Ethel (Bailey) Peterie
(1888-1964)
Ethel Blanche (Bailey) Peterie was born on May 18, 1888 at Isabel, KS, the daughter of Richard D. and Frances Jeanette (White) Bailey.
When Ethel was the tender age of one, her mother was tragically killed by a bolt of lightning during a Kansas harvest. She was taken into the home of her uncle, Lester White, in Isabel. She is said to have "enjoyed school, and knew the joys and sorrows of being a child of the Kansas Prairie."
While studying at a business college in Missouri, Ethel came down with typhoid fever, and came home. She married farmer Jesse T. Peterie (1882-1969) at Medicine Lodge, KS, on March 17, 1906. Jesse was born on Sept. 27, 1882 at Laredo, MO, and came to Kansas in 1903 with his parents.
They had four children: Thelma Fanelle Lamkins, Edith Marguerite Hoyt, Jeanette "Claudine" Raleigh and William Gerald Peterie.
Active in the community, Jesse served for many years on the Isabel school board "through the years of consolidation and two new buildings." He also was on the cemetery board for two decades.
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| The flat, flat farm fields and skyline of Isabel, early 1900s |
According to her cousin Blanche (Clark) Tarter, Ethel "was happy as a farm wife and mother of four children. After many years of failing health and caring for her husband, she died as she slept quietly" on Oct. 11, 1964.
Jesse outlived her by five years. He passed away in 1969.
To honor their memory, the Peteries' children donated a brand-new Hammond organ to the Isabel United Methodist Church in 1970. A plaque on the organ bears their names.
Daughter Thelma (Peterie) Lamkins taught elementary school in Barber County, KS until shortly after she was married. Thelma's husband Charles Nelson Lamkins taught for 43 years, including in Wichita, KS.
Daughter Edith (Peterie) Hoyt also was an educator, teaching elementary school for eight years in Pratt County, and Isabel, KS. She and her cousins Blanche (Clark) Tarter and Verda (White) Richey collaborated on the landmark 1971 family volume, Ancestral and Chronological History and Lineage of the Family of Luther White and Mahala (Minor) White, Their Forbears and Descendants, 1665-1971.
Daughter Claudine (Peterie) Raleigh owned her own store in Medicine Lodge, called, Nordine's Gift Shop. Her husband Norman Cecil Raleigh was a prisoner of war (POW) in World War II from September 1944 through April 1945.
Copyright © 2000, 2008 Mark A. Miner