Mary Elizabeth Bawden Ely

BAWDEN, ELY

Posted By: Carol Bawden (email)
Date: 4/3/2007 at 12:39:18

MARY ELIZABETH BAWDEN, daughter of Stephen Douglas and Mary Ella Woodward Bawden, b 31 March 1870 in Davenport. She attended Davenport schools and took training at the Teachers Training School. She taught at Old Number One Elementary School in Davenport (now Washington Elementary School).
She married Samuel Leander Ely on 22 March 1900 in her family home on E. 11th. Samuel was born 2 December 1864 in Chambersburg, Franklin County, Pennsylvania. His family moved to Mt. Carroll, Illinois when he was 9 years old in 1874. He attended the (then) Iowa State Normal School (now University of Northern Iowa) in Cedar Falls, Blackhawk County, Iowa. He graduated from Davenport Business College. His first job was a bookkeeper in Davenport for the Iowa Soldier’s Orphans’ Home on Civil War military training camp ground – a facility started by Annie Wittenmyer, a Civil War nurse and friend of Clara Barton. He later worked for A. J. Smith and Son furniture store in Davenport and finally rose to the position of cashier at the Union Savings Bank.

He suffered from tuberculosis and spent several winter months in the South where he contracted typhoid malaria. He died at age 39, on 6 June 1904 in the E. 11th St. home in Davenport just 2 months after the death of their first son, Edward. Following her husband’s death, Mary Elizabeth gave birth to a second son, Stephen Lee Ely born 2 January 1905 in Davenport. She did not remarry but devoted herself to caring for her son, her mother and teaching school. Mary Elizabeth died 15 August 1946 in the family home – 1315 E. 11th St. She was buried with Samuel and Edward in Davenport’s Oakdale Memorial Gardens. The Elys were members of St. John’s Methodist Church.