This is the family of Chariton's John and Kate (Shreeve) Luke who arrived in portrait form recently at the Lucas County Historical Society Museum. This smaller image was accompanied by enlarged and colorized portraits of the parents.
The Lukes were among the earliest wave of coal mining families to reach Lucas County --- most of Welsh or English descent.
John, born during 1853 at Newcastle upon Tyne, sailed for America with his parents, John Sr. and Elizabeth, and younger sister, Anne, in 1857, when he was 4. They alighted in Pennsylvania where John Sr. went to work in the mines, then followed the jobs west, settling by 1866 at Kewanee, Illinois.
John Jr., like his father, went to work in the mines and followed the jobs into Iowa. He married Kate during 1873 in Ottumwa and by 1880 was at work in the Cleveland mines in Lucas County. As mines opened and closed during the years that followed, the Lukes moved their family to mining towns in both Mahaska and Monroe counties before eventually returning to Lucas County and settling down in Chariton.
The Lukes, as was the case with many of their Lucas County mining family contemporaries, were converts to the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints --- now Community of Christ --- and mainstays of the Chariton RLDS congregation.
John was 80 when he died in Chariton during June of 1934. Kate was 96 when she passed during April of 1949. Both are buried in the Chariton Cemetery.
The children are not identified individually in this portrait, but its donor, Kenneth Vest of Clinton, is a descendant of the youngest daughter, Mary Ann (Luke) Potter/Vest, seated in front. The other Luke children in the portrait are John William (1873-1940), Emma Giles (1875-1952), Isabell Seddon/Whalley (1877-1936), Jacob R. (1880-1955), Elizabeth Lane (1885-1966), Daisy Myers/Ellis (1887-1971), Jeanette Wickline (1889-1975) and Edward (1892-1937). Daughter Catherine, born during 1882, died in 1898.
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