Elva Linton Odebrecht Nagel

See also: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhg939wt_1374f9dtfncv

A short story of my life – given together with many pictures, to my chapter of P.E.O. – 1964.

- Elva Linton Odebrecht Nagel

Editors Note: This was found with some of my grandmother’s notes on Linton heritage without the mentioned photos. It is my belief that the PEO organization mentioned in the cover letter refers to the “Philanthropic Educational Organization” Sisterhood, but I am not sure.

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My life has been quite different from the others given at our last meeting. For one thing it has been so much longer and very much to my regret, I was an only child. I was born in Columbus 73 years ago last month. My father also was a native of Columbus. His father was a newspaper publisher and land developer. For many years the family lived on a farm on S. High St. about a mile south of the viaduct and steel plant. After a number of years this farm was developed into a recreational park with a lake for boating and picnicking. It was the only place of that kind or near Columbus. Boats left W. Broad St. at about Front St. on the old canal taking people to the “Lake Park” as it was called. I have a faint recollection of these trips to visit my grandmother.

When I was 5 years old, my grandfather gave my father a farm near Minneapolis, Minn. And we went to live on this small place near the Mississippi river. The first winter there was one of the coldest known to that part of the country. When spring came my parents gave up the farm claiming they wouldn’t live there if they were given the whole state. Thus my father lost the farm and it was given to another son. We returned to Columbus and I nearly died of Typhoid fever. After that, we spent a year on a farm near Murfreesboro, Tenn. Our farm had been part of a Civil War battlefield and as my father plowed the fields, he turned up bullets or an old canteen. We live there only one year then moved to a farm near Marysville, Ohio and stayed there one year. By this time my father was completely disenchanted with farming and we returned to Columbus to stay. It was while living we were living on the last farm that I started school in New Dover Ohio and finished the first grade there. All I can remember of this was eating my lunches in the school yard where we “played house” with a little boy in the rail fence corner at noontime.

Upon our return to Columbus, my father entered business with my grandfather and they developed several tracts of land, having small houses built, which in turn were sold with a small down payment and the balance in monthly payments. This was the very beginning of this method of selling houses in Columbus. There were no Savings and Loans at the time. My father was a Civil Engineer by profession. He followed that for a short period after graduating from OSU but turn to so many other things. During this land developing period, we moved quite often. This was the “horse and buggy” days and they needed to be near the projects for too much time would be consumed driving from one section of the city to another. Finally, when I was about twelve years old, we settled down in the north end of Columbus. I went to the old “Northwood” school and then two years in the “North High” school, which is now “Everett Junior High”. During these years I lived at 124 14th Avenue in what is now the “Phi Kappa Psi” fraternity house, which my father planned and built for our house. The present day study hall for the boys was our barn where we had two horses and I had a pony. The dormitory 3rd floor was planned for dancing and my friend and I had many good times giving dances there. My last two years of high school were at “Doane Academy”, which at that time was part of Dennison University. There were only 500 students and everyone knew everyone else. These years were very happy we loved Granville. I was captain of the Doane Academy girls basketball team and loved and took part in other sports. Gordon Seagraves the “Burma Surgeon” was my young boy lab partner in Physiology and we dissected frogs, cats and other smaller things together. Since, he has become famous; I received a letter from him telling me that was the beginning of his surgery.

From Granville, I went to Washington D.C. to a girls school for a year. This was 1912 and 1913, when President Wilson was inaugurated. The girls in our school watch the Inaugural parade and former President Dwight Eisenhower was a West Point Cadet in that parade. Washington at this time was a city of about 300 thousand population and it was the custom of the President and his family to give a tea each year for the girls of some of the girls’ schools there. My mother was visiting me at the time our school was invited, so she went with us and we had a lovely informal tea with the President and the 1st Mrs. Wilson and their daughters. Part of our education was to go each week to the theater, concerts, etc. When a school was out I return to Granville in time for fraternity danced and a house party. Later I returned to Denison for a year of Home Economics. It was during this last year that I started dating my future husband – then a senior. We became engaged in the spring and were married in August 1915. We went to live in Detroit and after two years our first child was born. She came a month before she was expected and very morning my obstetrician was called into active duty in World War I so I was turned over to a strange doctor who didn’t arrive until after she was born. We moved to Arlington during the early days of the village. There were no houses north of what is now Jones Junior High School. In fact, that wasn’t there and the only school at the time was a one story wood structure, which stood on the present site of the swimming pool. Everyone knew everyone else in the village and we had dances and card parties in the school gym. When M.M. was 9 ½ years old our son Dick was born. My husband was in business during these years, then when the great depression struck and he was without work, he went back to college and worked for a masters and doctors degrees at OSU. He also taught in the College of Commerce. He was offered a position with the Federal Trade Commission in Washington D.C. and our family moved to Silver Springs, Maryland, where we live for 3 years and among other things acquired a son-in-law. My husband was offered a position as a “director of agencies” for the Ohio Farm Bureau and since my parents were not well and we still owned our former house here in Arlington, we moved back. Our little grandson was born in St. Clare’s hospital in (the) “Hells Kitchen” area of NY City. At the time the Queen Mary could be seen lying on her side in the river at the foot of the street [Editors Note: This was 1942 during WWII and the Queen Mary was used to ferry American Soldiers to the European Theater]. Our daughter and her husband were living in Jackson Heights.

In 1944 while on a fishing trip in Canada, my husband suffered a thrombosis and lived only 15 minutes after the attack. I was a widow for almost 18 years. During this period I had my daughter and grandchild living with me the greater part of the time until her death at the age of 32, when Bob was 7 years old. His father had been killed in an automobile accident when he was 4 years old. There were no relatives to take him and so he had lived with me ever since excepting a few quarters he has lived at the Beta Theta Pi house at OSU. He will graduate this June. My son graduated from Ohio State. He married Shirley Keller in 1955. She was born in Arlington.

Early in 1961 one of my closest friend and neighbors for about 30 years was with her husband on an around the world trip when she became quite ill and died aboard ship in the harbor at Piraeus, Greece. About a year later George and I were married. (It had been her wish, often expressed to friends and neighbors.)

My son Dick and his wife Shirley and their two children live at Severna Park, Maryland. That is near Annapolis. Dick is in charge of the “Equitable Life Insurance Society” office in Baltimore. He holds an “M.A.I.” membership in American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers and is a past master of the Community Lodge of Masons. He will be here tomorrow to help put on the “Scottish Rite”.

One more thing that may be of interest to some of you. Every line of my ancestry was here in U.S.A. before the American Revolution and every immigrant and descendant of my line married women whose ancestors also came to America before the Revolution. On my father’s side, they came here – most of them Quakers from England. My mother’s came after the fall and death of Oliver Cromwell, when King George III came to the throne. They originally were Scotsmen.