age of 24 in 1872 he met and married Elizabeth Franklin, my mother. She was an English woman and had come across from London several years before. She was a niece of Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle George Burns, who had preceded her to America, and was married in their home. They lived in Dwight for several years after they were married, Grandmother Ellsaesser living with them. My father meantime had learned the blacksmith trade and was working for a man by the name of Nato Small. In his shop my father learned how to take an old worn out buggy or wagon and make a new one out of it as well as many other things. He learned how to make tools out of iron and steel. How to temper metal so it would hold an edge. He also became an expert horse shoer and did lots of it. It was when I was about three years old and my brother Theodore about two that father and mother moved out on the Chester farm three or four miles East of Dwight. Here my brothers Frank and Charles were born and also my sister Hannah and here also my brother Theodore was taken away with Diptheria at the age of three. My father mourned greatly for this child. He was a beautiful child with dark brown hair and eyes and father's first born son. I also took the dread disease and had a hard spell of it, which left me cross eyed. My father had my eyes striaghtened with electricity which I took by taking hold of my father's hand on one side and my Uncle Theobald on the other side while they each had hold of the electric current. While I was taking the treatment my mother rubbed down on either side of my spine. I don't know how long I was taking these treatments but my eyes were straightened. It was somewhere about this time my Grandmother Ellsaesser went to Syracuse, New york to live with her daughter Anthonia Burkhart, and here she remained as long as she lived. I can just remember her as a kind old lady wearing a white cap with a ruffle around her face. She had a large trunk in her bedroom in which she had many treasures it seemed to me. Many times when I would go to her bedroom she would open her trunk and bring out a big red apple which seemed to scent the whole room with its fragrance. My grandmother was a devout catholic. Only one of the children adhered to the catholic faith--Anthonia in New York. My uncle Theobald lived with us and had a bedroom to himself. One day brother Frank and I had been playing in the rain barrel, a thing we had been forbidden. We had splashed water out and got ourselves wet. Mother undressed us and put us to bed for punishment until dinner time. Frank was in uncle Theobald's room and the door was closed. When mother went in to dress him for dinner, she found he had secured uncle's shaving mug and razor. He was standing before the glass, his face smeared with lather and he was trying to shave himself. Father had made a miniature wagon, just like a farm wagon, for us to haul the baby in. It was painted green and trimmed in black and red. One nice morning mother put baby Charles in the wagon for me to watch and tend. We had a spring colt which was very gentle and I cocceded the idea of hitching the colt to the wagon with the baby. I secured the colt's halter which had a long rope attached and tied it to the wagon tongue and started the colt to going. The colt was started with the wagon tied on and started to run around and over a manure pile back of the barn when father saw what was going on and came to the rescue. Another time mother told me to go to the hen-house and get a setting hen and shut her up in a coop. The coops we had were the shape of the letter A with slats across the front and by turning the coop on its back, it was almost like a tub. Mother told me to put a little water in the coop so the hen wouldn't sit down. It was fun to carry water and our over that poor old hen, so I filled the coop half full. When mother went out to see about the hen, she found her swimming in water. Some of the earliest recollections of my mother was that she was a spiritual woman. I remember how she would teach me to pray and sing and always had be ready every Sunday morning to go to Sunday School. I remember so well the first song I learned at mother's knee was this: I think when I read that sweet story of old, When Jesus was here among men, How He called little children as lambs to His fold, I should liked to have been with Him then. I wish that His hands had been placed on my head That His arms had been thrown around me And that I might have heard His kind words when He said Let the little ones come unto Me. Yet still to His footstool in prayer I may go And ask for a share in His love, And if I thus ernestly seek Him below, I shall see Him and hear Him above. In that beautiful place He had gone to prepare For all who are washed and forgiven And many dear children are gathering there For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Mother was a member of the Church of England known in our America as the Episcopalian Church--or Episcopal. Among my earliest recollections was my father conducting morning worship. I remember standing on a chair by the side of my father and holding one corner of the Hymn book as we sang, "Happy Day" or "What a Friend We have in Jesus" or perhaps "Jesus Lover of My Soul". I can remember hearing my father say that his grandfather had been a man of means, that it took a half a day to walk across his estate, but he had become a poor man helping people who were in need, which seemed to me to be a very commendable trait.
My Early School Days-- My uncle Theobald took great delight in teaching me the alphabet and when I started to school at the age of four I knew them all. I was not such a precocious child that I should have started to school so early--but I have always felt that my father felt the lack of education and wanted me to have the oportunity he lacked. My teacher was also our neighbor and stopped for me every morning and I rode behind her on horseback--she also taught me how to crochet, and I remember well how uncle Theobald brought to me a lot of red yarn and asked me to crochet a pair of wristlets and a pair of mittens for which he offered me a dollar--well with the teacher's help I finally got them done. The wristlets were not so bad but the mittens had a terrible shape, but I got the dollar just the same. It was after I was nine years old my father bought a farm just a short distance from where we lived on the opposite side of the road and about a half mile nearer to Dwight and here we moved and here my mother died in child-birth the 23rd of February 1882. My father was left with four helpless children. I the eldest was ten the following July. Frank was six, Charles four, and Hannah three years. It was a hard blow to father just buying a home and then losing mother, and funeral expenses, but the Lord always provides a way. Father had a widowed sister Aunt Mary Berndt living in Mo. She came with her three children Louise was a young woman of eighteen, Frank the oldest boy was fourteen and went to live with uncle Theobald who was married and lived in the home we had previously vacated close by. Martin the youngest was just ten years old and remained with us. Louise worked out and part of the time was home with us. We got along with Aunt Maria or Mary as we called her in the home until the next year in May 1883 she sickened and died with Hernia. This brought another hardship on father as he was now without anyone to care for the children and the home, also he had the added funeral expenses besides. He made arrangements with my cousin Louise to keep house which she did until my father remarried the 18th of October 1883 to Louise Rastetter a young german woman. She proved to be a very good stepmother taking an interest in we children as her very own and began to make clothes for us, of which we were all sadly in need. I was twelve at the time of her entrance into our home but I had become quite a disobedient girl during the time I had been without a mother and often caused my stepmother much grief because of my disobedience but as time went on I grew older and learned better.
Unfinished Story by Emmaline Olin Martineau
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