Throwback Thursday: Lydia Clapper Moats

Lydia Ann Clapper was born in Ohio on July 21, 1825. When she was 18 she married David Moats and by 24 she was already the mother of four children.

In 1851 the family headed west and on March 10, 1852, David received a federal land grant for 40 acres in Highland Township, Clayton County, Iowa. David and Lydia made a life for themselves in Clayton County, where David farmed and Lydia raised their four children – and give birth to 10 more.

They retired in 1899 and moved to Elgin, where David and Lydia remained active. When they celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary in 1909 a reporter from the Elgin Echo stopped by there home. He found David, 89, hauling a wheelbarrow of potatoes to the cellar and Lydia, 84, cleaning the house.

In total they would celebrate 68 years of marriage and earn the title of the longest married couple living in Fayette County. When she died in 1912 at age 86, they had had 48 grandchildren and 43 great-grandchildren.

Throwback Thursday: Ralph and Leone Get Married

The morning of Wednesday, July 12, 1933, Ralph Shaffer and Leone Kerr got in a car and headed east from Elgin, Iowa, toward Illinois. With them was Leone’s cousin, Carroll Klingman, and his wife, Cora. They drove to Galena, where Ralph and Leone were married in front of Judge Cook.

A short time later, they turned the car west and headed home. They arrived back in Fayette County late. It’s not clear what they planned to do, but for the time being they didn’t plan to tell their families. Leone bid her new husband goodnight, and went to her family farm in Illyria Township. She placed their marriage license in her dresser and went to bed. The Kerr family would learn the news when Leone’s mother, Anna, found the marriage license the next day.

 A quarter mile away, Ralph couldn’t contain his excitement. He pulled his parents and brothers Tom and J.D. out of bed to tell them what he’d done.

“I can still hear Ralph telling Mother that he was desperately in love with Leone and he couldn’t live away from her,” J.D. recalled years later. “Mother told Ralph that he didn’t have enough money.”

Bessie’s reservations didn’t matter to Ralph. The deed was done. The next week, the announcement was on the front page of the Elgin Echo. On July 21, a shower was held in the Illyria Church basement to celebrate the newlyweds.

They remained together for 54 years, until Ralph’s death in 1987. At their 50th wedding anniversary open house, July 10, 1983, they celebrated with four generations of their family, as well as special guests Carroll and Cora Klingman.

“They are always thinking about someone else instead of themselves,” J.D. once wrote. “Ralph and Leone always made everyone feel at home.”

Throwback Thursday: Leone (Kerr) Shaffer

When Anna Kerr gave birth to her first child on July 7, 1910, her husband, Will, wanted to name the girl Ella, after his mother. Anna was not the biggest fan of the elder Mrs. Kerr, and the feeling was said to be mutual. She persuaded her husband to compromise and name her Ellen – then proceeded to call her by her middle name only: Leone.

Leone grew up on farms in rural Clayton and Fayette counties. She received her eighth grade diploma from country school on May 21, 1924, then moved in with her grandparents, Will and Mary Gruver, that fall to attend Elgin High School. After graduating with the Class of 1928, she went to Fayette, where she took summer courses at Upper Iowa University. That fall she started teaching in Illyria Township No. 1, a one-room schoolhouse south of Elgin.

It was during these years she started spending more and more time with a neighbor boy, the brother of her high school classmate Tom Shaffer. Ralph Shaffer lived his parents next to Illyria Church – less than half a mile from Leone. She would spend many nights at the Shaffer house, escorted home after dark by Ralph’s brother J.D., who walked Leone across the Illyria Cemetery by lantern light back to the Kerr farm.

After more than four years of courtship, everyone expected to see Ralph and Leone tie the knot. What their families didn’t know, what was that Ralph and Leone already had a plan – one that they would put in motion just a week after Leone’s 23rd birthday.

To be continued.