Life and death of a pioneer: Mary Hays Youtsey

This is Mary Hays Youtsey, a Lucas County pioneer who due to life's circumstance died and is buried in Barton County, Kansas. Thanks to a descendant who posted her portrait to Ancestry.com and Find a Grave we have images both of her and her tombstone (in Pawnee Rock Cemetery).

I happened upon her obituary, published in The Chariton Democrat of April 15, 1886, while looking for something else Tuesday and was intrigued by it. The obit had been written for The Democrat by William Goltry of Russell, one of her sons-in-law. Here it is:

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"I write to inform you of the death of Mary Youtsey, wife of Peter Youtsey, one of the early settlers of this county, and will be remembered by many of the old settlers. She died at the residence of her son-in-law and daughter, Tobias and Farrillia McGill, near Dundee, Barton county, Kansas, where they have been living for about two years, April 4th, after a long and painful illness.

"Her maiden name was Mary Hays. She was born in the territory of Indiana on Sept. 4th, 1806. Her grandfather and father were both killed by the Indians, her father when she was five years old. She lived in Indiana, and bravely endured the hardships of frontier life until the year 1852, they came to Iowa to procure land for their children with the means they had labored long and faithfully to lay up. 

"They settled in Cedar township in Lucas county, near Lagrange, on a farm. Her health became bad several years ago, and they went to Colorado for her health, and then to Dundee, Kansas.

"She was one of the great and noble women of her day, one of the hard workers, always ready to do all in her power to relieve the sick or help the distressed. She and Father Peter Youtsey have been very kind to their children, giving them all land for homes and much substantial help besides, for which they are very thankful.

"She was buried near Pawnee Rock, Kansas. Her husband, Peter Youtsey, survives her. He is with his children near Dundee for the present."

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According to a biography of one of her children, published in Colorado, Mary was born on the Driftwood Fork of the White River in Jackson County, Indiana, near a pioneer fort, Fort Vallonia (her descendants misunderstood that name as Fort Bologna, not the case at all).

Her father, killed during 1813 when she was 6 or 7, was Caleb Hays, a veteran of service during the War of 1812 who died during the skirmishes between settler militias and native Americans that continued into 1813. His father was Caleb Hays, too, but the exact circumstances of his death in Kentucky seem to have been lost.

Mary and Peter married during 1829 and prospered, bringing their family to Cedar Township, Lucas County, during 1852 where they purchased substantial tracts of land astraddle what now is U.S. 34 in the neighborhood of the ghost town of Lagrange, on the Lucas-Monroe county line. These purchases were made both with cash ($1.25 per acre) and military land warrants purchased from veterans of the War of 1812.

Peter Youtsey returned to Lucas County to live after Mary's death and during November of 1886 remarried, an event reported upon briefly in The Chariton Herald of  Nov. 25: "A marriage at the office of the Justice of the Peace on last Tuesday was interesting because of the age of the bridegroom, Mr. Peter Youtsey, who is 80 years old. He is a resident of Cedar Township, as is also his bride, Mrs. Eliza Trowbridge, who is 59 years of age."

The newlyweds had little more than a year together, however. He died on Jan. 1, 1888, and was buried in the Lagrange Cemetery.  Anna Eliza (Trowbridge) Youtsey survived until July 2, 1900. She was buried beside her first husband, Alonzo Trowbridge (1816-1885), in the Prather Cemetery, a little farther east along U.S. 34.