Encountering John G. Redlingshafer & Ekin Lovell

An oddity of life in a place where your family has lived for a very long time is the fact you keep running into ancestors.

This week, a big carton of miscellaneous records arrived at the Lucas County Historical Society Museum that included two minute books dating from the mid-1870s forward. They contain accounts of school board meetings in the Washington No. 6 district, Benton Township, better known as Gartin School. Gartin once was located five miles south of Chariton along what now is State Highway 14.

And there there he was --- in signature form --- my great-great-grandfather, John G. Redlingshafer, board president when the earliest minutes were recorded. It appears from other records in the book that he usually served the district as treasurer, but stepped forward to head the board now and then, too.

John G. and Isabelle (Greer) Redlingshafer arrived in Benton Township in an ox-drawn wagon during 1856, traveling from Washington County, Pennsylvania, soon after their marriage. All of their children, including my great-grandmother, Mary Belle (Redlingshafer) Myers, were educated in the Gartin School.

The Redlingshafers (below) also were among the founding parents of the Otterbein United Brethren in Christ congregation, which met at the school before its building a mile north was constructed (Otterbein Church was moved to the Lucas County Historical Society Museum campus in 1976).

John (1827-1913) was a native of what now is Germany, born in the farming village of Heinersdorf, Bavaria. He arrived in the United States with his parents and siblings during 1848.

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There tends not to be too much of interest in old records like this, but I was struck by one paragraph in the minutes shown here:

"The president asked if there was any more business to be attended to at this meeting. The secretary of the board informed him that he had received a notice from secretary C. Houck of Independent Dist. No. 4, Benton Center, notifying the board of Ind. Dist. of Washington No. 6 not to allow Ekin Lovell's children to attend school in the Ind. District of Washington No. 6, Benton Tp.

"The board after a short discussion agreed that Ind. Dist. No. 4, Benton Center, might prohibit Ekin Lovell's children from attending school in Ind. Dist. of Washington No. 6, but they (the Gartin board) would not (prevent the children from attending) unless their school was crowded and the board ordered their secretary, if Ekin Lovell's children commenced attending school in Ind. Dist. of Washington No. 6, to notify the board of their coming."

Benton Center No. 4 was known by most as Myers School, after my family, and the secretary mentioned in the minutes was Charles Houck, an uncle some generations removed.

The minutes suggest that the Garton School Board, while acknowledging that the Myers School Board had the right to prohibit the Lovell children from attending classes at Gartin, did not intend to prevent them from doing so as long as Gartin School was not over crowded.

This probably was a matter of residence. It's likely the Lovell children lived in the Myers district but had expressed interest in attending classes in the Gartin district --- perhaps because Gartin was nearer or because the roads to it were more reliable. If the Lovell family lived west of Wolf Creek, for example, it would be a challenge at times to reach Myers School, east of the creek.

School boards of the day had to provide a free public education to children who lived in their districts, but if students from one district attended classes in another the board had to pay tuition to the host district. The Myers directors probably were trying to avoid doing that for the Lovell children.

Whatever the case, there's no further mention of the situation in the records so we're unlikely to know how in was resolved.

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One of the Lovell children in question most likely was Ezra, the youngest of seven. He died three years after these minutes were recorded, on May 19, 1882, at the age of 15, and his tombstone in Benton Township's Salem Cemetery is the only reminder left in the township of this family.

Ekin and Elizabeth Lovell were English, recorded in the 1851 census of England as residents of Thorpe End, Raunds, Northamptonshire. In that year, Ekin, a shoemaker, was 30; Elizabeth, 28; and their eldest children, Alfred and Charles, ages 6 and 3 respectively.

According to Elizabeth's obituary, published in The Leon Reporter of 29 December 1904, they had married in 1843 and came to the United States in 1855, living a year at Philadelphia before relocating to Dodgeville in Des Moines County, Iowa. 

When the 1856 Iowa census was taken, the four-member Lovell family was living in Des Moines County with the John Hixson family. According to that census, the Lovells had lived in Iowa a year or less.

Four years later, when the 1860 census of Dodgeville, Des Moines County, was taken on 10 July, Ekin still was working as a shoemaker and owned only personal property valued at $75. Two sons had been added to the family, Nephi, age 2, and Ransberry, age 8 months.

The family prospered modestly during the next 10 years and when the 1870 census of Dodgeville was taken, Ekin's occupation was given as farmer and the family owned real estate valued at $1,100 and personal property valued at $400. John, age 9; Emma, age 5; and Ezra, age 3, had joined the family. Alfred and Charles no longer were living at home.

According to Elizabeth's obituary, the family lived in Des Moines County for 15 years, which would date the move to Benton Township, Lucas County, at ca. 1871.

The Ekins, probably converted in England by missionaries of the Lamoni-based Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now Community of Christ), were among organizers of an RLDS congregation that met in Palmer School, near the Lucas-Wayne county line, alternating Sundays with a long-vanished Seventh-day Adventist congregation. Elder Ekin Lovell was recorded as pastor of the congregation in Lucas County's 1881 history.

Not long after Ezra's death during 1882, the Lovell family moved to the vicinity of Lamoni in Decatur County, organized by and as a headquarters for the strengthening RLDS church. It seems likely that the Benton Township RLDS congregation was disbanded when they moved.

Ekin Lovell died in Decatur County on 29 June 1895, age 75; and Elizabeth, on 14 December 1904, age 82, at the home of her son, Nephi, in New Buda Township, Decatur County. They are buried in Lamoni's Rose Hill Cemetery.