This is another selection from the collection of early snapshots related to Chariton's pioneer Dungan family that arrived unexpectedly at the museum recently, offering a rare window into the lives of a family that vanished with the death of its last member, Edna (Dungan) Culbertson, in Chariton during 1975 at the age of 99.
Although Col. Warren S. Dungan --- distinguished Civil War veteran, attorney, legislator and Iowa lieutenant governor --- and his wife, Abby (Proctor) Dungan, produced a family of six adult children (one daughter died as a child), there were no grandchildren, so Edna was the end of the line.
In a remarkably efficient use of cemetery space, the entire family --- Warren and Abby, Mrs. Dungan's parents, Caleb and Myra (Sampson) Proctor, and six of the seven Dungan children are shoe-horned into a single lot just north of the driveway in the Chariton Cemetery's oldest section. This was accomplished with a bit of strategic cremation. Caleb Proctor is one of three War of 1812 veterans buried in the cemetery.
That's the original Dungan home (top), built soon after Civil War at what now is the intersection of North Grand Street and Auburn Avenue. The snapshot appears to have been taken shortly before the five surviving Dungan daughters had it demolished about 1920 and replaced with the house immediately above, which still stands and served as the family home until 1945 when it was sold and Myra, the only daughter living full-time in Chariton at the time, moved in with her cousin, Mary (Dungan) Smith --- widow of Channing --- at 603 South 8th Street. Edna, upon retirement as a Minneapolis educator, moved into 603 South 8th, too, and lived there until shortly before her death.
Here's another shot of the old house, in the background, with sisters Myra and Minnie standing amid hollyhocks to the southeast. Minnie, at right, kind of blends into the vegetation and is a little difficult to see.
Warren Dungan arrived in Chariton from his native Pennsylvania during 1856 to establish his first law practice and, during 1859, married Abby Kingman Proctor, who had arrived with her parents not long before from their native Massachusetts. Their eldest child was a son, Fayette, who died unexpectedly at age 35 during 1895 while working for a newspaper in Chicago and whose remains were returned to Chariton for burial. The other children were Effie, born 1866; Minnie, 1869; Myra Belle, 1871; Mary Edna, 1875; and Myrtle, 1877.
Myrtle, Myra and Edna are shown here at the front door of a tiny cottage just south of the Dungan home that had been built for their grandparents, Caleb and Myra Proctor. It was moved away and the area turned into lawn and gardens not long after Myra Proctor died during 1892.
Abby Dungan died at the age of 41 during September of 1881 when her youngest, Myrtle, was only four years old, so the Proctors helped Warren raise his children and Effie, the eldest daughter, 15 when her mother died, began to fill the mothering role that would define the remainder of her life.
This photo shows Edna (left) and Effie in the family garden about 1894. Edna was the only one of the five Dungan daughters who married young. She married Joseph Braden Culbertson at the family home on North Grand on June 24, 1903, when she was 28, and they moved west, living most of their married life in Denver. There were no children.
Edna divorced Joseph during the early 1920s and moved from Denver to Minneapolis to teach. Her sister, Minnie, already was teaching there and Effie had joined her as housekeeper and companion. Effie died in Minneapolis at the age of 76 during 1944, but Edna and Minnie continued to make there home there until after Minnie's 1963 death after which Edna moved back to Chariton to live with Myra.
Here's a photo of (from left) Edna, Myrtle and Myra, taken during the 1890s near the Dungan home.
Myrtle and Myra continued to live together on North Grand Street until 1920, Myra teaching school and Myrtle, teaching school at first and then serving as county superintendent of schools. Here is Myrtle dressed in her best, again some time during the 1890s.
During 1920, to the considerable surprise of many, Myrtle announced her engagement to District Court Judge Francis M. Hunter, of Ottumwa, a widower with no children some 20 years her senior. She was 43 at the time. According to some accounts they became acquainted while working together to resolve child welfare issues that emerged when youngsters ended up in the court system.
They married at the new Dungan home on North Grand during December of 1920 and settled down in Judge Hunter's Ottumwa home. He died during 1936 leaving Myrtle an affluent widow. She died during July of 1950 at age 72 while being cared for following surgery in Minneapolis at the home of her sisters there. She is buried in the Ottumwa Cemetery with Judge Hunter and his first wife.
Myra (above) continued to teach in Chariton and live in the family home on North Grand until the outbreak of World War II, when she moved to Washington, D.C., to fill one of the many government jobs that opened there to women as men marched off to war.
After the war, she returned to Chariton and opened a private commercial college which she operated for many years. The surviving sisters, Edna, Minnie, Myrtle and Myra, decided during 1945 to sell the house on North Grand and Myra moved in which her cousin, Mary, whose health was failing, on South 8th Street. Edna moved back to Chariton to join her there after Minnie's 1963 death, but Myra died three years later, during May of 1966, at the age of 94.
Here's a final snapshot from the Dungan collection, this one of Myra during the 1890s in the family garden on North Grand Street.
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