Welcome To Pages From The Past

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Clark Nash ] [ Out House ]

MARY ELIZABETH HILDINGER

Mary Elizabeth Hildinger was born on November 14, 1858 in Hocking County, Ohio to Caroline and Thomas Martin Hildinger.  She was the second child and first girl born to this couple.  She would have five brothers and one sister who died in infancy.  Not much is known of her early years.  We know that the family stayed in Hocking County while the first four children were born.  Sometime during the Civil War, the family moved to Thorn creek, Whitley County, Indiana where three more children were born of this union.  In 1870 Lib's father, Thomas Martin was killed in a logging accident.  Lib's mother, Caroline, married John Freudiger born in Bern Switzerland and had two other children, Charles and Clara.  With the early death of Mr. Freudiger, the family then moved to Labette County, Kansas.  Here Lib met and married Alonzo Bechtelheimer. Lib's firs son, Alonzo, Jr., came from this marriage. Shortly after the birth of Alonzo, Jr., Alonzo Sr. died leaving Lib a widow with a small child.  This is when Lib met and Married Clark Nash.

Lib and Clark married in Labette County, Kansas on 14 March, 1881.  Eunice, Nell, Leelie, Harry, Ray and Roy were all born in Labette County.  Life was going all right with the Nash family until tragedy struck.  Within  just a few month's time, Harry, Leelie and twins Ray and Roy all died of illnesses.  Harry and Leelie, age four and three, died of diphtheria.  The twins, Ray and Roy, died four months later of the same illness at the age of four months.

With the news of the planned opening of the Cherokee Strip in 1893, the family decided to pull up stakes and seek it's fortune in Oklahoma.  At this stage I doubt that the family really wanted to stay in Kansas with the memories of so many lost children still so fresh in its memory.  Maybe the new place the hurt might abate.  The story of the claiming of the land in Oklahoma is covered pretty well in Clark Nash's biography, so I won't repeat it here.  Clark had spent the winter at the homestead trying to get living quarters ready for the family.  The first home would be a dugout, sod home with a flat tin roof and dirt floor.  Lib and the children had stayed behind in Kansas until the spring.

Two of Lib's brothers also staked claims close to Clark.  So a caravan from Kansas departed in the spring of 1894 headed for the new land.  In the caravan was Lib with her three children, Nell, Eunice and Lon, Lib's mother, Caroline Bloom Hildinger Freudiger, Lib's brothers, John and George, with John's family (George was single).  Lib told my mother many years later that when she saw the dugout where she would set up housekeeping, her heart fell.  She said she didn't feel she could return to keeping a house with dirt floors.  Lib said she almost turned around and went back to Kansas.

The pictures of Lib show a woman who has a hard life, bearing many babies and doing extremely hard work.  Her hair was pulled back severely from her face and secured in a bun at the base of her neck.  Her physical appearance belied a really nice woman.  She was compassionate, witty and a good mother and quite  good fun to be around.  She and Clark seemed to be quite happy together. 

I have written in Clark's story about how the farm evolved.  New settlers from further west came by the Nash farm on their way to Pond Creek, the site of the rail head where supplies were available.  Oft times they would stop to rest and get refreshed at the Nash farm.  Many times the settlers would have sick babies.  Eventually, all this activity evolved into a boarding house and the servicing of the travelers became much more formalized.  Of course, Lib was the key to the boarding house since Clark had a thriving insurance business.  I do not know when this traveler service began.  I would suspect that it continued at least until Clark's death from prostate cancer in 1912.  Beulah would marry just three years later in 1915.

I know that Lib and her daughter eventually moved to Guthrie at 1124 W. Noble.  This residence was next door to Beulah and her family and by Lib being that close, it was a big help and her three little girls with Roy being away at work so much.  Unfortunately, this ideal situation was not to go on very long.

The whole world changed for Beulah and the entire Rogers and Nash families on a February night in 1924.  On a Sunday night after church at the West Side Methodist Church where Beulah directed the choir, Lib, along with her daughter, Eunice, a neighbor, Mrs. Barnard and Beulah and two of her daughters left the church to cross Noble to return home.   Let me quote from the Guthrie Daily Leader of the next day: "There is a man in Guthrie today whose soul is so dwarfed that he should be shunned by all decent humanity.  But the trouble is he is a moral coward and is, unfortunately, unknown to the people.  We have reference to the man, driving a huge touring car at a terrific speed down the asphalt pavement of Noble avenue Sunday night, hurtled into a crowd of church people who were just emerging from the West Side M. E. Church, scattered them like chaff before a wind, fatally injuring one and seriously and painfully injuring three others Miss Eunice Nash who had been suffering for some time with rheumatism and was on crutches sustained the most serous injuries.  Her crutches were reduced to kindling wood.  Bother her limbs were broken and one of them in two places; she was dragged on a fender of the car for more than fifty feet before being hurled to the pavement.  Mrs. C. L. Nash, mother of Miss Eunice was painfully injured as was also Mrs. Grant Barnard, Mrs. Rogers and her two children narrowly escaped serious injury by the quickness of Mrs. Rogers, who was some feet further east than the Nash family.  She was slightly bruised when she fell to the pavement after shoving her two children to one side.  The speeding machine barely missed them as it shot by."  As it turned out, Eunice recovered.  Mary Elizabeth did not and died about ten days later, unexpectedly.  Eunice lived eleven more years.

At her death, Mary Elizabeth Hildinger was 65 years, 3 months and 7 days.  By all accounts she died to soon.  She was a lovely person.  Mary Elizabeth sleeps next to her beloved husband, Clark in the New Home Cemetery in Nash, Oklahoma.