#52Ancestors - First

I accepted Amy Johnson Crow's #52Ancestors challenge this year.  I spend so much time researching others, my own family has been neglected.  I am using this challenge to get back in touch with my ancestors (and my husband's) one ancestor a week.  Here is my first effort.  The topic for week one was First.  For that I chose my great-grandfather, pictured below with his wife Martha Ann, daughter Melba and son (my grandfather) Vernon.  I hope you enjoy!

The first child of Noah Frank and Armeda (Bland) Hedrick was Elmer Ross Hedrick.  Elmer was born the 4^th of March in 1890 on a farm in the Ozarks near Linn Creek, Missouri.  Elmer grew up to be a tall, slim drink of water with brown hair and pale blue eyes.  About two months after his eighteenth birthday his father passed away, leaving him the man of the family.  And what a job he inherited. 

            It had been a cold, wet spring and area farmers had struggled to get their crops into the fields.  Noah had nine hungry mouths to feed so despite the inclement weather, he was out in the field.  Noah caught pneumonia and in the time before antibiotics, that was nearly always a death sentence.  Noah fought for a couple of weeks before he succumbed to the dread disease. 

            Elmer had to step into his father’s boots and finish getting the crops in, take care of the livestock and take care of his mother and siblings.  When his younger brother Guy was old enough to take over as the man of the house, Elmer went to northeast Kansas.  He got jobs to earn money.  He kept some to help get his own life started, and sent some home to his mother and siblings. 

            Elmer went home to visit in January of 1916 and on the 16^th, he married Martha Ann Shipman.  Elmer was 25 and his bride was 19.  Martha had never been out of the Ozarks, and family stories say she’d never worn shoes up to this point in her life.  They were an adorable couple with six foot tall Elmer towering over petite Martha Ann, who wasn’t even five feet tall.

Elmer married her and took her back to northeast Kansas with him.  They settled in Severance, where they became the parents of three known children.  Their first daughter, Melba Louise, was born July 28^th, 1917.   On March 13^th, 1919 son Elmer Vernon was born and on the 4^th of January 1921 they welcomed another son, Otto Kenneth. 

            In 1917, Elmer was stricken with influenza and never truly recovered.  The Kansas Chief of August 16^th, 1917 said that Elmer Hedrick was rejected for the draft due to disability.  In January of 1919 a newspaper reported that he was receiving treatments from a kidney specialist in St. Joseph, Missouri.   By this time, Elmer’s mother and siblings had moved to Robinson, Kansas.  And just after his thirty-second birthday, Elmer and his family moved there as well.  This move was most likely so that Armeda and his siblings could assist Martha Ann in Elmer’s lingering illness. It was their turn to care for him, as he had taken care of them after his father’s death.   In January of 1922, Elmer was taken to the hospital in St. Joseph.  He had been suffering from pneumonia and puss had formed in his lungs, requiring surgery.  He was in the hospital for over a month.  Elmer suffered all year long and finally passed away at his Robinson home on New Year’s Eve of 1922. 

            Elmer was the love of Martha Ann’s life.  Even though she remarried, she never loved anyone as much as she did her first husband.