♀Ella May Harvey

Ella May Harvey (1862–1939) was a Springfield, Illinois, widow whom her obituary in the Illinois State Journal called “an authority on religions of the world”, and who, the same notice says, had traveled through North America and Europe for forty-eight years to study them. She was the great-grand-aunt of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), the sister of Nancy’s great-grandmother Julia Esther Harvey (1857–1951).

Early life and marriage

A Find a Grave memorial gives her birth as 10 May 1862, and she was born at Mount Carmel, Wabash County, Illinois, the fifth of the seven children of the physician James Harvey (1821–1896) and Eleanor Tougas Lovellette (1830–1898), all seven of whom are named in the obituary of the youngest, Orian Ross Harvey, in 1908. In 1891 she married John Scott White (1862–1906), and they had three sons, Robert, Beauchamp Augustus and Joseph. Robert was born at Muncie, Indiana, in July 1892.

John White spent fifteen years with the Franklin Life Insurance Company at Springfield, and the census of 1900 found the family in Springfield’s Ward 5, where she was listed as his wife and he as an insurance agent. Her obituary placed the household at the corner of Fifth and Scarritt streets. About 1901 he left Springfield, and he later lived at Philadelphia.

Widowhood

In August 1906 John White fell ill while traveling in the west with his wife and died at Seattle. She brought his body back to Springfield by rail with her three sons, and he was buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery, the funeral having been set for the Central Baptist church with the Odd Fellows in charge at the grave. Her brother Beauchamp Augustus Harvey and her sister Mary Alice Stein came from Mount Carmel to join the family for the funeral.

Two years later, in 1908, her brother Orian’s obituary named her as “Mrs. Ella White of Chicago”, and the census of 1910 listed her in Chicago’s Ward 7 as a widow and head of her own household, living on her own income, with her three sons. She did not return to Springfield until 1933, when she went to live with her son Robert.

Later life and death

Her obituary says that in her last years, though in failing health, she kept up a large correspondence with authorities on religious and philosophical subjects, helped authors writing about the world’s religions with what she had gathered on her journeys, and had in the course of her research collected and given away three libraries.

Her obituary, as transcribed on a Find a Grave memorial, says she died at her home on Illini Road on 16 June 1939, after an illness of two years. A Find a Grave memorial gives the place as Woodside, Sangamon County, and her burial in Oak Ridge Cemetery at Springfield, in the plot where her husband lies. She was survived by her three sons, a grandson and a granddaughter, and three sisters.

Notes

The obituary of 1939 reached this account through its transcription on a Find a Grave memorial, which attributes it to the Illinois State Journal of 17 June 1939. The same notice says she was a direct descendant of the English physician William Harvey. No evidence supports this, and William Harvey had no children.

Her birth date is given as 10 May 1862, the date on the memorial; its stated age at death, 77 years 1 month and 6 days, computes back to that day, and the obituary gives 77. The census of 1900 gives May 1863, aged 37. The obituary says she was born on a farm in Wabash County, and that she left Springfield in 1900; her husband’s obituary of 1906 says he left five years earlier, about 1901. It prints the second son’s name as “Beauchamp C. A.” where the tree has Beauchamp Augustus and the 1906 notice has “Beauchamp A.”