Leona Sullivan on her wedding day.
One of the family stories that caught my eye when I first starting working with our genealogy was that of my great grandmother. Leona Elberta Sullivan was the illegitimate daughter of Ammie Frances Sullivan. She was born on the sixth of March in 1881. She was raised by a local church family who took her in and on November 13, 1902 she married and moved into her new home with her husband Oscar Rohrer. She arrived with her life possessions being a sack of clothes and a guitar slung over her back. Oscar had a farm in rural Miami County Indiana. Less than one year later, on the 13th of September 1903, just six days after she gave birth to my grandfather she was dead. The following image shows how often this was the case for women who gave birth in that time period.
The source of this image can be found HERE.
Her life on the farm is one that had to have long days of hard work although there must have been joyful times too. I would love to know what songs she played on the guitar. I have it and would find a way to have the songs played on it if I knew what they were. Enjoy the video that follows of some footage of farm life a few years later in the era of 1910 America.
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