Women In My Family History: Part 15

Cora Sophis Gillingham Sheafor

1881 - 1967

Cora Gillingham was born in 1881 at Richland Center Wisconsin the ninth child of twelve in a Irish family.  She was the fifth daughter and her mother did not need her in the house doing chores so she ended up out in the sheep fields with her father.   She developed a keen sense of the out of doors from this experience and when she went to school she excelled in the natural sciences.  After her schooling was completed she taught school for seven years and then married a man named Jay Sheafor.   She had five children and worked extremely hard and had a busy life.  She always took time to notice the wild life and birds on the farm and to teach her young children about the natural world.  At one point she had a serious illness and had resulting poor health.  After she recovered as much as possible she resumed her farm wife duties and continued to raise her children but she added the art of writing to her activities.  She wrote books,  stories and poetry.  She was also the topic of an article in the magazine The Farmers Wife.   Cora's husband Jay's father was Francis Sheafor and his father was named Squire. Squire Sheafor was the son of Jacob Sheafor who had a sister named Elizabeth.  Elizabeth Sheafor married Isaac Southard Patton and then had a son named Vincent who had a son named Samuel.  Samuel had a daughter named Clara.  Clara Barton Patton married Leroy Shepler and had a daughter named Georgia who married William Harvey Rairigh.  Harvey and Georgia had a son named Loyd who was my mother's father.  Please take the time to read through the images of articles that follow.  If you click on them they should open up large enough to read the print.