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.