Mary Ellen Wiley Richardson

Mary Ellen Wiley was born July 1845 in Wheeling, West Virginia. She was the third of eight children born to Joshua Cooper Wiley and Mary Ellen Kettlewell Wiley. Her father Joshua was a Wheeling city collector, and before his death in 1863 superintendent of the Wheeling Gas Works.

On December 21, 1865 Mary Ellen (Ella) married Theopolis W. Richardson, also a life-long resident of Wheeling, and recently returned Civil War veteran. The newly weds moved down the Ohio river to Sardis, Ohio where Theopolis's father Joseph bought some properties in this small but busy waterfront town, and in his capacity of merchant established a waterfront dry-goods store. Family oral history has it that Theopolis operated a riverboat to bring in goods for the business. On the 1870 census Theopolis occupation was retired dry goods merchant.

Ella and Theopolis had five children; Alice 1866, Joseph Edward (Edward) 1868, Eugene Wiley 1870, Maud Virginia 1872, and Amy born February 2, 1873. Theopolis had chronic health problems, legacy of his months spent in the Confederate prison camp Andersonville. In September of 1873,at the young age of thirty, Theopolis died, leaving Ella a widow with five young children, the youngest only 3 months old. Theopolis left no will, nor did he own any property.

Ella bought the property on which she lived in Sardis from her father-in-law a month after Theopolis died. I assume it is the house that the couple had been living in since their marriage. Ella was still living in this house on Water St. in 1894. Sardis, as all other riverfront towns, was subject to frequent flooding. The historic floods of the 1930's destroyed the Sardis waterfront buildings, and today, where Ella's house once stood, is green space.

Alice, Ella and Maud @ 1920

In 1879 Ella sent her 13 year old daughter Alice to the Soldier's and Sailors Home for Orphans in Xenia, Ohio. Ella wrote on Alice's application that she lacked the funds to support or educate Alice at home. Another consideration in sending her eldest daughter to the school was the fact that Ella's sister Katherine Wiley was a matron at the Home in Xenia. Katherine was on staff from 1879 to 1893.

The departure of Alice in 1879 left the widowed Ella with 4 young children. Joseph Richardson, Ella's father-in-law, died in March of the following year. All five of her children were listed in Joseph's will but did not inherit anything of value. In 1880 Ella applied for a Widow's Penion widow pension application based on Theopolis's civil war service and his subsequent death. The pension file does not tell us whether Ella received a pension, but does give eloquent testimony to her desperate financial situation after the death of her second husband, David W. Skinner.

On December 25, 1883, Ella married David W. Skinner in Monroe County, Ohio. David W. Skinner was around 20 years her senior, a farmer from Wetzel county, West Virginia. Mr. Skinner had lost his wife to cancer several years earlier and had children of his own. Several days before their marriage Mr. Skinner signed a deed in Wetzel county to pass his farming tracts of land to his children for 1 dollar. He retained a life interest in the tracts, ultimate control was given to his son John G. The following year, again in Wetzel County, Mr. Skinner accepted a bond obligation to handle the estates of Ella's four younger children. Presumably Alice was not a consideration since she was already in her majority. In 1886 Ella was still making application on behalf of her children for a pension, but the record does not reflect whether she received one.

Unfortunately, on December 6, 1888 the slighly deaf Mr. Skinner, upon leaving the Sardis wharf on his skiff in the dark, was hit by the steamer Courier. D. W. Skinner died of internal hemoraging the next day. No will was filed in either Monroe County, Ohio or Wetzel County, West Virginia, but his daughter Adaline was appointed administrator of her father's estate.

Ella's application for a pension was filed under her married name Richardson, but in 1903 and 1917, in her applications for Amy's dependent child pension and her own widow's pension, she used her married name Skinner. On the 1900, 1910, and 1920 census she was enumerated as Ella Richardson. Also interesting to note, in the local papers she is always referred to as Mrs. Ella Richardson.

The turn of the 20th century found a 55 year-old Ella living in Sardis. Of her five children, three lived with, or next to her.

Her eldest daughter Alice graduated from the Orphan's Home and later earned a teacher's certificate in Woodsfield, Ohio. She taught in the Sardis grade school until her marriage to the town doctor, Dr. Sheridan C. Griffith in 1894. The Griffiths and their three children lived next door to Ella until they moved to Worthington, Ohio in 1915.

31 year-old Joseph Edward, (Ed or Edward) was still single in 1900, and worked in the local shirt factory while living at home with Ella. The following year Ed married a Sardis girl, Erma Dieter and set up housekeeping in Wheeling, West Virginia. This couple and their three children would visit Sardis often over the next 15 years, but by 1920 Erna had moved on to a second marriage, taking their daughter Constance with her. After 1920, Ed's sons Andrew and Eugene were either in Ella's household, their aunt Maude Maloney in Chicago, or their Aunt Alice's in Worthington. Ed spent the later part of his life living with his sister Alice, and in 1941 he committed suicide.

Ella's youngest and mentally challenged 27 year old daughter Amy, and her 4 year old granddaughter Lena where living in her household in 1900, 1910 and 1920. Ella's dependent pension request on behalf of Amy filed in 1917, clearly stated that Amy was mentally weak since birth and was not able to care for herself. Lena was Amy's illegitimate daughter. A small bit of family oral history suggests that Amy was too mentally challenged to have been responsible for the course of events that produced Lena. In 1932 Amy was the informant on Lena's death certificate and named Lena's father, but I have never been able to find any information on him. Amy apparently never did live alone, and after Ella's death in 1923 she lived with her daughter Lena. After Lena's premature death from consumption in 1932 Amy lived with Alice in Worthingon, and later died in a nursing home in Columbus in 1957.

Ella's daughter Maud married William Maloney in 1895 in Chicago. By 1901 Ella had three grandsons from this marriage. Ella had extensive connections in Chicago through her own family. Ella's brother Andrew Wiely lived there through the 1880's, and presumably her mother Mary Ellen Wiley was living with Andrew when she died there in 1893. Ella's sister Katherine Wiley, the matron in the Orphan's home in Xenia, and Adah Wiely, both unmarried sisters, were living in Chicago in 1900. After Maud's husband William Maloney died in Chicago in 1918, Maud was a frequent visitor in Ohio and figures prominently in family stories from the descendants of Alice Griffith in Worthington. Maud visited Sardis often when her mother was alive.

Ella's son Eugene, my great-great-grandfather, left Sardis at a young age, and except for an occassional visit, never returned. Eugene lived and worked in Pennsylvania, but was mostly undocumented until he eloped with Susannah Radcliffe Wade, a sixteen year old from Jollytown, Pennsylvania, in 1893. Ella visited Eugene and his wife in Jollytown in 1895, by which time the first granddaughter Ruth was a year old. When Ella died in 1923, Eugene and Susannah had had 10 children, Susannah had died of cancer in 1921 and the second youngest son had died of croup in 1922.

Ella died in Sardis on April 28, 1923. She lived in Sardis for 58 years, and apparently would not leave Sardis in her later years to live with her daughter Alice Griffith in Worthington. Ella was survived by two sisters, Adah and Louisa, of Wheeling. All her children were alive, and she had 16 grandchildren. Ella was buried next to Theopolis, and her father-in-law Joseph Richardson, in Sardis cemetery.