Lucinda Stoneking & a New Years Eve conflagration

I frittered away too much time in January complaining about the cold and the snow, neither of which was that unusual for the depths of winter in Iowa.

But any troubles I may have imagined were minor when compared to those of Lucinda Stoneking, whose home in one of Lucas County's most remote areas burned to the ground during a blizzard overnight on New Years Eve 1942. Here's the Herald-Patriot report of January 8:

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New Year's eve brought little happiness to one county home. The home of Mrs. Lucinda Stoneking in Pleasant township was destroyed by fire that evening in a middle of the night blaze that ravaged the dwelling before aid could be obtained.

The fire was discovered after Mrs. Stoneking and her daughter, Verda, had retired for the night. Her son, Jess, was at the home of a neighbor for the evening.

Neighbors came in an attempt to put out the blaze, but the blizzard that swept the county during the night hampered their attempts. The fire made so much headway on the house, which was made of logs and stone, that few of the contents could be saved.

Mrs. Stoneking and her daughter walked a mile to the home of a neighbor to spend the night.

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Lucinda lived a long life after that fire --- I found the photograph of her on Ancestry.com, dated 1955 --- but probably is most often noted today because of her place on the tombstone shared with her husband, Joseph, at Stoneking Cemetery. The inscription below her name --- a few familiar lines found on countless tombstones --- is legendary in Lucas County, part of the absurd lore that identifies the cemetery as "haunted."

I'm guessing that the message was placed there at the direction of Lucinda, who  survived her husband by more than 40 years. There's another equally nice but smaller stone at Stoneking that marks the grave of Lucinda's mother, Rebecca Byard.

As nearly as I can place it, based upon land ownership maps, the house that burned --- apparently built of logs and perhaps with fieldstone chimneys --- was located in what now is woods just southeast of the cemetery. This probably would have been one of the original Stoneking homes in the neighborhood, perhaps erected not long after the family arrived from Wetzel County, (West) Virginia, prior to 1860.

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Lucinda, born during 1869, also in Wetzel County, was the second wife of Joseph Stoneking (1849-1916) who, in turn, was a son of Adam Stoneking (1813-1865), the family patriarch in Lucas County. 

Joseph had married first Mary E. Sanford in Lucas County on April 24, 1876, and they had at least one child, Charles Henry, before the marriage ended. He married Lucinda --- at 16 some 20 years his junior --- on May 24, 1886, in neighboring Monroe County.

Joseph and Lucinda were first-cousins --- her mother, Rebecca (Stoneking) Byard, and Joseph's father, Adam, were siblings. Joseph and Lucinda had 10 children.

Lucinda continued to live in Lucas County until her health failed when she was in her late 80s. She then moved to Des Moines to live with her son, Roy, where she died at the age of 90 on Aug. 18, 1959.