Frederick Stembel

John Stembel

Oliver Stembel

OLIVER FREDERICK STEMBEL (1825 - 1887)

Oliver was born January 17, 1825, in Middletown, Maryland. At the time he was born, he had a sister 12, a brother, 11, and another sister 5.

In 1850, Oliver married Margaret Sharp. He was 25. She was four years younger. According to a granddaughter, Margaret's parents perished in a flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, (not the Johnstown flood, however) and Margaret came to Ohio with another family, possibly as a hired hand or a servant.⁽¹⁾ Oliver and Margaret had five known children, all born in West Liberty, Ohio. Sometime after 1880, Oliver, Margaret, and their daughter Eleanor moved west in hopes that the drier climate would alleviate Oliver's asthma. They first moved to Kansas, but eventually settled in Valley City (Johnson County), Missouri, not far from the family of his late cousin Jacob Stembel (son of Frederick Stembel, Jr.). Jacob's widow had moved to Johnson County, with her son and his wife, 20 years earlier.

It appears that Oliver's four sons eventually followed their parents to Missouri (although one returned to Ohio later).

Oliver was reputedly an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed hunting and fishing. He passed away in 1887 at the age of 62. Margaret stayed on in Missouri. She died 14 years later. Both are reportedly buried in Knobnoster, Missouri, but I was not able to locate their graves on a visit there, however. I have since been told there are no markers on their graves.

Oliver and Margaret's children:

A. John Bradford. John was born October 20, 1851. He was raised in Ohio. In 1882, he traveled to Missouri with his brother Marcellus and a cousin, Albert Stembel, son of his uncle Joseph. He was about 30 at the time of this move. He eventually settled in Kansas where he married. He and his wife had three children between 1892 and 1898: Roy, Willard, and John, Jr. I don't know who his wife was, or what happened to her. Roy and Willard went to live with John's brother, William, in nearby Missouri.

I don't know much about John, Jr. He was reportedly crippled by a fall when he was a baby. At the time of the 1900 census he was living with an innkeeper in Bonner Springs, Kansas. He was two years old.

Curiously, John, Jr.'s father was also living in Bonner Springs. John, Sr., was living in a rented house on Nettleson Street with his new 18 year old wife, Nellie Fry. They had a one month old daughter, Gladys. Even more curious, the census gives the age of 48-year-old John as 35! Also living with John and Nellie were Nellie's mother,⁽²⁾ Nellie's 16-year-old brother, and a 49-year-old widow, who was boarding with them. Evidently this marriage ended, for Nellie remarried about 1915. According to a family member, John died sometime around 1928.

John Stembel's children:

1. Roy Willis. Roy was born July 30, 1892, in Kansas. Sometime before 1900, he went to live with his Uncle William (his father's brother), who raised him. Roy never married. He spent most of his adult life living near Bonner Springs, Kansas where he trapped gophers for farmers. According to Mary Stembel Davis, sometime in his life he suffered sunstroke and could not do heavy labor.⁽³⁾

Roy died on Christmas Day, 1958.

2. Willard L. Willard was born September 6, 1895, in Kansas. Sometime before 1900 he and his brother Roy (above) went to live with his Uncle William in Johnson County, Missouri. Willard died on March 15, 1911. He was 15 years old.
3. John, Jr. John was born in February of 1898. At the time of the 1900 census, he was living with an innkeeper and his wife, Fred and Fanny Ingersoll. They were childless, and may have adopted him, for John's father was living nearby. His father was newly married and had a new one-month-old baby. According to Mary Stembel Davis, John was crippled from a fall as a baby. He was supposedly mistreated by his mother.⁽⁴⁾ At the time of the 1930 census, John was living in Los Angeles, California, and working as a laborer.
4. Gladys D.. Gladys was born in April of 1900, at Bonner Springs, Kansas. She was the first child born to John's second wife, Nellie. At the time of the 1920 census, Gladys was living in Kansas City, Kansas, living with her mother and step-father, Henry Kosmyer. Later Gladys married Marvin Kueck. In 1963 they were living in Rainbow Lakes Estates, outside of Dunnellon, Florida.

B. Marcellus Lafayette. Marcellus Lafayette, known as "Lafe," was born August 12, 1855, in Champaign County, Ohio. According to family tradition, when Lafe's father, John, moved his family to Ohio, they were accompanied by one or more of the Stembel's slaves. Once in Ohio, they continued to live with or near the Stembel family. When Oliver's second son was born, a former slave who was their nanny, was given the privilege of naming the baby. She chose Marcellus Lafayette Stembel.⁽⁵⁾ This woman figures prominently in another incident in Lafe's life. As a child, Lafe sustained an injury to his arm and developed a severe case of blood poisoning. It spread to the point where the doctor was considering amputating his arm if it didn't improve soon. The nanny appealed to the family not to allow the amputation, but to let her to apply a traditional poultice to his arm. Within a day of the application of the poultice, the infection was under control and his arm was saved.⁽⁶⁾

I believe it is highly likely that the Stembels who moved to Ohio freed their slaves and took them with them, although they don't show up in the census records (however, a young black girl appeared in the 1830 census living with John's brother Frederick in Xenia, Ohio, 50 miles south of West Liberty).⁽⁷⁾ Though technically free, the former slaves probably lived with, or near, the Stembels and continued to work for them. I believe it's likely census takers ignored the free blacks living with the Stembels, or maybe the Stembels didn't volunteer the information to the census takers for whatever reason.

Lafe traveled to Missouri in 1882 with his older brother John, and a cousin Albert (son of Joseph, Oliver's younger brother). Just before he left, his Aunt Maria (Maria Josephine, Oliver's sister) gave him a Bible dated March 30, 1882. The Bible was last in the possession of his daughter, Mary Stembel Davis.

Evidently Lafe did not remain in Missouri very long, for just over a year later he married Emma Ida Clark in Spring Hills, Ohio (near the Champaign - Logan county border). They were married on Lafe's 28^th birthday. Emma was ten years younger than he. They had six children, two of which died in infancy

Lafe ran a blacksmith shop in the town of Crayon (Champaign County), Ohio, and farmed an 81-acre farm on shares after he was married. Later, he built a two-story building in Crayon, which had a general store with a post office on the bottom floor and an I.O.O.F. Hall upstairs. For a time he also had the region's telephone switchboard in a back room (his daughter Mary remembers working in the store and at the switchboard). Lafe worked as a part-time troubleshooter for the phone company after that.

Lafe and Ida lived in Champaign County until Ida's death in 1913. Lafe eventually moved to suburban Detroit to live with his daughter, Mary. He died there in 1943. Lafe and Ida are both buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in Millerstown, Ohio.

Lafe and Emma Stembel's six children:

1. Minnie May. Minnie was born on New Years Day, 1886. She died of scarlet fever on August 27, 1902. She was 16 years old.
2. Goldie Ethel. Goldie was born November 24, 1887. She almost died of scarlet fever during the epidemic that took Minnie's life. On November 29, 1905, she married Charles Hoffman. Goldie and Charles had five children, Franklin, Orrin Clair, Margaret, Shirley, and Marcella. Goldie died April 19, 1971.
3. (Son). Emma gave birth to a son on January 26, 1889, who died five days later.
4. Mary Margaret. Mary was born December 26, 1892. Mary, too, had scarlet fever like her sisters, but wasn't as sick. Growing up, she worked in her father's store, and later at the phone switchboard. On March 26, 1919, she married William Kenneth Davis. They moved to Ecorse, Michigan, outside of Detroit. Later, her father came to live with them until his death in 1934. Mary and William had no children.


William died March 16, 1949. After his death, Mary went to work for a coal dealer. She ran the office and handled sales. After the owner died, Mary ran the company for a few months until a buyer could be found. Then she quit working for good. I corresponded with Mary from 1986 to 1988; she provided information about her branch of the family. She died about November 18, 1989. Her ashes were placed next to her husband in the Michigan Memorial Cemetery.

5. Bertha. Bertha was born January 30, 1895, and died August 8 of the same year.
6. Cora Ann. Cora was born May 3, 1896. She grew up in Crayon. She married Walter R. Scott. They had no children. Cora died November 14, 1984.

C. William C. William was born February 2, 1859 in West Liberty, Ohio. In 1880 he moved to Valley City, Missouri according to his granddaughter, Peggy Taylor Palmer. He was 21 years old and unmarried at the time of the move. In 1896, at the age of 37, he married Ida Caldwell, a 23-year-old native of Missouri. Over the next 10 years they had four children. In addition, two of his brother John's children came to live with them (see John Bradford above).

William died in 1938 at the age of 79; Ida died in 1960 at the age of 87.

William and Ida Stembel's children:

1. James C. James was born July 11, 1899, and died August 28, 1900.
2. Hazel. Hazel was born March 15, 1900 at Valley City, Missouri. On Christmas Day, 1927, she married Jesse Earl Taylor in Kansas City, Missouri. They lived in Kansas City all their life. They had one child, a daughter, Peggy.


Jesse died December 13, 1955, in Kansas City.Hazel's house was purchased by the state for the Crosstown Freeway, so she moved in with her sister, Gladys in 1971. Hazel died soon after, on April 6, 1972, in Warrensburg, Missouri. She is buried in Kansas City.

Hazel and Jesse Taylor's child:

a. Peggy June. Peggy was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on June 3, 1930. She married Charles Palmer August 24, 1952, in her parent's home in Kansas City. Peggy and Charles had one child, a son, Jesse Charles, but he died when he was six years old. Peggy and Charles live outside of Clinton, Missouri.

3. Gladys. Gladys was born November 26, 1903, at Valley City. On November 1, 1930, she married Lawrence Lee Harness in Sedalia, Missouri. They had no children. Lawrence died at Warrensburg, Missouri, on August 19, 1969. After her husband's death, Gladys lived alone until 1971 when her sister, Hazel moved in with her. Hazel died soon after. Gladys's had to move when her house was purchased by Central Missouri State University as part of their expansion program. She moved to a small house in town where she lived until shortly before her death September 25, 1983. She died in Shawnee Mission, Kansas.
4. Jesse Harlow. Jesse was born October 6, 1906, at Valley City. He married Juanita (surname unknown) around 1932. The marriage ended in divorce in 1940. Jesse married Ruth Hodges around 1942. This marriage also ended in divorce in 1949. Jesse married twice more, the last time to Edna Erhart Brenner, a widow with four children, two who were still in school. Jesse loved to spend time with his step-children. Edna died in 1975. Jesse died June 5, 1986, at Warrensburg. He had no children from his marriages.

D. Joseph Van Swearingen. Joseph was born on May 4, 1862. Joseph was a long-time family mystery. Mary Stembel Davis Joseph's niece) told me how one day he just moved away from his Ohio home and the last anyone heard from him was in 1896. I finally located him in the 1900 federal census. He was living in Thomas County, Kansas, with another family. He was single. He listed his occupation as farmer. Recently, I located him again when I found him listed in the 1920 census. He was working as a "Hired Man" in Wheatland (Yuba County), California, about 30 miles north of Sacramento. According to the census, he was 59 years old.

Eleanor Josephine. Eleanor was born January 9, 1869, in Ohio. She grew up in Valley City. On September 14, 1890, she married Frank P. Lanham, in Johnson County, Missouri. Sometime after their marriage, they moved to the Tulsa, Oklahoma, area where they had nine children. A number of their offspring still reside in Oklahoma.